If we try to look at the future of public sector management in the UK, it might be more useful to think about what is happening in the rest of Europe, rather than looking at the USA (“reinventing government”, etc.) and especially New Zealand. There are some common pressures on the public sector in Europe, but not a unified or convergent approach to management. In the areas of structural arrangements about policy making and service delivery, relationships between tiers of government, goal setting, planning, budgeting, evaluation, “user” orientation and personnel management, there are choices to be made.

This paper argues that there are four influences on the development of performance measures in the public services: a belief by the government that reward should be linked to performance and that financial incentives can be developed which bring about the link; a belief in the superiority of management in the private sector compared with the public; performance measures are inevitably linked by those engaged in service provision to attempts to cut expenditure; the measurement approaches being adopted imply the accountability of local services to a higher body, rather than the users of the services. Because of these influences, there is confusion among managers about the meaning of performance measurement and this reduces its value as an aid to good management in the public services.

Top‐down or outside‐in change methodologies are increasingly seen to be ineffective. Systems thinking suggests that change in organizations is a much less straightforward and more subtle phenomenon than previous models allow. Since the late 1970s and as organic metaphors have become used more, the concept of organizational learning has emerged as central to the issue. However, an understanding of how this may take place is still undeveloped. Recently technologies for whole systems development have emerged based on Weisbord′s dictum that for change or learning to occur we need to “get everybody into improving the whole”. Whole systems development can offer a way to realizing the learning organization. Provides a case study of whole systems development in action within Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council in the UK. Begins with a brief account of the ideas on which whole systems development is based and concludes with a commentary on the case study.

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The decline in manufacturing employment in the West Midlands Region of England has been dramatic. This paper situates the changes in the economy of the region in the context of the changing international and national economies. It is argued that the shift in trading patterns from the old Empire towards Europe and North America made manufacturing sectors more vulnerable to competition both in the home market and in the overseas markets. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by the high value of sterling at certain crucial periods. National economic conditions and policies have also had detrimental effects on the regional economy, especially demand-management policies, which concentrated on consumer credit. The development of the vehicle sector has been disrupted by frequent and sudden changes in credit regulations. In addition to these problems, there is evidence that credit and labour-market conditions have both hampered development, and there is some evidence that land shortages in the conurbation have been a hindrance. National government policy towards particular sectors has been applied without major attention being paid to its regional impact. Given the high level of integration of the regional economy, shocks to one part of the economy transmit themselves rapidly to others.