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Access, Quality, and the Global Learning Crisis: Insights from Ugandan Primary Education

Sarah Kabay

Around the world, 250 million children cannot read, write, or perform basic mathematics. They represent almost 40 percent of all primary school-aged children. This situation has come to be called the ... More

Around the world, 250 million children cannot read, write, or perform basic mathematics. They represent almost 40 percent of all primary school-aged children. This situation has come to be called the “Global Learning Crisis,” and it is one of the most critical challenges facing the world today. Work to address this situation depends on how it is understood. Typically, the Global Learning Crisis and efforts to improve primary education are defined in relation to two terms: access and quality. This book is focused on the connection between them. In a mixed-methods case study, this book provides detailed, contextualized analysis of Ugandan primary education. As one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to enact dramatic and far-reaching primary education policy, Uganda serves as a compelling case study. With both quantitative and qualitative data from over 400 Ugandan schools and communities, the book analyzes grade repetition, private primary schools, and school fees, viewing each issue as an illustration of the connection between access to education and education quality. This analysis finds evidence of a positive association, challenging a key assumption that there is a trade-off or disconnect between efforts to improve access to education and efforts to improve education quality. The book concludes that embracing the complexity of education systems and focusing on dynamics where improvements in access and quality can be mutually reinforcing can be a new approach for improving basic education in contexts around the world.Less

Accomplishing Change in Teaching and Learning Regimes: Higher Education and the Practice Sensibility

Paul Trowler

This book offers a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. Using social practice theory, it presents a practice sensibility rooted in concepts which illuminate teaching and ... More

This book offers a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. Using social practice theory, it presents a practice sensibility rooted in concepts which illuminate teaching and learning contexts. The book takes the reader through the social processes occurring within higher education institutions which shape contexts and influence the direction of change; for leaders and managers, educational developers, change agents, and academics, this sensibility will help to identify the successful paths to changes for enhancement and the patterns of policy implementation likely to occur as teaching and learning is enhanced. For researchers of higher education, the practice sensibility offers new possibilities for meaningful research into teaching and learning issues. Teaching and learning regimes are a key focus of the book. As a family of practices performed by a workgroup in higher education over extended periods, they comprise a number of ‘moments’—characteristics derived from structural foundations which shape the workgroup’s practices and frameworks of meaning. These moments condition how teaching and learning is fundamentally understood, what its aims are thought to be, what is considered ‘normal’ practice, how individuals see themselves and others, and how power operates within the workgroup. The material context is significant in this, as are the backstories, personal histories, and institutional sagas. This book develops a completely new approach to Trowler’s concept of teaching and learning regimes. Using both his research and that of others in the field, it presents a more nuanced, fully developed, and sophisticated version of the concept which has great traction for empirical research, the management of change, and the enhancement of the student experience and learning outcomes.Less

Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs

George E. Mitchell, Hans Peter Schmitz, and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within the transnational nongovernmental organization (TNGO) sector. ... More

Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within the transnational nongovernmental organization (TNGO) sector. Additionally, TNGOs have been embracing more transformative strategies aimed at the root causes, not just the symptoms, of societal problems. As the world has changed and TNGOs’ ambitions have expanded, the roles of TNGOs have begun to shift and their work has become more complex. To remain effective, legitimate, and relevant in the future necessitates organizational changes and investments in new capabilities. However, many organizations have been slow to adapt. As a result, for many TNGOs’ the rhetoric of sustainable impact and transformative change has far outpaced the reality of their limited abilities to deliver on their promises. This book frankly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. In short, TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they themselves operate by bringing their own “forms and norms” into better alignment with their contemporary ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist readers in formulating and implementing organizational changes to adapt TNGOs for the future. The book draws upon a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects.Less

Building the New Managerialist State: Consultants and the Politics of Public Sector Reform in Comparative Perspective

Denis Saint-Martin

In the 1980s and 1990s the governance witnessed a shift from the Weberian model of bureaucracy to the ‘new managerialism’ — a term used to describe the group of ideas imported from business and ... More

