Productivity and Organizational Management

Teresa Carla Oliveira, Stuart Holland

4Economic and social efficiency: The case for inverting the principle of productivity in public services

Conventional notions of productivity are pretty hopeless when it comes to describing what doctors, teachers and social workers actually do. Consider a classroom with a sensible number of pupils. Want to increase that teacher’s productivity? Add 30 per cent more kids. What about those hospitals that take so long to get patients well and return them to the community? Speed it up, for goodness sake! Get them out of bed and back on the streets if you want to hit that productivity target – in the UK’s case, that of waiting times. And, while you are at it, fix revolving doors to the front of the building so ...