This paper describes an empirical study of mentor and mentee behaviors deemed critical for developing healthy mentoring relationships and effective mentoring during the "start up" and "on going" stages of a formal mentoring scheme within a major UK public sector organization. Several identified behavioral categories (criteria)…

This article explores the core themes and issues of private residential service delivery for children and youth in Ontario, with a specific focus on staffed group care within this sector. Such exploration highlights the juxtaposition of the public rights of children with the private world of service provision. Based on twenty interviews with…

The objective of this article is to explore the experience of reconciling the strategic information system (IS) management with the radical transition of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure in Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) between 1998 and 2003. This investigation will be beneficial for the implementation of IT projects, as…

As public and private funders have focused on evaluating the effectiveness of workforce development programs, a myriad of data collection systems and reporting processes have taken shape. Navigating these systems takes significant time and energy and often saps frontline providers' capacity to use data internally for program improvement.…

Total quality management based governance models tend to focus on incremental improvements within the boundaries of a single organization. This may limit the benefits of information technology because they are not complex enough to address business or performance problems that extend beyond the boundaries of a single organization. The research…

The settings for this article are rural and remote communities in the province of Ontario, Canada, where the advent of high-speed Internet has brought about new opportunities for the provision of public health and information services. This article proposes that public funding agencies and service providers will gain planning and evaluation…

Virtual Worlds have become an attractive platform for work, play, and learning. Businesses, including the public sector and academia, are increasingly investing their time, money, and attention to understanding the value of virtual worlds as a productivity tool. For example, educators are leading the way with research in Second Life, one of the…

For more than a decade, competence development has been a key concept of modern management in both the private and the public sector, but to some extent its meaning and practice have been different in the two sectors. In the public sector in particular, competence development has been closely related to a number of other buzzwords characterizing…

Organizations have become more dependent on information technology (IT) in the 21st century. But IT implementation and use is resisted in certain sectors of Tanzania, particularly in government-run enterprises. The purpose of this study was to investigate the causes and consequences of resistance to IT development and implementation in the…

Intense competitive pressure and the need for continual improvements have led to a burgeoning interest in and use of pay-for-performance programs. This paper explores the increased use of pay-for-performance, drawing examples from healthcare, education, and the government. Suggestions are made as to how best to implement pay-for-performance…

Are public and private organizations fundamentally different? This question has been among the most enduring inquiries in public administration. Our study explores the impact of organizational ownership on two complementary aspects of performance: service quality and access to services for impoverished clients. Derived from public management…

Recognizing the diversity of models and strategies for private sector participation in education that have emerged in Latin America, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) requested the Academy for Educational Development (AED) to conduct research with leaders in the public and private sectors in several countries. While…

This paper uses meta-analysis to investigate whether random assignment (or experimental) evaluations of voluntary government-funded training programs for the disadvantaged have produced different conclusions than nonexperimental evaluations. Information includes several hundred estimates from 31 evaluations of 15 programs that operated between…

The goals of the early childhood business plan are to explain, inform, and guide public and private stakeholders and policymakers and the general public about the investments and activities required for all children to have opportunities for school success. The business plan presented in this report has two parts, an asset review and an action…

The new public sector community development workers (CDWs) programme was established in 2004 following ineffective service delivery through chronic under-spending on annual budgets in post-apartheid South Africa. CDWs receive training in learnerships within the National Skills Development Strategy to ensure access to and spending of local…