Central government in the UK has introduced performance management regimes that apply rewards and sanctions to local service providers. These regimes assume that organizational performance is attributable to decisions made by local policymakers rather than circumstances beyond their control. We test this assumption by developing a statistical model of external constraints on service standards and applying this model to the outcomes of comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) in English local government. The results show that CPA scores were significantly influenced by the characteristics -such as social diversity and economic prosperity -of local populations. Thus 'poor' performance is partly attributable to difficult circumstances rather than bad choices.

We test the separate and joint effects of centralization and organizational strategy on the performance of 53 UK public service organizations. Centralization is measured as both the hierarchy of authority and the degree of participation in decision-making, while strategy is measured as the extent to which service providers are prospectors, defenders and reactors. We find that centralization has no independent effect on service performance, even when controlling for prior performance, service expenditure and external constraints. However, the impact of centralization is contingent on the strategic orientation of organizations. Centralized decision-making works best in conjunction with defending, and decentralized decision-making works best in organizations that emphasize prospecting.

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Innovation has become a cornerstone of many government programmes of public management reform. In this study we provide the first empirical analysis of innovation adoption in a programme of public management reform that involves an external authority decision. Studies of this nature have not formed a central element of innovation-adoption research, which typically focuses upon the voluntary adoption of innovations by public organisations. Over a two-year period seventy-nine services adopting a programme of innovative management in local government were studied. The empirical results indicate that innovation adoption in local authorities is likely to be achieved where there are dispersed populations, where adoption is concentrated upon a limited number of services, and where there is prior experience of facets of the programme of innovative management reform. Explanations of these results are identified and the implications of researching innovation in public organisations are considered.