Rhys Andrews

• PhD Politics
• Professor of Public Management at Cardiff University

This paper explores the changing nature of the local welfare state in England, Scotland and Wales in recent years. The potential impact of policy changes within the three countries is modelled by comparing local authority spending on education, children's social care and adult social care in each country. Panel-based regression analysis for the per...

Representative bureaucracy theory posits that the presence of less‐advantaged social groups in public leadership positions is an important driver of social equity among the recipients of public services and the public servants who provide them. To evaluate whether active representation can lead to improvements in social equity within arms‐length pu...

The increasing use of municipally owned corporations (MOCs) to provide vital public services has drawn attention to the representation of women on MOC boards of directors. Resource dependency theory suggests that board composition is likely to be shaped by linkages to critical resources within an organization's environment. This paper presents an a...

This study aims to empirically examine whether alternative combinations of economic and institutional conditions influence access to sanitation, drinking water and electricity services in Ghana using fuzzy clustering and regression analysis. Drawing on secondary data from 2021, five clusters of local government districts are identified: big, wealth...

Local governments increasingly create and use corporate forms of organization to provide public services. While there is growing evidence on the factors influencing such corporatization, less is known about what leads some local governments to bring corporatized services back in-house. This paper investigates financial, socioeconomic, political and...

City deals – place-based agreements between central and local state actors – are an increasingly common intervention for supporting economic performance in urban areas. This paper presents empirical evidence on the effectiveness of city deals by estimating the impact of the UK’s City Deals scheme on rates of economic growth, productivity and job cr...

The ‘revolving door’ between those at the top of public and private organizations has given rise to questions about the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors influencing public servants’ switching into lucrative posts with companies they previously regulated. In this study, we investigate the departmental attributes associated with the movement of senior Briti...

In the wake of the global financial crisis, local governments in the UK have been under increasing pressure to develop cost-effective and innovative approaches to public service provision. The use of municipally owned corporations (MOCs) has emerged in this context as a potentially attractive alternative to more established service delivery models,...

This book sets the stage for the first comprehensive cross-country comparison of corporatisation in local government. The opening chapter provides the backdrop for 19 country chapters by explaining the empirical phenomenon and defining the concept of corporatisation. It also introduces a typology identifying different types of municipally owned cor...

Comparison of 19 countries in this book has identified five core characteristics of local government corporatisation. In this chapter, we describe these characteristics. First, there appears to be a trend towards local government corporatisation, albeit not everywhere. Second, local corporatisation can occur under both public and private law, with...

The question whether small or large organisations are associated with the best public service performance has long been a subject of debate in public administration research, and has had profound ramifications for practice. This article seeks to bring clarity to this debate by conducting a meta-analysis of studies scrutinising the relationship betw...

It is often asserted that the representation of women in leadership positions within public service organisations is likely to result in improved outcomes for other women within those organisations. However, there has been little systematic research devoted to understanding whether this argument holds for the nonprofit organisations that now provid...

Local governments increasingly use social enterprises for public service delivery, but the sustainability of this approach is likely to be influenced by a range of resource dependencies. Drawing on the Resource Dependence Theory, we investigate the resources social enterprises must acquire and maintain for their survival among nearly 100 social ent...

Vertical integration of health and social care organizations is widely regarded as an effective way to deliver improved outcomes for recipients of the services provided by those organizations. We test this hypothesis by investigating the impact of the creation of integration authorities in Scotland – statutory bodies responsible for planning and re...

Public‐Private Innovation Partnerships can generate innovative approaches to improving public services. However, incomplete contract theories point to difficulties in making public‐private collaborations work effectively and efficiently. Drawing on these theories, we analyse the transfer of the management of a children’s social services department...

The corporatization of public services by moving services previously provided in-house into various types of arms-length corporate forms of organization is becoming an important trend at multiple levels of government. Although the use of such corporate forms to deliver public services is not a new phenomenon, evidence on the impact of corporatizati...

Local State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) play an increasingly important role in the delivery of key public services to citizens across the world. Because they operate at arms' length from their parent organizations, arrangements for the effective governance of local SOEs are a major concern for public administration researchers and policy-makers alike....

Decentralising fiscal power to locally-elected governments is often regarded as beneficial for public service efficiency. However, questions remain about whether decentralising fiscal responsibilities work well in countries lacking political decentralization. In China, fiscal decentralisation has significantly strengthened the role of local governm...

