Best Value and Performance Management Inspired Change within UK Councils

Abstract

This chapter focuses on an exploratory study from an operational perspective, investigating the role of Knowledge Management (KM) in the UK Public Sector, the case setting being within the council’s waste services. Key literary findings outline that while Government seeks to improve council service delivery, significant legacies remain from earlier change programmes that appeared to be restricting the Local Government Modernisation Agenda (LGMA). Given the exploratory nature of the study, a theory building approach is adopted based on results from the exploratory study. The findings show that although knowledge and information flows could inform performance management frameworks to trigger change, a lack of suitable networks or a culture of knowledge sharing, combined with tight implementation timescales and a shifting agenda, meant that councils did not respond as anticipated due to systemic weaknesses. As with many organisations, KM implementation did not reach full potential. However, there are a number of lessons learned and key findings that can act as a learning process for further knowledge management applications within public sector contexts.

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