In the 1980s and 1990s the governance witnessed a shift from the Weberian model of bureaucracy to the ‘new managerialism’ — a term used to describe the group of ideas imported from business and mainly brought into government by management consultants. Over the past fifteen years, the British, French, and Canadian governments have spent growing sums of money on consulting services, thus, policy makers inside the state have increasingly been exposed to the business management ideas that consultants bring into the public sector. There are major differences in the extent to which reformers in these countries accepted these ideas in bureaucratic reform. Accordingly, this is a book about policy change and variation. It shows that the reception given by states to managerialist ideas depends on the openness of policy-making institutions to outside expert knowledge and on the organization, development, and social recognition of management consultancy.Less

Cosmopolitan Canvases: The Globalization of Markets for Contemporary Art

Olav Velthuis and Stefano Baia Curioni (eds)

This book brings together recent, multidisciplinary, cutting edge research on the globalization of markets for contemporary art. Focusing on different regions including China, Russia, India, and ... More

This book brings together recent, multidisciplinary, cutting edge research on the globalization of markets for contemporary art. Focusing on different regions including China, Russia, India, and Japan, the chapters in this book study the extent to which art markets have indeed become global. On the one hand, it focuses on organizations such as the art fairs, Internet platforms, and auction houses which have enabled global flows of contemporary art. It shows how art from places such as the Middle East has been transformed into a new asset class. On the other hand, the chapters highlight the multiple barriers which globalization has encountered in art markets. Although markets for contemporary art have indeed emerged across the globe, cross-border flows of works of art have remained comparatively insignificant. The reasons behind these barriers are explored. They include differences in taste across the globe, trade barriers in countries like India and Brazil, and vested interests of actors in local art worlds like Japan. This book recognizes the coexistence of various ecologies of contemporary art exchange and sketches the presence of resilient local networks of actors and organizations within art markets. Some chapters moreover argue that Europe and the United States continue to dominate the global market, especially when considering rankings of success and participation in the most prestigious commercial events such as Art Basel.Less

The Cultures of Markets: The Political Economy of Climate Governance

Janelle Knox-Hayes

This book explores the establishment of emissions trading as a form of environmental market-based governance in Australia, China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. It argues that ... More

This book explores the establishment of emissions trading as a form of environmental market-based governance in Australia, China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. It argues that international efforts to promulgate markets run up against local cultures of markets that shape economic practices and knowledge to different degrees. While the global agenda under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has sought to develop similar systems to enable interconnected and synchronized emissions reductions, each of the cases analyzed here has produced different results. The markets and climate policies established reflect the syncretic impact of sociopolitical and cultural context on the institutional transfer of markets. Each country expresses a varying degree of ease or unease with the establishment of markets as systems of climate governance. The book also examines the material implications of emissions markets on the environment and climatic systems. It finds that cultures of markets present a substantial challenge to a universalist prescription for resolving climate change and highlights issues of citizen, state, and industry participation, and the materiality of economic and financial productivity.Less

Digital Government at Work: A Social Informatics Perspective

Ian McLoughlin and Rob Wilson

Digital Government at Work aims to provide a new perspective on the use of digital technologies to provide more joined-up public services. Drawing upon extensive research conducted from ... More

Digital Government at Work aims to provide a new perspective on the use of digital technologies to provide more joined-up public services. Drawing upon extensive research conducted from inside live projects over a ten-year period, the issue of how the digitalization of services can be made more relevant and useful to both front-line service providers and the citizens they are aimed at is subject to fresh scrutiny. Using insights from the field of social informatics, the authors illustrate the dangers of too much integration and centralization of data and suggest an alternative approach based on the ideas of infrastructure and federation. Central to this is a recasting of the process of system design and adoption that places a new emphasis on the role of ‘users’ (both service providers and service end-users) in the co-production of both system and service innovations. Underpinning these arguments is an alternative model of conversational relationships or ‘architectural discourse’ through which designers engage in system design and development and users seek to articulate their needs and requirements. This framework provides a new approach to understanding how designers and users interact and opens up possibilities for innovation to take place through more effective user appropriation of technologies. It is through such means that the potential to improve the coordination of service delivery and the experience of service users can be increased. A corollary of this is that the evolution of digital era governance is more likely to be supported by infrastructural and federal information and organization architectures. In contrast to enterprise-based notions of integration and centralized data—where system designers make key a priori decisions over the way systems will be deployed and used—such architectures are inherently more open to user appropriation and user-led innovation.Less

