Prelims

Half Title Page

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Title Page

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

A Critical Introduction

BY

JOHN FENWICK

Northumbria University, UK

United Kingdom– North America– Japan– India– Malaysia– China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 John Fenwick. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80071-421-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-420-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80071-422-9 (Epub)

Dedication Page

This book is dedicated to Andrew, Anna, Denise and Matthew.

Contents

List of Cases

About the Author

John Fenwick is an Emeritus Professor of Public Management and Leadership at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK. He has worked in Policy Research in Local Government and has taught at Hull University and Northumbria University. John has published widely in the fields of local public policy and public service reform. Previous books include Managing Local Government (1995), the jointly edited Public Management in the Postmodern Era (2010) and the jointly authored Public Enterprise and Local Place (2020) and Leading Local Government: The Role of Directly Elected Mayors (2020).

Acknowledgements

Several factors and numerous people have influenced the discussion of organisational behaviour in this book and have provided inspiration, knowingly or otherwise, for the perspective I adopt. The first influence was the inadequacy of many existing textbooks in the classroom setting, especially when teaching students who had come into the university for afternoon and evening classes after a morning at work in the local public sector. I felt that the available sources had relatively little to say to the needs and experience of such students and that even avowedly ‘critical’ sources tended towards the overly-theoretical or the dogmatic. The second factor was my own experience of working in local government and in higher education where it was clear that the organisations concerned were under considerable pressure both from expanding expectations and from reduced funding. An increasing obsession with ‘line management’ throughout the public sector has done little to address these pressures or to enhance the quality of the services provided. The third factor was my personal body of research with a range of colleagues over many years, comprising discussions with managers and employees in the public sector, along with many management development sessions for staff of local public organisations.

I would also like to thank the necessarily anonymous authors of the practical ‘cases’ which feature throughout the book and I wish to acknowledge the support given by Kirsty Woods and other staff at Emerald. I also wish to acknowledge with thanks the responses of Dr Lorraine Johnston and Dr Guy Brown to a pre-publication draft of this book.

My debt to all these sources is gratefully acknowledged. Needless to say, any errors in the text are mine alone.

Professor John Fenwick

Newcastle upon Tyne

2021