ABSTRACT
Despite the attempts initially outlined in the Mallaby Report of 1972 to promote the concept of generic managers, the culture of technical professionalism is still strong. The result of this has been that, whereas most large organizations already share services internally – where people undertaking functions such as finance, human resources or information technology are grouped together in order to allow the specialist activities to be carried out more effectively – this is not universal practice in local councils. Whilst there may be a finance department there are often accountants, human resources or IT specialists in ‘service’ departments.
