Dr Toby Lowe

Senior Research Associate

Email: toby.lowe@ncl.ac.uk
Personal Website: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/tobylowe/

Background

My background is in Political Philosophy, where I explored the concept of community: what it means, and what a politics that took community seriously would look like.

Following my PhD, I left academia for 15 years. I worked in the fields of regeneration, social inclusion and the arts, in both policy and delivery roles. Most recently, I was Chief Executive of Helix Arts, an organisation which promotes equality of opportunity to make art.

My current research interest is in public and social sector performance management. It focusses on helping those engaging in social change to be more effective at what they do. My role at the Business School also includes developing relationships between the University and those seeking to create social change. This includes developing the Leaders Network for Social Change, and the Little Heresies in Public Policy seminar series.

I'm currently working on:

Funding in Complex Ecologies - research in partnership with Collaborate on how funders and public sector commissioners are responding to complexity. This work has identified a new complexity-informed paradigm for public management, outlined in the report 'Whole New World: Funding and Commissioning in Complexity'
We have a three-year action research programme funded by the Tudor Trust which explores how organisations are implementing the emerging complexity-informed paradigm for public management, and are supporting the creation of a Community of Practice for organisations who want to work in this way. See here for details.
Place-Based System Change - working in partnership with Lankelly Chase on their programme to support system change for people who experience Severe & Multiple Disadvantage - see what we're up to here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/tobylowe/

Research

My research focusses on performance management and commissioning in the public and social sectors. It has explored the flaws with using outcomes as the basis for performance management and commissioning, particularly when used in Payment by Results approaches.

At the heart of current problems with the performance management of social interventions lies a failure to respond to complexity. I am exploring complexity-friendly approaches to commissioning and performance management, based on trust & transparency, horizontal accountability and the creation of positive error cultures.

My research currently focusses on:

Funding, commissioning and performance management in complexity - research in partnership with Collaborate on how funders and public sector commissioners are responding to complexity. This work has identified a new complexity-informed paradigm for public management, outlined in the report 'Whole New World: Funding and Commissioning in Complexity'
We have a three-year action research programme funded by the Tudor Trust which explores how organisations are implementing the emerging complexity-informed paradigm for public management, and are supporting the creation of a Community of Practice for organisations who want to work in this way. See here for details.
Place-Based System Change - working in partnership with Lankelly Chase on their programme to support system change for people who experience Severe & Multiple Disadvantage - see what we're up to here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/tobylowe/

Publications

Lowe T. Debate: Complexity and the performance of social interventions. Public Money and Management 2017, 37(2), 79-80.
Pell C, Wilson R, Lowe T, ed. Kittens are Evil : Little Heresies in Public Policy. Axminster: Triarchy Press, 2016.
Lowe T, Wilson R. Managing the performance of social interventions. What can we learn from a complex systems approach?. In: British Academy of Management (BAM). 2016, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: British Academy of Management.
Lowe T, Wilson R. Playing the game of Outcomes-Based Performance Management. Is gamesmanship inevitable? Evidence from theory and practice. Social Policy and Administration 2017, 51(7), 981-1001.
Lowe T. New development: The paradox of outcomes—the more we measure, the less we understand. Public Money and Management 2013, 33(3), 213-216.
Lowe T. The Communitarian Critique of the Market. In: Richard Norman, ed. Ethics and the Market. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, pp.63-91.
Lowe T. Communitarianism as a Blind Alley? A Reply to Lacey and Frazer. Politics 1996, 16(2), 103-108.
Lowe T. Performance management in the voluntary sector – responding to complexity. Voluntary Sector Review 2017, (ePub ahead of Print).
Dow A, Vines J, Lowe T, Comber R, Wilson R. What Happens to Digital Feedback?: Studying the Use of a Feedback Capture Platform by Care Organisations. In: ACM SIGCHI (CHI) 2017. 2017, Denver, Colorado, USA: ACM.