Staff Participation and Public Management Reform - Some International Comparisons

This book explores the role of civil servants and their trade unions in the public management reform process, framing it in its economic, social, cultural and legal contexts. Building on neo-institutional and stakeholder theories, the book shows how staff and their representative organisations have influenced the formulation and implementation of public management reforms in twelve OECD countries. This study challenges top-down elite theories that have dominated the existing literature, explaining how staff participation practices, both direct and indirect, have impacted on the implementation of reforms in different ways in different countries. The book concludes that variations in staff participation in the reform process depend upon institutional and political factors and the distribution of power in the employment relationship.

FRANCESCO CERASE Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Naples Federico II, Italy JEAN MICHEL DENIS Assistant Professor, Marne La Vallée University, France ZUZANA DVORAKOVA Associate Professor, Department of Human Resource Management, University of Economics, Czech Republic YVES EMERY Professor, Public Management and Human Resources Department, Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, Switzerland DAVID GIAUQUE Professor, Public Management Unit, Institute of Economics and Toursim, University of Applied Sciences, Austria GILLES JEANNOT Deputy Manager, Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés, Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussés, France RAINER KOCH Professor, Institute of Public Management, Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany PETER LEISINK Professor, Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands RENATE MEYER Associate Professor, Department of Public Management, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria MYRIAM PARYS Advisor, Cabinet of Minister Marino Keulen, Belgium RICHARD SHAW Senior Lecturer, School of Sociology and Social Policy, Massey University, New Zealand TRUI STEEN Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, University of Leiden, The Netherlands BRAM STEIJN Associate Professor, Department of Public Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands JAMES THOMPSON Associate Professor, Graduate Program in Public Administration, University of Illinois, USA TURO VIRTANEN Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki, Finland GEOFFREY WHITE Professor, Department of Management, University of Greenwich, UK GERHARD HAMMERSCHMID Assistant Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Public Management, Austria