Fire and Rescue Services: Leadership and Management Perspectives

This unique text fills a major gap in the emergency services literature by surveying the research on fire and rescue service management in the UK. An extensive evidence base focuses on organizational culture, leadership skills, standards, and accountability, emphasizing the services’ dual roles as first responders and guardians of public safety and prevention. The implications for international public health and safety programs are made clear as the services’ recent history illustrates the complex challenges typical of functioning within local and national political contexts. Chapters take on a broad range of management, leadership, service delivery, and staffing concerns, including:

·  Evolution and adaptation of fire and rescue services during periods of expansion and austerity.
·  Civil protection as a local and national priority.

·  Structural issues: assessments and improvements, collaborations with other services.

·   Emerging social concerns:diversity, gender equality, the aging worker population.

·  The concepts and consequences of heroes and heroism.

·  Future directions for governance, transparency, and accountability.

 Fire and Rescue Services complements the earlier volumes in the Leadership & Management of Emergency Services series with equal parts realism and vision. It should interest a wide audience of public policymakers, public managers, and emergency service personnel, as well as academics and researchers.

Pete Murphy is the Professor of the Public Policy and Management at Nottingham Business School. He teaches and supervises at undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive levels. Pete, is the Vice Chair (Research) of the Public Administration Committee of the Joint Universities Council, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Public Scrutiny. His current research focuses on public policy, and in particular the public assurance, performance management, governance, scrutiny, and value-for-money arrangements of locally delivered public services.

Between 2000 and 2009 Pete was a Senior Civil Servant in Whitehall, where he held a series of posts in the Department of the Environment Transport and Regions; the Department of Transport Local Government and Regions; the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Department of Communities and Local Government. For five years he was also a Director of the Government Office for the East Midlands. Prior to joining the Civil Service, Pete was the Chief Executive at Melton Borough Council in Leicestershire. He has been responsible for emergency planning and responding to emergencies at local, regional and national levels.

Kirsten Greenhalgh is an Associate Professor at Nottingham University Business School.  She is currently the Deputy Director of Undergraduate Programmes and Course Director of the BSc. Finance, Accounting and Management.  Her current research focus upon strategic management accounting and public and emergency services.  Her specific interests are in performance measurement and management and the integrated delivery of services and financial management regimes across the public sector. 

Prior to joining the Nottingham University Business School she was a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University for fourteen years. Her professional background is in management accounting and she is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting for who she sits on the Adjudications Working Party.  She has held a number of management accounting posts in both the National Health Service and Local Government prior to engaging in academia.

Pete and Kirsten have, both been on the Editorial team of the International Journal of Emergency Services.