Time to
Defend Improve Public Services! »
Appalled by the effect of cuts on your community? But you want to improve public services, not defend them? I was speaking to one of Birmingham’s genuine social entrepreneurs yesterday. He was telling me about his experience of making his voice heard in relation to cuts in public services. The cuts are having a real [...]
Cooking with Community Involvement »
American sociologist Sherry Arnstein came up with the idea of a ladder to represent approaches to community involvement as successive rungs towards ‘citizen empowerment’ 40 years ago. But is ‘empowerment’ always the most important aim of community involvement. And is more community involvement always the right ingredient for better public services? Successful public services are [...]
What’s Wrong With Efficiency? »
Frederick Winslow Taylor, born in the mid‐19th century, was an engineer, one of the first management consultants and the intellectual leader of the ‘Efficiency Movement’ which held that inefficiency in industry and society at large could be removed by the rule of experts. In formulating management as an academic discipline, Taylor invented ‘scientific management’ ‐ a tool for greater efficiency. Scientific management focused on finding the one best way of doing any task and standardising it regardless of human factors. It shiftsed decision making from employees to ‘expert’ managers. The production line is its perfect form. Here tasks are made more efficient by progressive standardisation, specialisation and ‘deskilling’.
Coproduction, the Surface Economy and ‘Welfare Society’ »
We tend to think of coproduction in relation to public services. In the UK, in particular, recent interest in the potential of coproduction on the part of policy-makers and public service agencies is focused through the prism of public spending cuts and the government’s ‘Big Society’ idea. Big Society being a way of expressing the [...]
Coproduction & the Core Economy »
Coproduction is… ‘the process by which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organisation’. This is the definition given by the leading expert in what economists call ‘common pool resources’ and 2009 Nobel economics laureate Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom made studies of collective action in [...]
Now FULLY BOOKED – Communities Managing Change Event »
PLEASE NOTE – This event is now FULLY BOOKED. We will aim to get resources and information online as soon as the event as possible.
Photo Gallery
In A Fix? Welfare Cuts and Consumer Society
Time to DefendImprove Public Services!
Cheaper Energy: Together
Co-operative Council
Neighbourhood Timebanks, Carrs Lane – Tuesday 10 July
GOOGLE NEWS
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