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Although effectiveness and efficiency are old comrades of public administrations, they still often cause unintended consequences. The relation between (absent) effectiveness and (overly emphasised) efficiency remains unresolved. The paper shows that effectiveness and efficiency are still used interchangeably, and despite the presence of negative effects, it comes as a surprise that important documents still address these terms without procedure or methodology to provide the content whereby they could be more clearly elaborated. Not only is the goal to achieve clearer meaning, but to accomplish results with the fewest possible negative effects. Alongside different management reforms, decision-makers must not lose sight of the whole; all reforms are only specific answers to inadequate previous ones, and it could be valuable to take a step back to see how/why different reforms emerge. The paper addresses the success/failure of reforms and the outcomes thereof. It claims the core problem of rational decision-making lies not in rationality per se, but in a lack of concept and/or insufficient attention to the behaviour of complex adaptive systems. With the help of complex adaptive systems, cybernetics, and combinations of effectiveness and efficiency, the paper presents the essential elements for adaptive (human) decision-making (such as diversity, variation, selection, adaptation, and integration) as the framework whereby unintended, reverse, and neutral effects can be reduced. New rules/decisions should be based on different levels of planning and adaptation, and on moving from the general to the more specific, in accordance with context specificity and unplanned, emergent things. It seems the hardest thing to address is the human character that does not (want to) recognise a situation as the situation in which some things must be spotted, evaluated, and changed if needed.

Reform offers economic gains for society at large, but can represent a threat to the interests of public employees. Public sector reform faces opposition from voters employed in the public sector. Norwegian data allow for an analysis of this interpretation. Survey data show that public employees prefer less reform than the rest of the population. The voting behavior of public employees is more sensitive to reform than is that of other voters (the swing voter hypothesis), & hence: shares of public employees in a local jurisdiction have a negative impact on the probability of reform. 5 Tables, 1 Appendix, 28 References. Adapted from the source document.

At present, in England there is little alignment between innovative work and government accountability frameworks. Innovation rarely catches on if it is driven from the top or through a system's approach to change; its flow depends on networking and active relationships, which take time, are less predictable yet provide a much stronger anchor for sustainable institutional reform. In earlier stages of reform the divide was between those leaders who are actively driving change and those were more passive in their leadership role. Most public sector executives are now actively concerned with `public value' and transforming their organizations rather than merely making them more efficient.

In this article we focus on how Norwegian municipalities present information about the results of their work of implementing The Coordination Reform to the inhabitants through their websites. The point of departure is that political reforms may lead to uncertainty for the inhabitants. This uncertainty can partly be handled by giving specific information about how the reform will affect the inhabitants. We contribute to the debate about the municipality as an information agent by following how the 25 municipalities in Troms County cover their work on The Coordination Reform on their websites over a period of one year. We focus on external communication to a heterogeneous target group (the inhabitants) in a reform context. The main finding is that the municipalities disseminate relatively little information about their work with the reform and about specific results. But there are variations between the municipalities. It may seem that they wish to show that they focus on the reform in different ways and part of the information on the websites are therefore of symbolic character.

"This book is a comprehensive reconstruction of the successful attempt by rural professionals in late imperial Russia to engage peasants in a common public sphere. Covers a range of aspects, from personal income and the dynamics of the job market to ideological conflicts and psychological transformation. Based on hundreds of individual life stories"--Provided by publisher

AbstractManagers of street-level organizations play an important role in the successful implementation of public reforms. A prevailing view within the public administration literature is that this work involves the adaptation between reforms and local contexts, where divergence is viewed as a form of resistance to change. The article challenges this prevalent reform-centric view by introducing a situation-centric perspective and coining the concept of situational work as a significant form of managerial work during implementation. Situational work encompasses managerial actions that ensure functional and well-ordered service delivery in local street-level organizations by accomodating everyday situational contingencies, including reform objectives, but also the interests and expectations of workers, clients, and local service partners. The concept of situational work, then, broadens the recognized scope of managerial activities that contribute to successful reform implementation, reconceptualizing divergence from reform design as constructive rather than as resistance to change. The article draws on an extensive multi-wave study of a major organizational reform in Norway, based on observations of meetings as well as qualitative interviews of managers, union representatives, frontline workers, and collaborating partners in six welfare service offices at three points in time (altogether 23 observation sessions and 173 interviews).