As issues of social equity and inclusiveness have become increasingly salient to political discourses, they are also more strongly emphasized as dimensions of effective public service delivery. As a consequence, representative bureaucracy has become more significant to the study of public management. The theory of representative bureaucracy assumes...

IMPACT We need to know more about the financial accountability of corporatized public services. In this article, the authors analyse the audit fees of a large sample of English local SOEs from 2009–2017, assessing the impact of board composition and ownership structure on those fees. SOEs with more politicians on their boards of directors had highe...

This paper investigates the relationship between political control and the audit fees for local state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in England – hybrid public service organizations not subject to public sector audit. To do so, the paper employs panel regression techniques to analyse secondary data on 405 SOEs in which major English local authorities hel...

This study examines insider lobbying as a form of relational Corporate Political Activity (CPA) that can be used by firms to gain an advantage in the competition for government contracts, and how firm size moderates the effectiveness of different insider lobbying strategies. Drawing on a unique dataset that captures meetings between private compani...

The central aim of this Special Issue is to gather scholarly perspectives from different countries on the implications of population ageing for local government and the best ways to meet those challenges that arise as a consequence. Contributors to the Special Issue approached these questions in different national contexts from a variety of concept...

This article analyses the economic, political and institutional antecedents and performance effects of the adoption of shared Senior Management Teams (SMTs) – a management innovation (MI) that occurs when a team of senior managers oversees two or more public organizations. Findings from statistical analysis of 201 English local governments and inte...

Theories of sectoral advantage and failure suggest that collaborations between public and nonprofit organizations can create new collaborative capabilities that compensate for sector-specific weaknesses. Drawing on this perspective, we investigate whether government-created nonprofit organizations (GCNPOs) can turn around public services regarded a...

Organizational publicness is likely to have important implications for the mortality or survival of local authority companies. Majority-owned companies and those experiencing more political control may be less prone to dissolution due to greater government commitment to their survival, than their minority-owned and more politically autonomous count...

We argue that governing parties can use privatization as a political discipline mechanism to reward core constituents and swing voters by diverting unwanted social and economic costs to other places. We test this argument by analysing the dispersal of asylum seekers across English local authorities before and after the Conservative Party-led privat...

Theoretical perspectives on the ideological influences on government contracting predict that local governments controlled by right‐wing political parties will contract out a higher proportion of services than those controlled by left‐wing parties. However, empirical evidence on the impact of political ideology on contracting out remains inconclusi...

Cet article évalue la perception, par les hauts responsables du secteur public, de l’impact des réformes de type « nouvelle gestion publique » dans les pays européens. À partir des données d’une enquête menée dans 20 pays européens, nous examinons le lien entre cinq importantes réformes mises en œuvre dans le cadre de la nouvelle gestion publique (...

Organizational goal ambiguity and senior public managers’ engagement: does organizational social capital make a difference? The Job Demands–Resources model highlights that aspects of the work environment that place high demands on employees are job stressors, which can reduce their levels of engagement with their work and organization. By contrast,...

Drawing on the literature on public service co-production, we examine the individual-level and local government-level factors associated with pro-environmental behaviours. Statistical analysis suggests that individuals that have high levels of self-efficacy, have more civic engagement or are carers, are more likely to ‘co-produce’ environmental out...

The transparency of the fiscal performance of governments has attracted attention from researchers, policy-makers and practitioners around the world. This study examines the determinants of fiscal transparency in the city-level governments of China, which has become a key issue in the drive to modernise the Chinese state. Employing cross-sectional...

The creation of companies by local governments to provide public services (or corporatization) is an example of systemic public entrepreneurship that is popular across the world. To build knowledge around the antecedents of public sector entrepreneurship, we investigate the factors that lead local governments to create companies for public service...

In many developing countries, access to basic infrastructure services, such as sewerage and waste disposal varies considerably across different areas. In this study, Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies configurations of economic and political conditions (population density, population size, income and political participation), ass...

Drawing on the literature on sector imprinting, we examine whether private sector experience is related to organizational commitment among senior public managers. We also explore the role that position and organizational tenure play in shaping that commitment, since tenure length is often associated with greater commitment, and assumed to be an imp...