The Executive's Compass: Business and the Good Society

James O'Toole

This book uses political philosophy to examine the role of the corporation in our culture and its place in creating The Good Society. This book aims to provide business leaders with a practical ... More

This book uses political philosophy to examine the role of the corporation in our culture and its place in creating The Good Society. This book aims to provide business leaders with a practical “compass” to help them navigate the turbulent waters of social change and political conflict. The device helps managers to identify the ideological origins of contemporary political disagreements and understand the philosophical and ethical sources of our differences of opinion about such issues as executive compensation, plant closings, and environmental regulation. The beauty of this “compass” is that it provides a framework for the executive to create order out of the growing chaos of cultural diversity and conflict of values. It is aimed at expanding understanding of the interrelationship of fundamental values.Less

The Future of Public Employee Retirement Systems

Gary Anderson

Olivia S. Mitchell (ed.)

People covered by public pensions are often the subject of ‘pension envy’, that is, their benefits might seem more generous and their contributions lower than those offered by the private sector. Yet ... More

People covered by public pensions are often the subject of ‘pension envy’, that is, their benefits might seem more generous and their contributions lower than those offered by the private sector. Yet this book points out that such judgments are often inaccurate, since civil servants hold jobs with few counterparts in private industry, such as firefighters, police, judges, and teachers. Often these are riskier, dirtier, and demand more loyalty and discretion than would be required of a more mobile labour force in the private sector. The debate challenges traditional ideas about how the public employee labour contract is structured and raises questions about how such employees are attracted to the public sector, retained and motivated on the job, and retired, via an entire compensation package of wages and benefits. This book explores aspects of these schemes, addressing the cost and valuation debate, along with the political economy of how public pension asset pools are perceived and managed. The discussion also explores ways that public pensions can be strengthened in the US, Japan, Canada, and Germany.Less

Graduate Work: Skills, Credentials, Careers, and Labour Markets

Gerbrand Tholen

The expansion of higher education (HE) has been one of the most important changes to affect Western labour markets. More than a third of all British workers are now degree holders. The graduate ... More

The expansion of higher education (HE) has been one of the most important changes to affect Western labour markets. More than a third of all British workers are now degree holders. The graduate labour market is often understood as that part of the labour market characterized by high skills and high knowledge intensity and required in an increasingly complex economy. HE is presumed to be the developer of these advanced skills. Yet with the graduatization of the workforce come growing concerns about as well as misunderstanding of what jobs graduates occupy, how they utilize their skills, and education’s role within graduate work and the competition for jobs. The book examines some of the assumptions placed on graduate work, graduate jobs, graduate skills, and graduate careers. It provides valuable insights into how we can understand the meaning of graduate work within a rapidly changing economic, technological, and organizational context. Based on in-depth qualitative case studies on software developers, financial analysts, laboratory scientists, and press officers, the book shows that the graduate labour market is more heterogeneous than often is understood. What counts as graduate work remains contested and under constant reinterpretation and renegotiation. Also, access to work, job performance, and career advancement are not necessarily driven by university qualifications and skills associated with HE. The book begins to explore how, and to what extent, those workers with university degrees are defined by their educational experiences, status, and qualifications, mounting a powerful critique against the idealization of graduate work.Less

Inside the Compassionate Organization: Culture, Identity, and Image in an English Hospice

Alan Baron, John Hassard, Fiona Cheetham, and Sudi Sharifi

The literature on management and organization studies suggests the time is right for a focus on ‘care and compassion’. The aim of this book is to answer this call by examining the cultural changes ... More

The literature on management and organization studies suggests the time is right for a focus on ‘care and compassion’. The aim of this book is to answer this call by examining the cultural changes found within a particular ‘compassionate organization’—an English hospice—from its altruistic beginnings to the more professionalized culture of today. The study seeks to understand how its members identify or fail to identify with an organization where issues of life and death take centre stage and explores some of the problems the Hospice faces regarding its representation in society. These strands are then drawn together to consider the interrelationships between culture, identity, and image in the organization. An ethnographic approach—including participant observation, extended interviews, and group meetings—was used to study this organization over a period of almost two years. This enabled the production of a nuanced, sensitive, and holistic interpretation of the case study Hospice as inferred from the views of both insiders and outsiders. The findings shed new light on the literature in management studies by proposing a view of culture as a sense-making context that facilitates group socialization underpinning a sense of personal and organizational identity. The study suggests a link between culture and group identification, making discussions about culture almost inseparable from those around identity. With regard to identity and image, however, the study suggests a dynamic and iterative relationship with a continuous flow between interpretation and reinterpretation influenced by the all-pervading cultural context.Less

