Book Review: Modernising work in public services: redefining roles and relationships in Britain's changing workplace

Texts providing a general overview of employment and industrial relations in the UK public sector are relatively irregular occurrences, despite the increasing pace of change in the subject. This edited volume finds a useful and welcome place among this rare genre. It is perhaps ironic that the publication of several of the better-known recent texts has barely predated further tranches of innovation, causing the books concerned to date relatively rapidly. This observation seems again likely to hold good: Susan Corby and Geoff White's text appeared when the 'New Labour' public service 'moderization' project had barely left the starting blocks; now the advent of the Brown Labour administration, confronted by a resurgent Conservative Party, has begun to render the pattern of future developments again uncertain. Pauline Dibben, Phil James, Ian Roper and Geoffrey Wood (eds) (Palgrave Macmillan: 2007), xii + 216pp., ISBN 9781403998590