Managing for Public Service Performance: How People and Values Make a Difference

How can management make a meaningful contribution to the performance of public services? Around the world, public organizations face increasingly complex social issues related to globalization, migration, health crises, national security, and climate change. To meet these challenges, we need abetter understanding of what managing for public service performance means, and what it requires from public managers and public servants.This book takes a multidisciplinary, critical, and context-sensitive approach to address such questions. Through a comparative overview of public administration performance in twenty-eight EU member states, it examines a variety of management aspects such as leadership behavior, human resourcemanagement, performance, diversity, and change management. It also critically reflects on how the context of the public sector affects the management - performance relationship in different democratic societies, as well as the influence of numerous stakeholders and their beliefs about the nature andpurpose of public service. By clarifying conceptual issues and taking a theoretical approach to the relationships between management and performance, this book offers a new direction for research and a framework to help improve public services in practice.