Coordination: A problem in public sector management

Coordination is a perennial problem for public services — most especially the human and social services. British policy towards community care and de-hospitalisation is examined as a case study of governmental attempts to improve inter-organisation relations. Three questions are addressed: do the theoretical approaches within the public policy literatures offer policy makers a coherent guide to action; have successive government policies been influenced by these theoretical approaches; has British empirical research on joint planning offered additional insights of help to policy makers? The need to link theories of trust — and the micro dynamics of inter-organisational relations — to the public policy tradition is emphasized, as is the need for a reflexive governmental concern for problems of implementation and governance.