According to W. Edwards Deming, American companies require nothing less than a transformation of management style and of governmental relations with industry. In Out of the Crisis, originally published in 1982, Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.

Out of the Crisis

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Despite an international resurgence of interest in coproduction, confusion about the concept remains. This article attempts to make sense of the disparate literature and clarify the concept of coproduction in public administration. Based on some definitional distinctions and considerations about who is involved in coproduction, when in the service cycle it occurs, and what is generated in the process, the article offers and develops a typology of coproduction that includes three levels (individual, group, collective) and four phases (commissioning, design, delivery, assessment). The levels, phases, and typology as a whole are illustrated with several examples. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for research and practice.

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Varieties of Participation in Public Services: The Who, When, and What of Coproduction

This article demonstrates how class origin shapes earnings in higher professional and managerial employment. Taking advantage of newly released data in Britain’s Labour Force Survey, we examine the...

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The Class Pay Gap in Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations

This article argues that while the idea of public service-dominant logic (PSDL) has much to offer, there remains room to extend it. First, the article fine-tunes the argument that co-production is unavoidable in services management, by categorizing the different things co-producers provide and analysing their interdependencies. Second, it seeks to account for collectively consumed public value, which is neglected in PSDL. Third, it recognizes that far from ‘delighting’ customers, many public services entail applying the coercive authority of the state to those with whom they deal. The article proposes a reconceptualization of the notion of ‘client focus’.

Co-Production, Interdependence and Publicness: Extending public service-dominant logic

User and community co-production of public services first became topical in the late 1970s, both in private and public sectors. Recent interest has been triggered by recognition that the outcomes for which public agencies strive rely on multiple stakeholders, particularly service users and the communities in which they live. Extra salience has been given to the potential of co-production due to fiscal pressures facing governments since 2008. However, there has been little quantitative empirical research on citizen co-production behaviours. The authors therefore undertook a large-sample survey in five European countries to fill this gap. This article examines an especially significant finding from this research – the major gulf between current levels of collective co-production and individual co-production. It explores the drivers of these large differences and examines what the social policy implications would be if, given the potential benefits, the government wishes to encourage greater collective co-production.

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Activating Citizens to Participate in Collective Co-Production of Public Services

This article reports the results of an intensive study of the quality of local governance in a town in the UK, demonstrating how the concept of local governance can be operationalized, presenting key findings on the quality of local governance in the case study and suggesting that more limited, service-oriented, performance assessment systems may be misleading.

Assessing the Quality of Local Governance: A Case Study of Public Services

The Palgrave Handbook of Co-Production of Public Services and Outcomes

Public expenditure in most parts of the world increased rapidly after 1945, as the ‘welfare 
state’ in its various forms became widespread. However, by the early 1980s, budget deficits 
provided a major motive for public sector reforms in many parts of the world – reforms that 
covered both the content of public policy and the way in which public policy was made. In 
the following 25 years, many governments, at least in the OECD countries, achieved more 
favourable budget positions (see chapter 3). However, from 2008 the most severe economic 
recession in the world economy since the 1930s ushered in a period of financial austerity in 
public sectors which is still in full train at the time of writing (late 2014).

Elke Loeffler

Papers

Activating Citizens to Participate in Collective Co-Production of Public Services

Assessing the Quality of Local Governance: A Case Study of Public Services

The Palgrave Handbook of Co-Production of Public Services and Outcomes

The changing context of public policy

Quality management in public sector organizations