This book provides a critical exploration and assessment of public sector innovation, challenging conventional assumptions about the ways in which innovation is generated and how it may succeed or fail.Focussing on the local level of public sector, the book systematically reviews the multidisciplinary nature of public sector innovation through an intersectional lens that considers mounting issues of public sector complexity, transparency, and accountability for innovative governanc...

This book adopts a highly critical approach to the ways in which organisations have been analysed by orthodox theories and offers instead a perspective on elements of organisational behaviour including leadership and its failures, structures, cultures, bullying and the denial of individual voice, firmly rooted in the critical understanding of power and control. Professor Fenwick draws from international examples of practice and finds grounds for optimism in the distinctive positive values ...

Leading Local Government: The Role of Directly Elected Mayors is a timely and critical book that examines the erratic rise and uncertain future of the directly elected mayor in the context of English local governance.Written principally for local government practitioners as well as for those with an academic interest in public leadership, the book asks whether elected mayors offer a new and reinvigorated form of local leadership, whether for individual towns and cities or ...

This book presents the key interactions in local government and public enterprise, drawing together the challenges for local governance in the practice of public entrepreneurship and its response to collaboration, place and place making. Specifically, this book includes the impact of local partnerships and public entrepreneurs in local policy implementation.It is written by established authors bringing together their experience and practice of local partnerships and public entrepre...

"Education, education, education" has become an obsession for politicians and the public alike. It is seen as an economic panacea: an engine for growth and prosperity. But is there a link between increased spending on higher eductaion and economicgrowth? Professor Alison Wolf takes a critical look at successive governments' education policy and challenges many of the tenets of received wisdom: there are no economic reasons for spending more on higher education in order to stimulate growth....

The seventh edition of Sociology, Work and Organisation is outstandingly effective in explaining how we can use the sociological imagination to understand the nature of institutions of work, organisations, occupations, management and employment and how they are changing in the twenty-first century.Intellectual and accessible, it is unrivalled in the breadth of its coverage and its authoritative overview of both traditional and emergent themes in the sociological study of w...

Written by a team of renowned experts in the field, Marketing: A Critical Textbook provides a unique introduction and overview of critical approaches to marketing.Ideally suited to advanced students of marketing, the book uses examples and ′real world′ case studies to illustrate and discuss major alternative and critical perspectives on the subject, enabling students to constructively question the conventional assumptions, concepts and models with which they are al...

Over the past ten years there has been a massive growth in call centres worldwide. These centres are said to represent the most dynamic growth area in white-collar employment internationally since the mid 1990s. Yet the footloose and global nature of the industry means that jobs will always be susceptible to outsourced operations, ICT developments, public sector subsidization of business restructuring and re-location, and cheaper operations elsewhere. This book conducts a thorough analysis...

The shift from the model of central government educational control to school- based management has been widely adopted and acclaimed and has created the general impression of increased democracy and participation.; The international contributors to this book tackle this important policy issue and look behind the scenes of the moves towards school self- management. They investigate the phenomenon of the self-managing school, Why It Is Happening Now, What Is The Truth Behind This Notion And ...

The majority of employees currently working in the private sector are now employed in small firms, yet little is known about their working conditions. This collection of essays addresses this gap. Based on theoretical analysis supported by contemporary empirical evidence, the book explores key areas of the employment relationship adding a new perspective to our understanding of contemporary work.

Is the privatisation of state education defendable? Did the public sector ever provide a fair education for all learners?In Education plc, Stephen Ball provides a comprehensive, analytic and empirical account of the privatisation of education. He questions the kind of future we want for education and what role privatisation and the private sector may have in that future. Using policy sociology to describe and critically analyse changes in policy, policy technologies and po...

In this unique and passionate book, Doug Nicholls proposes a cultural revolution within youth work. He draws on the best of youth work's past to redesign the youth work map for today. He speaks with wit, wisdom and warmth to youth workers about their craft. Yet he takes no intellectual prisoners in proposing a new role for youth work in the struggle for social justice. No student or practitioner should miss it.