Neighbourhood renewal programs have transformed crime reduction strategies in many developed countries. These place-based initiatives emphasise the preventative value of multi-agency work to enhance community safety and social inclusion. The purpose of this paper is to present empirical evidence on the effectiveness of neighbourhood renewal program...

Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies configurations of New Public Management (NPM) reforms (privatization, consumerism, performance management, and corporatization) associated with perceptions of improvements in healthcare efficiency, effectiveness and equity in 14 European countries. Although these outcomes are pursued concurrentl...

There is a large literature that seeks to evaluate municipal amalgamations ex post, but a relative dearth of scholarly inquiry into the practical political task of persuading the public to accept amalgamations ex ante. We address this important gap in the literature by conducting a rhetorical analysis to ascertain what types of arguments are believ...

A key institutional driver of current reforms within English local government is ‘alternative service delivery’. Our review of councils’ annual accounts between 2010/11 and 2016/17 suggests ‘corporatization’—the creation of local authority companies—is a growing phenomenon across the whole of English local government. This represents such a signifi...

Research summary This study examines the effectiveness of targets as a tool for the contractual governance of cross‐sector partnerships. Applying a difference‐in‐differences methodology, we find that the use of explicit targets within performance contracts is an effective means for improving partnership outcomes, especially where partner diversity...

Democratic theorists suggest that the size of local government is an important influence on citizens’ political efficacy. Typically, it is argued that small is beautiful for efficacy, because residents in areas served by smaller local governments are more likely to feel empowered to engage with decision-making. Nonetheless, it is conceivable that l...

Fiscal decentralization arguably improves government efficiency because it enhances responsiveness to local policy issues and incentivises fiscal discipline. However, critics suggest that central control over local spending is necessary to equalize fiscal outcomes between prosperous and deprived areas. Using a two-stage analysis, we investigate the...

This article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in European countries as perceived by top public sector officials. Using data from an executive survey conducted in 20 European countries, we look at the relationship between five key NPM reforms (downsizing, agencification, contracting out, customer orientation and flexi...

Shared senior management teams are a recent and radical response to financial austerity. They aim to improve the efficiency of public services without the disruption, controversy and transaction costs associated with full-blown organizational mergers. This paper assesses the adoption of this management innovation by English district councils, ident...

The UK government has made a concerted effort to modernise the way in which fire services are managed and staffed. Rhys Andrews and Rachel Ashworth consider the introduction of new duties around fire prevention, reformed pay structures, the integrated development programme for fire service personnel and a renewed emphasis on positive working condit...

This article examines the engagement of senior public managers by developing a person–situation-interactionist perspective. It integrates the literature on social exchange theory and person–organization fit to explore the effects of decision autonomy and shared vision on the engagement of more than 2,000 senior public sector managers in the central...

Drawing on theories of political competition, we explore the extent to which local public housing reform reflects the ideology of local ruling parties and local political preferences. Based on the citizen candidate and median voter perspectives, we hypothesise that left-wing party rule and pro-state preferences are associated with higher levels of...

Resource dependence theory suggests that to function successfully, organizations must obtain certain resources controlled by actors in their environment. To do this effectively, managers often develop networking relationships with key stakeholder groups in order to make critical resources available. Managers in public service organizations, in part...

The Job Demands–Resources model highlights that aspects of the work environment that place high demands on employees are job stressors, which can reduce their levels of engagement with their work and organization. By contrast, social support for employees is a resource that can sustain their engagement and enable them to cope with high demands. We...

Strategic decision-making theories suggest that organizations that combine rational and incremental strategy implementation styles are likely to perform better than those that emphasize a single style. To assess whether these arguments apply to the public sector; we explore the strategy implementation style and perceived service effectiveness, effi...

Administrative intensity is arguably a major determinant of public service performance. Although a large administrative function might constitute a bureaucratic burden, it could also enable organizations to better coordinate key activities. In particular, administrative intensity may strengthen or weaken the performance effects of other key organiz...

In this article, we examine the role that formal strategic planning plays in determining the success of strategy implementation in a set of more than 150 public service organizations from Canada. We also analyse the mediating effects of managerial involvement in strategic planning and the moderating effects of stakeholder uncertainty on the plannin...

