Ruth Dixon
Biographic Data
| ID | 3696564 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Dixon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Dixon |
| SIGNATURE | DIXON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2177-609X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 164 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Resilience in public service partnerships: Evidence from the UK Life Chances Fund
This paper explores functional and structural resilience in outcomes-based public service partnerships. Using a theoretical framework informed by socio-ecological and health fields, and data from all thirty-one social impact bonds (SIBs) funded through the UK government’s Life Chances Fund, we explore how SIBs adapted service delivery and funding mechanisms in response to Covid-19. Human factors supported service continuity and adaptation, indica…
Guiding principles for quality, ethical standards and ongoing learning in implementation research: Multicountry learnings from participatory action research to strengthen health systems
Global health gains can be achieved through strengthening health systems to identify and address implementation challenges in low- and middle-income countries. Participatory research, that promotes joint problem and solution finding between communities and different health systems actors, supports policy implementation analysis at all levels. Within the neglected tropical disease programmes in Liberia and Nigeria, we applied participatory action …
The Effect of Shared Service Centers on Administrative Intensity in English Local Government: A Longitudinal Evaluation
Administrative intensity” (AI) describes the proportion of total resources that organizations spend on administrative support functions rather than primary service and production processes. We test whether “sharing” administrative activities between organizations leads to a fall in AI due to economies of scale, as is often supposed, using organizational and financial data from more than 300 English local authorities. We employ multi-wave change s…
Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis
English councils have long aspired to be ‘self‐sufficient’, providing services within single jurisdictions with limited inter‐local collaboration. However, by 2017 almost all local councils (97 per cent) participated in one or more frontline or back‐office ‘shared service’ involving 338 distinct partnerships. We analyse this new‐found enthusiasm for inter‐council collaboration by performing exploratory social network analysis on organizational an…
Mapping Mutations in Legislation: A Bioinformatics Approach
Legislative amendment poses a conundrum: why do governments amend legislation that they only recently drafted? An effective method for quantifying amendments across a wide range of policy areas and legislatures would be valuable for answering such questions. Existing studies almost all rely on hand-counting and coding of amendments, methods which are laborious, necessarily subjective, and difficult to replicate. Using insights from bioinformatics…
Taking the heat or taking the temperature? A qualitative study of a large-scale exercise in seeking to measure for improvement, not blame
Measurement of quality and safety has an important role in improving healthcare, but is susceptible to unintended consequences. One frequently made argument is that optimising the benefits from measurement requires controlling the risks of blame, but whether it is possible to do this remains unclear. We examined responses to a programme known as the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS-ST). Measuring four common patient harms in diverse care settings with…
Ranking Academic Research Performance: A Recipe for Success
Using the example of a governance system that allocates public funding for research on the basis of rankings of research quality and impact (as has been developed in the UK over the past three decades), this paper explores three conditions needed for such rankings to be effective as a basis for genuine performance improvement over time. First, the underlying metrics must be capable of meaningfully distinguishing the performance of the institution…
A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?: Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government
UK central government is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration over the past few decades, a poster-child of ‘New Public Management’. Successive reforms were accompanied by lofty claims that the changes would transform the way government worked. Government would become more efficient (delivering services more economically, for example by competition or outsourcing) or more effective and user-friendly (mo…
What We Have to Show for 30 Years of New Public Management: Higher Costs, More Complaints
A Model of Cost‐cutting in Government? The Great Management Revolution in Uk Central Government Reconsidered
New Public Management (NPM), particularly in its early stages in the 1980s, is often said to have concentrated on cost‐cutting and efficiency, but few studies have examined how far NPM succeeded in cutting costs. Focusing on UK central government, often claimed to be a leading case of NPM, and analyzing three sets of data (for running costs, tax collection costs, and paybill), this study finds little evidence of real running cost reductions in th…
The Political Payoff from Performance Target Systems: No-Brainer or No-Gainer
Assuming elected politicians have some incentive to adopt public service management systems that will help secure their reelection, this article tests 11 hypotheses about political payoffs to incumbents from ambitious performance target systems. The data come from central performance targets for health and education in Great Britain in the early 2000s and are analyzed through a “consilience” approach that combines analysis of electoral and opinio…
Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases
This article examines the responses of ministers facing high levels of blame in the press after serious failures in the public exam system for school‐leavers in Scotland in 2000 and England in 2002. It develops a method for systematic analysis and comparison of the behaviour of officeholders facing blame, tests the hypothesis that ministers will accept personal culpability only after other ways of handling blame have been exhausted and uses time …
Land, Labour, and the Sex Composition of the Agricultural Labour Force: An International Comparison
Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases
This article examines the responses of ministers facing high levels of blame in the press after serious failures in the public exam system for school‐leavers in Scotland in 2000 and England in 2002. It develops a method for systematic analysis and comparison of the behaviour of officeholders facing blame, tests the hypothesis that ministers will accept personal culpability only after other ways of handling blame have been exhausted and uses time …
The Political Payoff from Performance Target Systems: No-Brainer or No-Gainer
Assuming elected politicians have some incentive to adopt public service management systems that will help secure their reelection, this article tests 11 hypotheses about political payoffs to incumbents from ambitious performance target systems. The data come from central performance targets for health and education in Great Britain in the early 2000s and are analyzed through a “consilience” approach that combines analysis of electoral and opinio…
What We Have to Show for 30 Years of New Public Management: Higher Costs, More Complaints
The Effect of Shared Service Centers on Administrative Intensity in English Local Government: A Longitudinal Evaluation
Administrative intensity” (AI) describes the proportion of total resources that organizations spend on administrative support functions rather than primary service and production processes. We test whether “sharing” administrative activities between organizations leads to a fall in AI due to economies of scale, as is often supposed, using organizational and financial data from more than 300 English local authorities. We employ multi-wave change s…
Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis
English councils have long aspired to be ‘self‐sufficient’, providing services within single jurisdictions with limited inter‐local collaboration. However, by 2017 almost all local councils (97 per cent) participated in one or more frontline or back‐office ‘shared service’ involving 338 distinct partnerships. We analyse this new‐found enthusiasm for inter‐council collaboration by performing exploratory social network analysis on organizational an…
A Model of Cost‐cutting in Government? The Great Management Revolution in Uk Central Government Reconsidered
New Public Management (NPM), particularly in its early stages in the 1980s, is often said to have concentrated on cost‐cutting and efficiency, but few studies have examined how far NPM succeeded in cutting costs. Focusing on UK central government, often claimed to be a leading case of NPM, and analyzing three sets of data (for running costs, tax collection costs, and paybill), this study finds little evidence of real running cost reductions in th…
Ranking Academic Research Performance: A Recipe for Success
Using the example of a governance system that allocates public funding for research on the basis of rankings of research quality and impact (as has been developed in the UK over the past three decades), this paper explores three conditions needed for such rankings to be effective as a basis for genuine performance improvement over time. First, the underlying metrics must be capable of meaningfully distinguishing the performance of the institution…
Taking the heat or taking the temperature? A qualitative study of a large-scale exercise in seeking to measure for improvement, not blame
Measurement of quality and safety has an important role in improving healthcare, but is susceptible to unintended consequences. One frequently made argument is that optimising the benefits from measurement requires controlling the risks of blame, but whether it is possible to do this remains unclear. We examined responses to a programme known as the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS-ST). Measuring four common patient harms in diverse care settings with…
Mapping Mutations in Legislation: A Bioinformatics Approach
Legislative amendment poses a conundrum: why do governments amend legislation that they only recently drafted? An effective method for quantifying amendments across a wide range of policy areas and legislatures would be valuable for answering such questions. Existing studies almost all rely on hand-counting and coding of amendments, methods which are laborious, necessarily subjective, and difficult to replicate. Using insights from bioinformatics…
Land, Labour, and the Sex Composition of the Agricultural Labour Force: An International Comparison
Land, Labour, and the Sex Composition of the Agricultural Labour Force: An International Comparison
Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases
This article examines the responses of ministers facing high levels of blame in the press after serious failures in the public exam system for school‐leavers in Scotland in 2000 and England in 2002. It develops a method for systematic analysis and comparison of the behaviour of officeholders facing blame, tests the hypothesis that ministers will accept personal culpability only after other ways of handling blame have been exhausted and uses time …
