Financial Strategy for Public Managers is a new generation textbook for financial management in the public sector. It offers a thorough, applied, and concise introduction to the essential financial concepts and analytical tools that today's effective public servants need to know. It starts "at the beginning" and assumes no prior knowledge or experience in financial management. Throughout the text, Kioko and Marlowe emphasize how financial information can and should inform every aspect of public sector strategy, from routine procurement decisions to budget preparation to program design to major new policy initiatives. They draw upon dozens of real-world examples, cases, and applied problems to bring that relationship between information and strategy to life. Unlike other public financial management texts, the authors also integrate foundational principles across the government, non-profit, and "hybrid/for-benefit" sectors. Coverage includes basic principles of accounting and financial reporting, preparing and analyzing financial statements, cost analysis, and the process and politics of budget preparation. The text also includes several large case studies appropriate for class discussion and/or graded assignments.
"[This book is] the most authoritative assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of recent trends toward the commercialization of health care," says Robert Pear of The New York Times. This major study by the Institute of Medicine examines virtually all aspects of for-profit health care in the United States, including the quality and availability of health care, the cost of medical care, access to financial capital, implications for education and research, and the fiduciary role of the physician. In addition to the report, the book contains 15 papers by experts in the field of for-profit health care covering a broad range of topicsâ€"from trends in the growth of major investor-owned hospital companies to the ethical issues in for-profit health care. "The report makes a lasting contribution to the health policy literature." â€"Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
Insightful and comprehensive and covering new subjects like globalization and IT, this text, international in its approach, provides a thorough introduction to the key phases of the contracting process and the skills required by managers in its implementation. These include: policy for contracting strategic purchasing understanding markets communicating the contracting decision designing and drafting the contract the role of the consumer the regulation of service provision Illustrated throughout with practitioner case-studies from a range of OECD countries, this book presents an important new theoretical ‘contract management model’ and a ‘mature contract model', and explores the mechanisms, formal rules and informal norms that influence the way governments contract for public services. This book is essential reading for all students of public management and all public service managers.
"Over the past two decades, there has been a shift of paradigm in public administration and public sector accounting around the world with the increasing emphasis on outcomes as opposed to inputs and outputs focus. Understanding of how government departments and agencies develop and implement outcomes-based approaches to their services and programs to strengthen public accountability, financial scrutiny and good governance worldwide is limited. Covering a selection of international practices on outcomes-based approaches to government departments, agencies and public higher educational institutions in developed economies, this comprehensive compilation provides an essential reading in the public sector accounting, accountability and performance management field. The contributions are grouped into three jurisdictions: Australasia, UK and Europe, and North America. It incorporates outcomes-based practices in public services from advanced economies and will be of significant interest to global public sector regulators, consultants, researchers, and academic communities as well as academic researchers in public administration and development studies fields. The insights offered by a country-specific practice will also be useful to governments in other countries implementing similar systems and practices and facing similar socio-political environments. This book will also help to gain an understanding of the issues of government accountability from a management point of view as well as from a socio-political point of view"--
A new approach to understanding and improving performance and public value This book presents the Public Service Value Model-an innovative, rigorous approach to defining public outcomes and quantifying results-to help readers understand and improve public service delivery. Filled with in-depth insight and expert advice, this guide will arm public service managers-whether in government, nonprofit, or even for-profit organizations-with a practical framework that can be used to define outcomes and manage trade-offs in public service delivery. Martin Cole (Hartford, CT) is Group Chief Executive of Accenture's Government Operating Group. Greg Parston (London, UK) is Executive Director of the Accenture Institute for Public Service Value.
In America today, a public official's lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently authorized officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a cut of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. The list goes on. This book is the first to document American government's "for-profit" past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officials' relationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers-by banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary-transformed that relationship forever.
In this pathbreaking book, world-renowned Harvard Business School service firm experts James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, Jr. and Leonard A. Schlesinger reveal that leading companies stay on top by managing the service profit chain. Why are a select few service firms better at what they do -- year in and year out -- than their competitors? For most senior managers, the profusion of anecdotal "service excellence" books fails to address this key question. Based on five years of painstaking research, the authors show how managers at American Express, Southwest Airlines, Banc One, Waste Management, USAA, MBNA, Intuit, British Airways, Taco Bell, Fairfield Inns, Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the Merry Maids subsidiary of ServiceMaster employ a quantifiable set of relationships that directly links profit and growth to not only customer loyalty and satisfaction, but to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and productivity. The strongest relationships the authors discovered are those between (1) profit and customer loyalty; (2) employee loyalty and customer loyalty; and (3) employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Moreover, these relationships are mutually reinforcing; that is, satisfied customers contribute to employee satisfaction and vice versa. Here, finally, is the foundation for a powerful strategic service vision, a model on which any manager can build more focused operations and marketing capabilities. For example, the authors demonstrate how, in Banc One's operating divisions, a direct relationship between customer loyalty measured by the "depth" of a relationship, the number of banking services a customer utilizes, and profitability led the bank to encourage existing customers to further extend the bank services they use. Taco Bell has found that their stores in the top quadrant of customer satisfaction ratings outperform their other stores on all measures. At American Express Travel Services, offices that ticket quickly and accurately are more profitable than those which don't. With hundreds of examples like these, the authors show how to manage the customer-employee "satisfaction mirror" and the customer value equation to achieve a "customer's eye view" of goods and services. They describe how companies in any service industry can (1) measure service profit chain relationships across operating units; (2) communicate the resulting self-appraisal; (3) develop a "balanced scorecard" of performance; (4) develop a recognitions and rewards system tied to established measures; (5) communicate results company-wide; (6) develop an internal "best practice" information exchange; and (7) improve overall service profit chain performance. What difference can service profit chain management make? A lot. Between 1986 and 1995, the common stock prices of the companies studied by the authors increased 147%, nearly twice as fast as the price of the stocks of their closest competitors. The proven success and high-yielding results from these high-achieving companies will make The Service Profit Chain required reading for senior, division, and business unit managers in all service companies, as well as for students of service management.
List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.
Designed to serve as a basic text for an introductory course in Public Administration, this innovative work provides students with an understanding of the basic management functions that are covered in all standard textbooks with two important differences. First, it is written to address the needs of both the experienced practitioner and the entry-level public servant. Case examples bridge the content-rich environment of practitioners with the basic principles of public administration sought by pre-service students. Second, the discussion of basic management practices is grounded in the political and ethical tensions inherent in the American constitutional form of governance. This reflects the authors' belief that public administration operates as an integral part of the country's political traditions, and thereby helps define the political culture. The book provides a framework for understanding American political traditions and how they inform public administration as a political practice. Key Changes in the Second Edition include: A new introductory chapter that explains what the authors mean by a constitutional approach and why that is important. An expanded discussion of the role of civil society in promoting the common good. A new section in chapter 5 on New Public Governance. Updated exhibits that incorporate up-to-date census data and revenue figures (chapter 10). A new section in chapter 14 that recognises the importance of maintaining accountability in contract and networked systems of governance. Significantly rewritten chapters to add emphasis on the relevance of the chapter material to nonprofit organisations. A significantly revised bibliography which incorporates new bodies of research that have appeared since the first edition.