Despite the salience of public administration reforms in Europe, there is surprisingly little systematic research identifying how and whether public sector reforms have been implemented, and with what outcomes. This introductory chapter introduces the topic of public administration reform, as well as the general approach and purpose of the book. Wi...

Based on a survey of more than 6700 top civil servants in 17 European countries, this book explores the impacts of New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms in Europe from a uniquely comparative perspective. It examines and analyses empirical findings regarding the dynamics, major trends and tools of administrative reforms, with special focus on th...

Organization theory suggests that the strength of the ties between employees is likely to be weaker in large organizations, but that decentralization of decision making can help generate norms of collaboration, trust, and shared mission. This article explores the separate and combined effects of size and decentralization on perceptions of organizat...

Administrative intensity is arguably a major determinant of public service performance. Although a large administrative function might constitute a bureaucratic burden, it could also enable organizations to better coordinate key activities. In particular, administrative intensity may strengthen or weaken the performance effects of other key organiz...

Andrews R. and Wankhade P. Regional variations in emergency service performance: does social capital matter?, Regional Studies. The relationship between social capital and the performance of public organizations is currently at the top of the UK policy agenda and elsewhere. This paper examines whether social capital is associated with improved regi...

In this article, the authors evaluate whether the provision of good quality social services has the potential to create social cohesion. In addition to examining the relationship between social services and social cohesion, the authors expand institutional theories of social capital by investigating whether this potential for building social solida...

Theories of contracting out offer contrasting perspectives on the noneconomic determinants of local government contracting. Some suggest ideological motives predominate, with contracting decisions reflecting the ideology of ruling parties. Others emphasise political motives, with governments responding to local preferences. In this paper, we draw o...

Theories of contracting out offer contrasting perspectives on the noneconomic determinants of local government contracting. Some suggest ideological motives predominate, with contracting decisions reflecting the ideology of ruling parties. Others emphasise political motives, with governments responding to local preferences. In this paper, we draw o...

The use of public–private partnerships (PPPs) is one of the most distinctive features of strategic management in the public sector. One of the most significant, yet understudied, forms of PPP to emerge in recent years is the public–private joint venture (PPJV). Unlike contractual PPPs, in which public organizations specify the service to be provide...

By working with business, public organisations are assumed to benefit from: a more contestable procurement process; access to private sector entrepreneurialism and the realisation of previously untapped scale economies. Nevertheless, realisation of these benefits may be contingent upon an expansion of management capacity to cope with vastly increas...

In seeking to benefit from the competitive pressures exerted through marketization, governments have hoped to gain improvements in public service efficiency. Yet, concerns remain about the effects of marketization on how equitably public services are provided. We consider evidence about the relationship between the introduction of market-type mecha...

This article brings together resource-based theory and contingency theory to analyze organizational capability in the public sector. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is used to identify configurations of organizational attributes (department size, structural complexity, agencification, personnel instability, use of temporary employees), a...

The impact of privatization on public service quality is an enduring issue in public policy and management. Advocates of privatization suggest that market forces prompt private firms to provide better quality services, while opponents point towards the potential for quality to be traded off against profits. Drawing on incomplete contract and capabi...

The participation of citizens in public policy-making has become a key aim for national and supranational institutions across Europe, but the relative importance policy-makers actually accord citizen participation arguably varies due to the alternative administrative traditions within different countries. Using data drawn from a large-scale survey...

Drawing upon data from a survey of senior public managers in ten European countries, we examine the relationship between public management reforms and perceptions of social cohesion. We find a positive connection between reforms which treat service users as customers and government openness (outward-downward reforms), and managers’ perceptions of t...

The social capital of the communities served by public service organizations is arguably a key determinant of their success. The performance of those organizations may also be shaped by the managerial strategies adopted by organizational leaders. In this study, we explore whether an innovative, outward-looking strategy can enhance the social capita...

In recent times, research on public management has grown rapidly. Nevertheless, despite the expansion of attention to management in the public sector, many important questions about the state of public administration research remain unanswered. One of the most salient of these questions concerns the relationship between public administration and ge...

Theories of workforce diversity in the public sector assume that organizations that are more representative of the population they serve are more likely to foster an inclusive work climate in which individuals from different sections of society can thrive. The authors examine this assumption by studying whether gender and minority ethnic representa...

