For a variety of reasons, public management development policieshave become the fad in many Western industrialised countries in recentyears. As governments move to see their…
Abstract
For a variety of reasons, public management development policies have become the fad in many Western industrialised countries in recent years. As governments move to see their operations managed other than simply administered, they are looking for ways to provide new management skills to their managers. In addition, senior government officials themselves see management development programmes as a way to strengthen the corporate culture and purpose of public bureaucracies. Attempts at launching new public management policies in several OECD countries are reviewed. The purpose is to draw out the similarities and differences in the approaches being tried. It is revealed that there are a great deal of similarities. For one thing, governments are looking inside their operations for solutions rather than turning to universities or the private sector. For another, the standard lecture approach to teaching has lost much of its appeal in the new programmes. In some instances, participants from the private sector are invited to attend the new courses.
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There has been a surge in interest in public management developmentin the 1980s. Countries that had no management development programmesintroduced new ones, while countries…
Abstract
There has been a surge in interest in public management development in the 1980s. Countries that had no management development programmes introduced new ones, while countries already having such programmes made far‐reaching changes to them. Initiatives have been costly precisely at a time when most governments have had to exercise restraint in their spending. Suggests that governments should have in place rigorous evaluation plans to assess if the programmes are successful. Reviews the evaluation efforts of several countries in public management development programmes. The study reveals that the evaluation record is spotty with the evaluation efforts of some countries, notably the United Kingdom, showing promise. In addition, points to several suggestions for governments to strengthen their capacity to assess the impact of their management development programmes. Concludes by arguing that governments tend to bias their evaluation of management development efforts and the results when they initially identify what ought to be evaluated and how.
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The new public management philosophy holds obvious appeal. It promises to provide the “Big Answer” to real and imagined shortcomings in public bureaucracy. How else does one…
Abstract
The new public management philosophy holds obvious appeal. It promises to provide the “Big Answer” to real and imagined shortcomings in public bureaucracy. How else does one explain such telling titles as “Reinventing Government” and “Getting Government Right”?
Blue Wooldridge and Virginia Rose Cherry
A public library budget can serve varied purposes: a contract, a management tool, a communication mechanism, a financial control mechanism, a motivator, a plan, a major…
Abstract
A public library budget can serve varied purposes: a contract, a management tool, a communication mechanism, a financial control mechanism, a motivator, a plan, a major policy‐making tool and as an instrument of democracy. This paper presents a methodology that public library directors can use to determine if the budget contains the information they need in order to make decisions.
As social media has become an ingrained aspect of our lives—including our political relationships with other citizens and the state—various governments have warned public servants…
Abstract
Purpose
As social media has become an ingrained aspect of our lives—including our political relationships with other citizens and the state—various governments have warned public servants that being politically active online might threaten the reputed impartiality of themselves and the public service. This study examines whether public servants are less likely to be politically active on social media than other citizens, and seeks to understand public servants’ varying disposition to be politically active online by investigating the role of employees’ underlying Big 5 personality traits.
Design/methodology/approach
Multivariate regression, along with marginal effects and predicted probabilities, are used to investigate public servants’ online political activity with survey data from Canada, a country where impartiality is a core public service value, and where governments, public service commissions and even public sector unions have voiced cautious messages about the threat online political activity presents to the reputed impartiality of public servants, and the public service at large.
Findings
Analysis of the direct effects of being a public servant and each Big 5 personality trait finds that being a public servant significantly, and substantively, reduces the probability of engaging in online political activity, meanwhile, Extraversion and Conscientiousness have consistent, significant and substantive relationships with being politically active online. Subsequent analysis investigating the dynamic between the Big 5 and being a public servant, uncovers a more complex story. Among public servants, Openness and Neuroticism, rather than Extraversion and Conscientiousness, are associated with significant and substantive changes in the probability of engaging in some online politically activities. This is consistent with research investigating the relationship between the Big 5 and risk aversion, given that public servants in Canada work in an environment with a highly cautious discourse portraying social media as a serious risk to impartiality.
Practical implications
The findings also speak to best practices for public service human resource managers by shedding light how public servants’ behavior can be better understood and managed by paying attention to their underlying personality traits.
