Transitioning and Transforming Probation: The Personal and Professional Challenges for Leaders Engaged in Delivering Public Sector Reform

• In Event: Outsourcing Probation Services in England and Wales: Theorizing and Documenting Change

Abstract

The outsourcing and transfer of labor in the criminal justice contexts of policing, prisons and courts illustrate that, even in a national context, these transitions do not follow a uniform pattern. Rather, there are a diverse set of ‘privatization journeys’ that can be taken and that need to be understood. Our focus here is on the experience of managers charged with stewarding their organization from the public sector, through a 12-month transitional period, and into the eventual full relinquishing of ownership into the private sector. With no clear ‘transition and transformation’ precedent to follow it is an account of how the locally based former public sector management team engage with their new owners (often senior officials from large multi-national corporations). The paper explores manager’s engagement with the language, working styles and vision of their new owners and then how they process and begin to articulate the challenges of new ownership for them (as individuals) and their organization (as a collective). We examine the resilience of the senior level organizational working culture; the operational dynamism of leaders to embrace change; and assess the extent to which managers felt able to participate in, and take ownership of, the branding of their organization.

Author

• Matthew Millings, Liverpool John Moores University