Public service mutuals: partnerships, collaboration and service-user outcomes

The provision of public services in England has undergone numerous reforms and a process of marketisation over the last few decades. This marketisation of public services has been led by a desire to create more cost-efficient services that are also responsive to service-user’s needs and is being driven by government through funding and legislation. In doing so, the government have encouraged the transfer of Local Authority staff into new provider and employee-owned mutual organisations (also known as ‘spin-outs’). This paper builds upon prior research that developed a theoretical overview of organisational change in the spin-out process, which was grounded in both policy-formulation and partnership theory. The research reported in this paper refines and develops this model, focusing in particular on the ‘outcome’ phase of the spin-out process. It draws on semi-structured interviews with senior managers at four spin-out organisations in order to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of what the outcomes are for spin-out staff and their service-users. In addition, it draws on survey data gathered from 66 spin-outs that allows the research to refine the partnership model by highlighting the differing importance of partners at different periods of the spin-out process. The research is ongoing but early analysis of the data reveals that service management and local authority senior managers and elected officials are the main arbiters of power at the start of the spin-out process, but that this importance reduces over time as the spin-out becomes more independent and service staff and users develop more strategic input. The data also suggests that outcomes for service beneficiaries improve following the spin-out process. The results are discussed in relation to our model of ‘organisational change in the spin-out process’ and the prior literature on partnerships, collaborations and policy-formulation

Assessing the state of the spin-out sector in England

The provision of public services in England has received large amounts of policy attention over the last three decades. During this time there have been numerous and far-reaching reforms to the public sector in England, which have resulted in less direct provision of public services by Local Authorities and an increased ‘marketisation’ of the public sector (Hall et al., 2012b; Simmons, 2008). This marketisation of public services has been led by a desire to create more cost-efficient services that are also responsive to service user’s needs. This reform is being driven by central government, which is using funding reforms and legislation to create greater public choice in the services that they use and the providers that they ‘buy’ these services from. In doing so, the government have encouraged the transfer of Local Authority staff into new provider and employee-owned mutual organisations (also known as ‘spin-outs’). ‘Public service mutuals’ have been defined as ‘…organisations which have left the public sector i.e. spun out, but continue to deliver public services and in which employee control plays a significant role in their operation’ (LeGrand and Mutuals Taskforce, 2012:9). Prior research exploring the spin-out sector has identified that policy initiatives such as ‘Right to Request’, ‘Right to Provide’ and ‘Mutual Pathfinders’ are having an impact and increasing the number of spin-outs from the public sector (Miller et al., 2012a; Cabinet Office, 2011). Spin-outs are seen as enabling services to be made more efficient and responsive to user’s needs, whilst at the same time reducing public expenditure (Addicott, 2011; Hall et al., 2012b; Alcock et al., 2012). However, much of the prior research on spin-outs is sector focused (i.e. exploring health and social care spin-outs only), whilst the spin-out sector in England is heterogeneous and includes leisure trusts, housing associations and employment services. There remains a limited amount of academic research that approaches the sector as a whole and that seeks to uncover common barriers to spinning-out and the challenges facing new and existing spin-outs. This research undertook a review of secondary literature in order to identify potential spin-outs and then invited the 210 organisations identified to participate in an online survey (of which 59 have responded to date). The online survey explored organisational demographics, the policy process adopted in spinning-out, the perceptions of future challenges and the ‘fit’ of commissioning frameworks. The results revealed that the spin-out sector is experiencing growth and that government policy initiatives are having partial success in promoting spin-outs. The research also revealed that the most significant challenge facing spin-outs in the future is related to access to finance and ‘payment by results’ contracting. Finally, the data also suggests that the greatest growth is experienced by those spin-outs that trade directly with consumers and that receive repayable investmen

An Annotated Bibliography of Recent Literature on Current Developments in Philanthropy

As philanthropic organizations play an increasingly important role in societies around the world, the research on philanthropy – from giving and volunteering practices to regulatory frameworks to digital innovations – has also evolved in recent decades. It is important to develop a thorough overview of the relevant scientific discourses and literature on current developments in philanthropy. This will allow researchers and practitioners to enhance the understanding of philanthropy and to improve its practice worldwide. This report provides new insights on current developments and important changes in the global philanthropic landscape, including trends in global philanthropy and its interaction with other sectors of society

A Tale of Evaluation and Reporting in UK Smart Cities

Global trends towards urbanisation are associated with wide-ranging challenges and opportunities for cities. Smart technologies create new opportunities for a range of smart city development and regeneration programmes designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges concentrated in cities. Whilst smart city programmes have received much publicity, there has been much less discussion about evaluation of smart city programmes and the measurement of their outcomes for cities. Existing evaluation approaches have been criticised as non-standard and inadequate, focusing more on implementation processes and investment metrics than on the impacts of smart city programmes on strategic city outcomes and progress. To examine this, the SmartDframe project conducted research on city approaches to the evaluation of smart city projects and programmes, and reporting of impacts on city outcomes. This included the ‘smarter’ UK cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough. City reports and interviews with representative local government authorities informed the case study analysis. The report provides a series of smart city case studies that exemplify contemporary city practices, offering a timely, insightful contribution to city discourse about best practice approaches to evaluation and reporting of complex smart city projects and programmes

Taming the ‘trolls’ : major public projects in the making

Major projects are not yet sufficiently understood, and practices in project governance and project management do not yet reflect the current state of knowledge of large, complex projects. In an attempt to understand the reasons, the authors therefore investigated the latest relevant findings documented in three countries: the UK, Norway, and the Netherlands. Their examination of the effect of implementing governance frameworks for public projects in these countries indicates that efforts to improve major projects are giving rewards: Even if complex public projects, the ‘trolls’, become more challenging, efforts to ‘tame’ them are improving. The results of the study show that project planning has improved and cost overruns are reduced. However, recent observations indicate that the effect may wear off remarkably quickly. Hence, the need for continuous improvement and change is prominent. There are fundamental limitations in the use of formal systems as they cannot detect all problems and there are limitations to humans' ability in terms of optimism bias that cannot be eliminated

Project benefit management: a conceptual framework of target benefit formulation

Successful realization of project benefits is strongly associated with organizational performance. Formulating project target benefits is regarded as the first and critical step in the benefit management process. In this study, we drew upon relevant theories and conducted in-depth interviews with senior managers in Australia to develop a conceptual framework of project target benefit formulation and corresponding propositions. Our findings highlight the important role of project target benefits in funding decision-making and suggest seven criteria for their appraisal (strategic fit, target value, measurability, realism, target date, accountability and comprehensiveness) and four constructs which improve the formulated target benefits (a formal benefit formulation process, senior executive leadership, senior executive supports, and public service motivation). These findings extend the current literature on project benefit management by providing a holistic view on how project target benefits should be formulated and appraised

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them