International Research Management

Philip H. Birnbaum, Frederick A. Rossini, and Donald R. Baldwin (eds)

This book presents a group of papers that describe the preconditions, processes, and outcomes of interdisciplinary research projects from the United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, Brazil, the German ... More

This book presents a group of papers that describe the preconditions, processes, and outcomes of interdisciplinary research projects from the United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, Brazil, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania. The papers describe the problems and approaches to successfully managing projects in government, private firms, and universities. The book also includes a comprehensive, annotated bibliography.Less

Knowledge to Action?: Evidence-Based Health Care in Context

Sue Dopson and Louise Fitzgerald

Health services can and should be improved by applying research findings about best practice. This book explores why it proves notoriously difficult to implement change based on research evidence in ... More

Health services can and should be improved by applying research findings about best practice. This book explores why it proves notoriously difficult to implement change based on research evidence in the face of strong professional views and complex organizational structures. It draws on a large body of evidence acquired in the course of nearly fifty case studies using data from 1,400 interviews with doctors, nurses, and managers, as well as observations and documentary analysis. Using qualitative methods to study hospital and primary care settings, the book aims to shed light on why attempts to introduce evidence-based practice in the UK NHS succeeded in some cases where in others it faltered. By opening up the intricacies and complexities of change in the NHS, it reveals the limitations of simplistic approaches to implementing research or introducing evidence-based health care. The book provides an analysis rooted in a range of theoretical perspectives that underlines the intimate links between organizational structures and cultures and the utilization of knowledge, and draws conclusions significant for other areas of public management. The findings have implications for the utilization of knowledge in situations where there is a professional tradition working within a politically sensitive blend of public service, managerial accountability, and technical expertise.Less

Making Wicked Problems Governable?: The Case of Managed Networks in Health Care

Ewan Ferlie, Louise Fitzgerald, Gerry McGivern, Sue Dopson, and Chris Bennett

This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case ... More

This book characterizes the nature of key reforms—namely managed networks—introduced in the UK National Health Service during the New Labour period (1997–2010). It combines rich empirical case material of eight such networks drawn from different health policy arenas with a theoretically informed analysis. It makes three main contributions. First, it argues that New Labour’s reforms included an important network element consistent with underlying network governance ideas, complementing the interpretation of other authors who have stressed either choice and markets or the continuation of NPM. It contributes to the wider NPM/post NPM debate by suggesting conditions of sedimentation. It specifies conditions of ‘success’ for these managed networks and explores how much progress was empirically evident. Second, the concept of ‘wicked problems’ is used to conceptualize many of the complex health policy arenas studied. It argues that networks are the least bad governance mode to tackle such wicked problems. Wicked problems conditions may become even more important in the future. It offers a qualified defence of network forms and caution against a whole-scale tilt to marketization in ‘wicked problem’ arenas. Third, it brings in a governmentality perspective to retheorize some of the novel organizational processes which do not fit either professional dominance or NPM models. A number of long-run policy developments under New Labour (such as clinical governance, EBM guidelines, energized clinical and managerial hybrids, patient safety regimes) appear consistent with this governmentality perspective.Less

Managing for Public Service Performance: How People and Values Make a Difference

Peter Leisink, Lotte B. Andersen, Gene A. Brewer, Christian B. Jacobsen, Eva Knies, and Wouter Vandenabeele (eds)

How does management make a meaningful contribution to public service performance? This is the overall question of this volume. The sixteen chapters aim to clarify conceptual issues; critically ... More

