Futures in Public Management: The Emerging Relational Approach to Public Services

The prevailing orthodoxy of public service management is that it should be marketized, commissioned, contracted, managed, measured, and evaluated. Futures in Public Management introduces and develops the alternative argument that the objectives for and outcomes sought by institutions working with the public in contexts of health, care and welfare are inherently relational phenomena – they are always complex and cross-boundary, always co-produced by the individuals who experience them through interaction with those who are delivering them in relationship with those providing help/support.

This volume of Critical Perspectives on International Public Sector Management questions the potential trajectories, risks and opportunities in taking relational approaches including the transition from existing and/or emergent forms of organising public management. The implications for the governance and management of organisations and practice of relational public services are discussed, as well as the requirements for new roles and responsibilities for stakeholders that a relational management to public service reform.

Drawing from wider literature to set out the emerging lessons and reflections on relatively long running attempts to create exemplars of what is broadly a relational approach to public service management, the chapters explore the systemic hinterland required to develop and sustain relational public service approaches.

Rob Wilson is Professor of Digital Social Innovation in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Hannah Hesselgreaves is Professor of Public Service Reform and Director of the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Max French is Assistant Professor in the Business School, Northumbria University, UK.

Melissa Hawkins is Assistant Professor in the Business School, Northumbria University, UK.

David Jamieson is Assistant Professor in the Business School, Northumbria University, UK.

Martin King is Lecturer in the Business School, Northumbria University, UK.

Jonathan Kimmitt is Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Business School, Durham University, UK.