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Future Editions
Vol. 27, No. 1 (February 2007): Financial Exclusion. Guest Editor: John Wilson and Donal McKillop (jsw7@st-andrews.ac.uk).
Vol. 27, No. 2 (April 2007): Regeneration. Guest Editor: Joyce Liddle (joyce.liddle@nottingham.ac.uk).
Vol. 27, No. 3 (June 2007): Academic Advice to Practitioners. Andrew Gray (profandrewgray@talktalk.net) with Guest Editor: Chris Pollitt.
Vol. 27, No. 4 (September 2007): Governing through Outcomes - The Experience of Outcome-based Budgeting in the UK and Internationally. Guest Editors: Caroline Mawhood and Colin Talbot (colin.talbot@mbs.ac.uk)
Vol. 27, No. 5 (November 2007): Public Services Programme. Guest Editor: Christopher Hood (debate articles to micky@mickylavender.com).
Call for papers: Public Money & Management
Does 'Lean' enhance public services?
The pressure to improve the productivity and performance of public services has led to many calls from industrialists, management consultants and policy officers for the application of industrial practices to the public sector. 'Lean' is one such favoured recent approach that claims to achieve substantial cost savings and quality improvement. But is the model of Lean advocated by management consultancies and others appropriate to public services? Is there evidence that it achieves the promised efficiency savings and quality improvements?
The roots of 'Lean' lie in Toyota production systems but there has been considerable development of the concept. The term was first adopted in the 1980s by with claims that the implementation of Lean practices in manufacturing resulted in using less of everything (for example raw materials, labour, time, etc) compared to mass production. Lean techniques assume that all organizations are made up of a number of processes; Lean then uses a number of business tools to look at these processes, redesigns them to reduce waste that does not add customer value and to create new processes where activity is pulled by customer demand.
Recent research and publications have shown that the public sector use of Lean has resulted in improvements in customer waiting times, service performance, processing times, customer flow and quality, achieving more for less, generating a better understanding of the process, better joined-up working, improved use of performance data, increased staff satisfaction and confidence, and embedding a continuous improvement culture. Therefore, it if Lean is implemented correctly, it could become more than just the next management fad. However, it could also be suggested that public sector managers must not attempt Lean naively: such whole system change should be implemented carefully with realistic expectations about its impact and ease of adaptation.
Public Money & Management will be publishing a themed edition of empirically-based articles to analyse the concepts, application, implementation and impact of 'Lean' within public services. Papers are invited that include, for example:
- Case studies and evaluations of 'Lean' implementation.
- Development of Lean frameworks for public services.
- Evaluation or comparison of Lean across different public services.
- Impact of and, barriers of effective implementation of Lean.
- How process improvement in general is being implemented in the public sector.
- How Lean is supporting a better understanding of operations management principles such as balancing capacity and demand, designing processes or systems ,and cultures of process improvement and innovation.
Abstracts up to 1,000 words should be submitted by 31 May 2007 to the edition's guest editor:
Dr Zoe Radnor, Associate Professor in Operations Management; Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL; Tel.: 02476 528202; email: Zoe.Radnor@wbs.ac.uk.
See our submissions page for notes for authors. Or contact michaela.lavender@cipfa.org
It is intended that selected authors will then be invited to present their full papers at a seminar at Warwick Business School in September 2007 prior to publication in early 2008.