The Political Payoff from Performance Target Systems: No-Brainer or No-Gainer
Assuming elected politicians have some incentive to adopt public service management systems that will help secure their reelection, this article tests 11 hypotheses about political payoffs to incumbents from ambitious performance target systems. The data come from central performance targets for health and education in Great Britain in the early 2000s and are analyzed through a “consilience” approach that combines analysis of electoral and opinio…
A Model of Cost‐cutting in Government? The Great Management Revolution in Uk Central Government Reconsidered
New Public Management (NPM), particularly in its early stages in the 1980s, is often said to have concentrated on cost‐cutting and efficiency, but few studies have examined how far NPM succeeded in cutting costs. Focusing on UK central government, often claimed to be a leading case of NPM, and analyzing three sets of data (for running costs, tax collection costs, and paybill), this study finds little evidence of real running cost reductions in th…
A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?: Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government
UK central government is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration over the past few decades, a poster-child of ‘New Public Management’. Successive reforms were accompanied by lofty claims that the changes would transform the way government worked. Government would become more efficient (delivering services more economically, for example by competition or outsourcing) or more effective and user-friendly (mo…
What We Have to Show for 30 Years of New Public Management: Higher Costs, More Complaints
Ranking Academic Research Performance: A Recipe for Success
Using the example of a governance system that allocates public funding for research on the basis of rankings of research quality and impact (as has been developed in the UK over the past three decades), this paper explores three conditions needed for such rankings to be effective as a basis for genuine performance improvement over time. First, the underlying metrics must be capable of meaningfully distinguishing the performance of the institution…
Taking the heat or taking the temperature? A qualitative study of a large-scale exercise in seeking to measure for improvement, not blame
Measurement of quality and safety has an important role in improving healthcare, but is susceptible to unintended consequences. One frequently made argument is that optimising the benefits from measurement requires controlling the risks of blame, but whether it is possible to do this remains unclear. We examined responses to a programme known as the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS-ST). Measuring four common patient harms in diverse care settings with…
Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis
English councils have long aspired to be ‘self‐sufficient’, providing services within single jurisdictions with limited inter‐local collaboration. However, by 2017 almost all local councils (97 per cent) participated in one or more frontline or back‐office ‘shared service’ involving 338 distinct partnerships. We analyse this new‐found enthusiasm for inter‐council collaboration by performing exploratory social network analysis on organizational an…
Mapping Mutations in Legislation: A Bioinformatics Approach
Legislative amendment poses a conundrum: why do governments amend legislation that they only recently drafted? An effective method for quantifying amendments across a wide range of policy areas and legislatures would be valuable for answering such questions. Existing studies almost all rely on hand-counting and coding of amendments, methods which are laborious, necessarily subjective, and difficult to replicate. Using insights from bioinformatics…
Guiding principles for quality, ethical standards and ongoing learning in implementation research: Multicountry learnings from participatory action research to strengthen health systems
Global health gains can be achieved through strengthening health systems to identify and address implementation challenges in low- and middle-income countries. Participatory research, that promotes joint problem and solution finding between communities and different health systems actors, supports policy implementation analysis at all levels. Within the neglected tropical disease programmes in Liberia and Nigeria, we applied participatory action …
The Effect of Shared Service Centers on Administrative Intensity in English Local Government: A Longitudinal Evaluation
Administrative intensity” (AI) describes the proportion of total resources that organizations spend on administrative support functions rather than primary service and production processes. We test whether “sharing” administrative activities between organizations leads to a fall in AI due to economies of scale, as is often supposed, using organizational and financial data from more than 300 English local authorities. We employ multi-wave change s…
Resilience in public service partnerships: Evidence from the UK Life Chances Fund
This paper explores functional and structural resilience in outcomes-based public service partnerships. Using a theoretical framework informed by socio-ecological and health fields, and data from all thirty-one social impact bonds (SIBs) funded through the UK government’s Life Chances Fund, we explore how SIBs adapted service delivery and funding mechanisms in response to Covid-19. Human factors supported service continuity and adaptation, indica…
Political science (10 works) · Economics (7 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Government (linguistics (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Marketing (4 works)