How does management make a meaningful contribution to public service performance? This is the overall question of this volume. The sixteen chapters aim to clarify conceptual issues; critically reflect on assumptions underlying public management and public service performance understandings; theoretically explain direct and indirect relationships between management and performance; and outline a research agenda based on a review of the extant literature. In order to achieve these aims, this volume takes a multidisciplinary, critical, rigorous, and context-sensitive approach. The disciplines of public management, leadership, human resource management, and work and organization psychology are combined because they focus differently on aspects of management, public service performance, employee outcomes, and linking mechanisms such as employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Multidisciplinarity is illustrated by the variety of management aspects examined: different types of leadership behaviors, people management, performance management, human resource management systems, diversity management, and change management. Stakeholders often emphasize different public values that influence what they hold desirable in public service provision. The authors critically reflect on which stakeholder interests are included and excluded in empirical studies. The institutional perspective informs critical reflection on public sector context factors that affect the management–performance relationship in democratic societies. By paying attention to distinctive features of the public sector context, the volume contributes to both knowledge growth and the improvement of public services in practice.Less

New Perspectives on Public Services: Place and Technology

Christopher Pollitt

Despite their immense importance for many aspects of public service management, the specific features of places have been largely ignored in recent public management literature. Technologies have ... More

Despite their immense importance for many aspects of public service management, the specific features of places have been largely ignored in recent public management literature. Technologies have received much more attention, but mainly within the specific field of e-government. This book puts together a case for paying much more attention both to place and to technological change, and the interactions between them. The book synthesizes theories and concepts from a range of disciplines and focuses them on the many ways in which public services shape places, and places shape public services. Using extensive and varied original empirical material, it examines the role that new technologies have played in these interactions. This theme is traced through internationally comparative studies of central government agencies, hospitals, population registration, and the police. It raises questions about the longer term effects of the increasingly ‘virtual’ relations between the citizen and government, and opens up new perspectives on the organization of our most basic and vital public services.Less

Paradoxes of Modernization: Unintended Consequences of Public Policy Reform

Helen Margetts, Perri 6, and Christopher Hood (eds)

This book explores the unintended and unanticipated effects associated with ‘modernization’ projects and tackles the key question that they provoke: Why do policy-makers persist in such enterprises ... More

This book explores the unintended and unanticipated effects associated with ‘modernization’ projects and tackles the key question that they provoke: Why do policy-makers persist in such enterprises in the face of evidence that they tend to fail? The book first discusses what is meant by ‘modernization’ and ‘unintended consequences’, placing public policy reform within more general intellectual and social trends. It presents eight case study ‘modernization’ projects. Their architects promised faster trains, a more efficient and reactive health service, a more motivated public service, better performing local government, enhanced information for prospective US university students, reduced rates of child malnutrition in developing countries, and a free, open, safe, interconnected cyberspace for people to conduct their social and political life. Each case provides a neat story with a paradox that varies the modernization theme and tackles the question: Why was the project pursued? The conclusion categorizes the cases in terms of their outcome, from success to disappointment, and suggests some strategies for a more balanced version of modernization for current and future policy-makers.Less

Performance or Compliance?: Performance Audit and Public Management in Five Countries

Christopher Pollitt, Xavier Girre, Jeremy Lonsdale, Robert Mul, Hilkka Summa, and Marit Waerness

Performance audit is now in fashion, but has in the past been a somewhat closed world, little studied by outsiders. Now an international team of researchers has studied the work of five national ... More

Performance audit is now in fashion, but has in the past been a somewhat closed world, little studied by outsiders. Now an international team of researchers has studied the work of five national audit offices – France, Finland, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. The picture thus revealed contains elements of technical innovation, methodological challenge, and crucial strategic choice.Less

Public Administration: The Interdisciplinary Study of Government

Jos C. N. Raadschelders

Public administration seeks to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internal structure and functioning of government, in all its complexity, and its interaction with society and its citizens. ... More

Public administration seeks to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internal structure and functioning of government, in all its complexity, and its interaction with society and its citizens. The book provides an account of the discipline, considering its history, growth, boundaries, and underlying assumptions. It tracks the emergence of the field against a background of the expanding conception of the state and the growth of public services, and situates it within the three branches of knowledge – natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It maps out the sources of knowledge of public administration, and how this is fragmented within the discipline’s specializations, the social sciences, and government and society at large. It examines how leading authors map the discipline, the application of different theories, the associated schools of thought and intellectual debates, and the role of knowledge integration. Scholars in public administration initiated much debate as to whether it should be treated as a science, a craft or profession, or an art. This book argues that to develop a comprehensive understanding of government and its complexity requires a truly interdisciplinary approach.Less