Originality/value
This study moves beyond analyzing trends between public and private sector employees, to instead examine public servants’ online political activity. This study offers theoretical and empirical insight into how public servants’ disposition to be politically active online is, in part, influenced by their underlying Big 5 personality traits, specifically, Neuroticism and Openness.
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
Jacques Bourgault and Stèphane Dion
Many relationships between politicians and bureaucrats are based on an energy‐equilibrium model where the politicians provide energy and the bureaucrats, equilibrium. According to…
Abstract
Many relationships between politicians and bureaucrats are based on an energy‐equilibrium model where the politicians provide energy and the bureaucrats, equilibrium. According to this model, conflicts occur when one partner does not adequately fulfill his or her expected role. This model may be fruitfully used to study the relationship between the politician, the career bureaucrat, and the political appointee. The division of roles among this “ménage à trois” is particularly difficult and often generates tension. The situation is most prone to conflict when the government is in a period of change. At such times, the newly elected politicians have a tendency to mistrust the established bureaucracy and to depend almost exclusively on their political appointees. The dysfunctions induced by this phenomenon, in regard to the capacity of the bureaucracy to adequately fulfill its equilibrium role, are very clearly illustrated by the Canadian political transition of 1984, when the federal government was handed over to the Progressive Conservative Party. A series of interviews with ministers, senior civil servants, and senior policy advisors, all of whom had ringside seats to this transition, shows how the extensive power granted to ministerial offices aggravated the difficulties usually associated with a period of transition. This particular transition illustrates how important it is for the newly elected to ensure that their partisan policy advisors play their roles without getting in the way of the indispensable cooperation which must be established between ministers and senior civil servants.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationships between governance and a variety of approaches to public administration, especially New Public Management.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationships between governance and a variety of approaches to public administration, especially New Public Management.
Design/methodology/approach
The study provides a conceptual review of the various approaches to public management and governance.
Findings
Many approaches to public administration, especially New Public Management, place excessive emphasis on quotidian management issues and insufficient attention to broader issues of governance.
Originality/value
I liked it.
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Eric E. Otenyo and Nancy S. Lind
Perhaps the increased use of technologies is the hallmark of the new global managerial dispensation. Worldwide, the tendency to use especially information technologies is legend…
Abstract
Perhaps the increased use of technologies is the hallmark of the new global managerial dispensation. Worldwide, the tendency to use especially information technologies is legend. By far the most widespread use of ITs has been for governments to post information about themselves on the internet. Literally all governments have web sites with information about government structures, foreign embassies, and tourism and investment opportunities.
Marthe Deschesnes, Nathalie Drouin, Caroline Tessier and Yves Couturier
The purpose of this paper is to understand how a Canadian intervention based on a professional development (PD) model did or did not influence schools’ capacities to absorb a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how a Canadian intervention based on a professional development (PD) model did or did not influence schools’ capacities to absorb a Healthy School (HS) approach into their operations. This study is the second part of a research project: previously published results regarding this research provided a detailed description of the PD model and highlighted the relevance and effectiveness of PD in improving actors’ HS-related knowledge and practices. The present paper focuses on the organizational impact of such PD intervention.
Design/methodology/approach
The design was based on a realist evaluation approach, which helps to elicit a theory explaining how an intervention leads to particular outcomes. A multi-site case study of three schools with pre- (T 0) and post- (T 1) intervention comparison was adopted. Multiple qualitative methods were used to capture how the changes were achieved by collecting data from various stakeholders involved in the intervention.
Findings
The PD model tested reinforced the schools’ capacities to absorb this type of initiative. For one of the capacities examined, “exploitation”, i.e., the ability to incorporate and maintain the initiative into schools operation, the evidence was less apparent. In congruence with the realist evaluation, the results are rendered in the form of a contextualized intervention theory identifying the links between the PD and the mechanisms that were likely necessary to explain what led to the changes in “absorptive” capacities (which refers to the capabilities of schools to acquire and assimilate HS knowledge, and also to transform and exploit them, in the context).
Originality/value
The refined theory, based on empirical findings, can enable facilitators and practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of the action mechanisms shown to be determining in the success of HS implementation.