A Case Study of Governance in Public Sector ‘Virtual Organizations’: The Emergence of Children’S Trusts

The UK public sector has become a testing ground for new ways of managing service delivery. One ambitious innovation is the creation of Children’s Trusts led by English local authorities. Children’s Trusts represent a new organizational initiative to promote the wellbeing of children by coordinating distributed multi-agency working in ways sensitive to local conditions and priorities. The authors argue that Children’s Trusts can be understood as virtual organizations within the public sector. From this perspective they explore the governance of Children’s Trusts and consider some of the associated demands on information systems.