Policy making and implementation
Local authorities increasingly need to work co-productively with stakeholders. INLOGOV Professor Catherine Mangan and colleagues investigate how this is working in the complex world of adult social care. Qualitative data from English local authorities show that they are using different types of market shaping in different parts of the care market (e.g. residential vs home care). Challenges to the sustainability of the care system (rising demand, funding cuts, workforce shortages) are making it harder for councils to take co-productive approaches encouraged by legislation, and mixing commissioning approaches risk antagonising providers and further unsettling an unstable market.
Government incentives like tax credits can have important effects on their recipients, research conducted by INLOGOV Associate Professor Koen Bartels and colleagues demonstrates. The authors explore the role of accounting technologies of government (ATGs) associated with UK Tax Credits and their impact on claimants’ motivations, behaviour, and identities. They approach Tax Credits as a case study to examine how ATGs articulate and operationalise neoliberal ideology through a complex network of inscription devices, expertise and locales. The findings indicate that ATGs play a key role in transforming Tax Credits claimants into self-disciplined ‘citizen-subjects’ whose decisions are informed by market logic. But are those who lack the required human capital to make this change being left behind?
Changes in institutions can provide opportunities for policy change. Looking at a case study of police governance reform, INLOGOV Emerita Professor Vivien Lowndes (with Professor Francesca Gains) examine how the micro-foundations of institutional change impact gender policy. The research highlights how new directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners prioritised violence against women and girls, identifying the institutional building blocks for gender policy change.
Strategic management, service delivery and performance management
The development of ‘strategic state capabilities’ has important implications for the quality of public services and citizen wellbeing. In a new book, INLOGOV Associate Paul Joyce examines the effective use of long-term visions and strategies, and its impact on national government performance. Meanwhile research in China identified weak links to the delivery of national targets and stronger links with factors such as the official’s age, length of tenure and distance from home.
Service delivery
Public servants are facing new demands and challenges. Extending the role of public service professionals can improve effectiveness, but can also come at a cost to the staff involved, argue INLOGOV Professor Catherine Mangan (with Catherine Needham and Elizabeth Griffiths). Looking at firefighters engaged in public health work, this role extension reduces the mitigating factors helping workers manage emotional labour. Interviews with firefighters engaged in public health work found that role extending was less emotionally intense than emergency response but evoked more negative emotions—challenging display rules; undermining role preparedness; and creating emotional dissonance. Role extending is not an easy add-on, but requires appropriate training and support.
Exploring healthcare practice, INLOGOV doctoral researcher Matthew McKenna (with Professor Nicola Gale) examine how practitioners navigate the tension between individual and population health risks. Using a theoretically informed survey of public-facing healthcare professionals, we uncover the tensions between their knowledge about infection and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), organizational interventions designed to address AMR and the relational dynamics of applying interventions to specific clinical settings. Healthcare professionals navigate these tensions by negotiating pathways for action that have enough coherence for them to live with it. 'Seeking coherence' therefore is introduced as a new concept, better suited to account for the way decision-making occurs in the context of the ongoing and often irresolvable tensions between individual and population based health risks.
Regulation and inspection
INLOGOV is developing new research around the role of regulation and inspection in improving public services. A series of articles by INLOGOV Assistant Professor May Chu and colleagues explore food safety regulation. The discussions extend to investigating the effects of international pressure and national interests on regulation, and how the influencing factors of consumers’ food risk communication behaviour on social media reduce the risk of food poisoning. Communicating food safety risk is paramount, but the intention and role(s) of consumers and central and local government warrant more attention and future research.