Managing Complexity in the Public Services

This new edition of Managing Complexity in the Public Services argues that the complexity of the public service world limits the usefulness of classical and rational scientific management approaches like the New Public Managerialism (NPM). As a result overly rigid approaches to performance management and strategic management can be highly dysfunctional in the public context. This book develops a number of pragmatic management practices developed in action research that will be of high use to both academics and practitioners and helps detail how complexity theory can be applied in practice