TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Exploring innovation in policy-making within central government: The case of the UK's highways agency
JO  - Public policy and administration
A1  - Butler, Michael J. R.
A1  - Wilkinson, Jacqui
A1  - Allen, Peter M.
SP  - 137
EP  - 155
VL  - 25
IS  - 2
N2  - The first and main contribution of this article is its access to the decision-making processes which drive innovation in policy-making within central government. The article will present a detailed case history of how the innovation came about and conclude by highlighting analytic possibilities for future research. The policy in focus is the UK's Traffic Management Act 2004, which passed responsibility for managing incidents on major roads from the police to the Highways Agency (HA), and has been interpreted as a world first in traffic management. The article tracks the Traffic Management Act 2004 from problem identification to a preliminary evaluation. It is then suggested that future research could explain organizational change more theoretically. By taking a longitudinal and multi-level approach, the research falls into a processual account of organizational change. The second contribution of the article is to highlight two novel ways in which this approach is being applied to policy-making, through an institutional processualist research programme on public management reform and empirical investigations using complex systems to explain policy change.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0952-0767
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952076709356847
ID  - ref1
ER  -