Public service spin-outs in the UK: towards a theoretical understanding of the spin-out process

Since the election of the Labour government in 1997 and its vision of the ‘Third Way’, the UK government has been keen to support social enterprise and to utilise the third sector in welfare delivery. Over the past few years the policy environment in the UK has sought to encourage public sector workers to ‘spin-out’ the services that they deliver into social enterprises. The research reported in this paper draws on semi-structured interviews with eleven representatives across four local authorities (LA) in the UK that are spinning out a public service into a social enterprise. The services being spun out operate across four different sectors, which allows the research to identify the common experiences and barriers in spinning out. The analysis is underpinned by a theoretical model of public/third sector collaboration by Takahashi and Smutny’s (2002), later adapted by Cornforth et al (2013). We present an alternative version of this framework based on public sector spin outs. In doing so, the research identified that there are significant barriers facing public services that seek to spin-out as social enterprises and the challenges that this brings to LAs in relation to managing the process. Issues around the sustainability of the ‘business case’ of the spin-outs proved to be the main problem, along with the difficulties of maintaining service provision during the transition phas

Reconciling visions and realities of virtual working: findings from the UK chemicals industry

The emergence of advanced technologies such as Grid computing will, some suggest, allow the final realisation of visions of virtual organisations. This will, according to its advocates, have entirely positive impacts, creating communities of experts, increasing flexibility, reducing the need for travel and making communications more efficient by crossing boundaries of time and space. Such predictions about future patterns of virtual working are, unfortunately, rarely grounded in real working practices, and often neglect to account for both the rich and varied interpretations that may exist of what constitutes virtual working and the constraints and concerns of those who would do it. This chapter gives attention to the consequences of different views over what virtuality might mean in practice and, in particular, considers virtuality in relation to customer and supplier relationships in a competitive and commercial context. The discussion is based upon a three year study that investigated contrasting visions of what was technically feasible and might be organisationally desirable in the UK Chemicals industry. Through interviews with managers and staff of companies both large and small that research provided insights into the different meanings that organisations attribute to the virtuality of work and to the acceptability of potential implementations of a middleware technology. It was found that interpretations of virtuality amongst the potential users and participants were strongly influenced by established work practices and by previous experiences of relationships-at-a-distance with suppliers and customers. There was a sharp contrast with the enthusiastic visions of virtual working that were already being encapsulated in the middleware by the technical developers; visions of internet-only interaction were perceived as rigid, alienating from well-established ways of working with suppliers and customers and unworkable. In this chapter we shall capture these differences by making a distinction amongst compet

Performance measurement : challenges for tomorrow

This paper demonstrates that the context within which performance measurement is used is changing. The key questions posed are: Is performance measurement ready for the emerging context? What are the gaps in our knowledge? and Which lines of enquiry do we need to pursue? A literature synthesis conducted by a team of multidisciplinary researchers charts the evolution of the performance-measurement literature and identifies that the literature largely follows the emerging business and global trends. The ensuing discussion introduces the currently emerging and predicted future trends and explores how current knowledge on performance measurement may deal with the emerging context. This results in identification of specific challenges for performance measurement within a holistic systems-based framework. The principle limitation of the paper is that it covers a broad literature base without in-depth analysis of a particular aspect of performance measurement. However, this weakness is also the strength of the paper. What is perhaps most significant is that there is a need for rethinking how we research the field of performance measurement by taking a holistic systems-based approach, recognizing the integrated and concurrent nature of challenges that the practitioners, and consequently the field, face

Designing Institutional Infrastructure for E-Science

A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more dependent upon access to, and sharing of digital research data. Thus, the U.S. NSF Directorate committed in 2005 to a major research funding initiative, “Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery”. These investments are aimed at enhancement of computer and network technologies, and the training of researchers. Animated by much the same view, the UK e-Science Core Programme has preceded the NSF effort in funding development of an array of open standard middleware platforms, intended to support Grid enabled science and engineering research. This proceeds from the sceptical view that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve the outcomes envisaged. Success in realizing the potential of e-Science—through the collaborative activities supported by the "cyberinfrastructure," if it is to be achieved, will be the result of a nexus of interrelated social, legal, and technical transformations.e-science, cyberinfrastructure, information sharing, research

Sustainability experiments in the agri-food system : uncovering the factors of new governance and collaboration success

