Turnaround Management Strategies in Local Authorities: Not Only for Poor Performers

Abstract

In the past four decades, UK government policymakers have sought to improve the performance of local government by trying to achieve organisational turnaround and bring laggards up to the standards achieved by the leaders. Both the Conservative Party and New Labour led new public management reforms aimed at modernizing and improving local government authorities by adopting standards from the private sector. Given the pressure to improve, failing local authorities have been pushed to adopt a unique set of strategies known as turnaround management strategies (TMS). However, this paper, based on qualitative data and a survey of 126 senior local leaders, shows that TMS have been implemented to a high extent among both poor and excellent performers. The paper concludes that regardless of their objective performance ranking, English local authorities are characterised by a self-perception of underachievement. As a result, high performers continuously implement radical changes.

Organizational failure and turnaround in public sector organizations: A systematic review of the evidence

“…Studies have been conducted across a wide range of organizational settings including health services ( 25 - 31 ), local government ( 8 , 11 , 32 - 36 ), schools ( 2 , 12 , 19 , 37 - 41 ), and a combination of public services ( 42 ) ( Fig. 1 ).…”

Building the next model for intervention and turnaround in poorly performing local authorities in England

“…This is not to say that those that underwent turnaround disliked CPA, and it is important to recognise that there were different levels of intervention in place ranging from the draconian to the supportive (ODPM 2003a, 2003b, Beeri 2012. The key question posed by lead officials during the initial review of failing councils was if the council had the 'will and the where-with-all' to get itself out of trouble.…”

“…Writing later, Beeri (2009Beeri ( , 2012Beeri ( 2013b Unsurprisingly there is less academic literature evaluating the current SLI regime because of its contemporary nature. Many of the studies that have been undertaken, have either been produced or commissioned by the LGA (Bennett et al 2014, Downe et al 2014a, Downe et al 2014b, LGA 2012, Planning Advisory Service 2013, Shared Intelligence 2013.…”

“…Finally through an assessment of ambition and 'direction of travel' (progress) it also raised the profile of the need to be focussed on the real and not merely the perceived needs of a locality in its wider context. Jones (2013) and Beeri (2012) have shown that despite the centralist nature of CPA, it was not wholly top-down and unsupportive. Indeed, the intervention process could, where appropriate, be a light touch affair.…”

“…More specifically, it concentrates on the corporate, or organisation-wide, intervention arrangements for local authorities, which are generally considered to be the most politically sensitive interventions and undoubtedly had the most significant impacts on public policy, service design and delivery since they were introduced in 2001. It is also an area of increasing international academic interest (Beeri 2012(Beeri , 2013b. The paper will therefore very briefly examine the literature of strategic turnaround and intervention before contextualising, and strategically positioning, the role of corporate intervention.…”