Voluntary Organizations and Public Service Delivery

Voluntary Organizations and Public Sector Delivery examines how aspects of voluntary sector employment are affected by its engagement with the growing trend to the market-based outsourcing in the delivery of public services within industrialized countries. The volume draws together a team of well-recognized academic contributors from the UK, Canada, Australia and the United States to explore how the process of outsourcing is impacting the internal and external labor markets of voluntary organizations, and the implications for the policy objectives underlying the externalization of the delivery of public services to them.

These themes of change in employment are covered in depth in the UK with dedicated chapters exploring, workforce patterns and skill needs, HR policies and practices, recruitment and selection, graduate recruitment, unionization, pay and conditions and psychological contracts in organizations. The book also contains a significant international comparative dimension with individual chapter analysis of employment issues in Australia, Canada and the United States, as well as an Anglo-German comparison.

Ian Cunningham is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde. He has researched and published in the area of human resource management, employment relations and employment issues in the voluntary sector. His publications include a forthcoming research monograph, contributions to edited volumes and 25 articles in refereed journals.

Philip James is Professor of Employment Relations at Oxford Brookes University Business School. He has researched and published widely in the fields of human resource management and employment relations, his publications including seven authored/co-authored books and monographs, numerous contributions to edited volumes, and over 60 articles in refereed journals. A key strand of his recent research has been concerned with the employment implications of public sector reform, including those associated with the outsourcing of social care services. His recent publications include the following co-edited volumes: Institutions, Production and Working Life (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Modernising Work and Employment in British Public Services: Redefining Roles and Relationships in a Changing Workplace (Palgrave, 2007).