In recent years, research, society and industry recognize the need to transform the agri-food system towards sustainability. Within this process, sustainability experiments play a crucial role in transforming the structure, culture and practices. In literature, much attention is given to new business models, even if the transformation of conventional firms toward sustainability may offer opportunities to accelerate the transformation. Further acceleration could be achieved through collaboration of multiple actors across the agri-food system, but this calls for a systems approach. Therefore, we developed and applied a new sustainability experiment systems approach (SESA) consisting of an analytical framework that allows a reflective evaluation and cross-case analysis of multi-actor governance networks based on business and learning evaluation criteria. We performed a cross-case analysis of four agri-food sustainability experiments in Flanders to test and validate SESA. Hereby, the key factors of the success of collaboration and its performance were identified at the beginning of a sustainability experiment. Some of the key factors identified were risk sharing and the drivers to participate. We are convinced that these results may be used as an analytical tool for researchers, a tool to support and design new initiatives for policymakers, and a reflective tool for participating actors

TOWARDS INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES FOR E-SCIENCE: The Scope of the Challenge

The three-fold purpose of this Report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Research Councils (UK) is to: • articulate the nature and significance of the non-technological issues that will bear on the practical effectiveness of the hardware and software infrastructures that are being created to enable collaborations in e- Science; • characterise succinctly the fundamental sources of the organisational and institutional challenges that need to be addressed in regard to defining terms, rights and responsibilities of the collaborating parties, and to illustrate these by reference to the limited experience gained to date in regard to intellectual property, liability, privacy, and security and competition policy issues affecting scientific research organisations; and • propose approaches for arriving at institutional mechanisms whose establishment would generate workable, specific arrangements facilitating collaboration in e-Science; and, that also might serve to meet similar needs in other spheres such as e- Learning, e-Government, e-Commerce, e-Healthcare. In carrying out these tasks, the report examines developments in enhanced computer-mediated telecommunication networks and digital information technologies, and recent advances in technologies of collaboration. It considers the economic and legal aspects of scientific collaboration, with attention to interactions between formal contracting and 'private ordering' arrangements that rest upon research community norms. It offers definitions of e-Science, virtual laboratories, collaboratories, and develops a taxonomy of collaborative e-Science activities which is implemented to classify British e-Science pilot projects and contrast these with US collaboratory projects funded during the 1990s. The approach to facilitating inter-organizational participation in collaborative projects rests upon the development of a modular structure of contractual clauses that permit flexibility and experience-based learning.

The Industrialisation Process of Asian Small and Medium Firms

National governments throughout the Asia-Pacific Region have identified small and medium enterprises as an important source of economic growth and employment. In the past, SME business strategies have focused on production, relying on their subcontracting and sales contacts with large firms for technological innovation and marketing and on abundant domestic labour forces for comparative advantage. Recently, structural problems in the region arising from the Japanese recession, currency appreciation and rising labour costs have upset these relationships forcing SMEs to move offshore (DFI) to restore cost competitiveness and to upgrade their internal technological and organisational capacities to international standards in order to compete for contracts within more open, international markets. This paper analyses this process of change, analysing the development of SMEs within four Asian countries using a six stage evolutionary model. The majority of SMEs in these countries are still in the earlier second (dependency) or third (internalisation) stages. The more advanced SMEs have moved into the fourth (externalisation) stage, where firms develop independent technology and marketing capacities. To the extent that localisation (stage five) had occurred, it involved local embedded relationships which had limited scope for further internationalisation. Little evidence of regional integration or networking among SMEs was found.Asia-Pacific, industrialisation process, Asian small and medium enterprises

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

Survival through networks: the 'grip' of the administrative links in the Russian post-Soviet context

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. Based on an analysis of the post-Soviet transformation experience of four defence sector organizations in a Russian region where the defence sector occupies a substantial part of the local economy, this article develops a typology of network relationships: Grooved Inter-relationship Patterns (Gr’ip) networks and Fluid Inter-relationship Patterns (Fl’ip) networks. This typology can be applied to a range of transition/emerging market and low system trust contexts. Gr’ip networks, in this case, represent the persisting legacy of the Soviet command-administrative system. Fl’ip networks are here an attempt by the defence companies to link into the civilian supply chains of a developing market economy. This article argues that Gr’ip networks had and still have a crucial role to play in Russian enterprises’ survival and development