Theories of workforce diversity in the public sector assume that organizations which are more representative of the population that they serve may be more likely to foster an inclusive work climate in which individuals from different cultures can thrive. We examine this assumption by studying whether gender and minority ethnic representativeness ar...

Organization theory suggests that the strength of the ties between employees is likely to be weaker in large organizations, but that decentralization of decision making can help generate norms of collaboration, trust, and shared mission. This article explores the separate and combined effects of size and decentralization on perceptions of organizat...

Under the Labour government, Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) in England were responsible for the delivery of Local Area Agreements (LAAs) – agreed targets between central and local government. This paper uses statistical techniques and local authority case studies to explore the impact of LAAs on LSPs' efforts to promote social cohesion. The re...

Organizational social capital is critical to effective organizational functioning. Yet, different aspects of social capital are likely to be present to varying degrees within any given organization. In this study, alternative blends of structural, relational and cognitive social capital are modelled using a range of key organizational variables dra...

Evidential C-Means (ECM) is a technique for cluster analysis, which has a methodology based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence (DST). To date this technique has been theoretically discussed but has had limited application. Based on DST, ECM facilitates the association of objects to sets of clusters, rather than simply a single cluster. One f...

The degree to which different social groups get along is a key indicator of the cohesiveness of a society. This study examines perceptions of social cohesion amongst Europeans and explains variations in those perceptions by considering the separate and combined effects of economic strain and institutional trust. Analyses were conducted with the 27...

Despite the growing threat posed to social cohesion by the economic crisis and fiscal austerity in many countries, scholars have so far paid comparatively little attention to theorising or empirically investigating the contribution that public management can actually make to the cohesiveness of society. In this paper, I draw upon Moore’s (1995) dis...

The task complexity and size of public service organizations are arguably key determinants of the proportion of resources devoted to administration. Moreover, the combined effect of these two variables is also likely to have important implications for the scale of the administrative function. To explore the separate and combined effects of task com...

Organizations frequently adopt multiple strategies to satisfy conflicting and competing goals. Modeling the organizational characteristics associated with such hybrid strategies is an important challenge for organization scientists. This study proposes the use of a novel evidence-based computational approach to the ambiguous classification of organ...

Representative bureaucracy theory assumes that representative organizations are better able to represent the needs of particular citizens and groups of service users and that they may perform especially well on their core tasks. In particular, recent work suggests that street-level bureaucrats are more likely to become active representatives than u...

One of the most significant European higher education reform initiatives of the last decade is the introduction of a European Qualification Framework (EQF) emphasising Learning Outcomes (LOs) in higher education. The EQF is offered as a reform to contribute to increased transparency and mobility, and also implies a certain degree of standardization...

Proponents of the vertical consolidation of lower tier units into a smaller number of single-tier local governments suggest that it improves the financial sustainability of governments by generating economies of scale and scope. However, critics suggest that such structural change is beset with disruptive and unanticipated costs that outweigh any p...

Local governments play a critical role in delivering services to the public. Over recent decades scholars have begun to empirically examine the relationship between the management and performance of local governments, locating this in economic, contingency, and resource-based theoretical frameworks. In this study, we undertake a comprehensive asses...

Drawing on theories of representative bureaucracy, we examine whether increased representation of women in police forces in England leads to a higher rate of domestic violence arrests. To do so, we use panel regression techniques to analyze the links between gender representation and variations in the arrest of domestic abuse perpetrators when cont...

Previous research has investigated the determinants of organizational capability in firms operating in competitive environments, yet to date few studies have considered the correlates of capability in public sector organizations. In this study, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis is used to identify configurations of the organizational attri...

Theories of human resource management suggest that public agencies that proactively seek to train and develop their workforce are able to reap a series of benefits for their organization. In particular, it has been argued that “investing in people” by training them can increase levels of organizational effectiveness. At the same time, a commitment...

In this article, we evaluate workforce diversity in the United Kingdom civil service by investigating the organisational determinants of the representation of women, black and minority ethnic and disabled people in central government departments. To do so, we draw on workforce data for 21 departments between 2007 and 2009. Our study reveals the pre...

We examine the relationship between a range of new public management (NPM) practices and citizens' perceptions of service efficiency, responsiveness, equity and effectiveness in English local governments. We find that public–private relationships have a negative relationship with citizens' perceptions of all four dimensions of local service perform...