International Public Management Review
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Combating Corruption: Lessons out of India
Get PDFThis paper deals with the ubiquitous problem of corruption among public officials– both elected and appointed, in India. By looking at the legal and administrative provisions to combat corruption, it is shown how futile the attempts so far have been. Among the plethora of reasons for failure to combat corruption, it is concluded that the more important ones are the inadequate and inefficient enforcement mechanisms, lack of political will, and more importantly the cultural context of social tolerance and easy forgiveness. Any outrage that is there is largely confined to rhetoric, not action. Despite some helpful developments such as the newly conferred freedom of information, active investigative media and engaged civic groups, reasons for optimism appear to be minimal. The need seems to be a serious effort to develop sound norms by changing the societal culture, which places the premium on the shoulders of political parties
Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector
Get PDFThis article claims that there is a need for a new form of innovation in the public sector because bureaucratic (closed) ways of innovating do not yield the quantity and quality of innovations necessary to solve emergent and persistent policy challenges. Based on these shortcomings the article defines a set of criteria, which a suitable form of public sector innovation needs to fulfill. The article shows that collaborative innovation meets these criteria because it opens the innovation cycle to a variety of actors and taps into innovation resources across borders, overcomes cultural restrictions and creates broad socio-political support for public sector innovation. The article highlights risks and issues associated with collaborative innovation and that the concept should not be discarded on these grounds since there is no suitable alternative to tackle emergent and persistent challenges. Finally, the article suggests capacities, which government needs to develop to successfully implement collaborative innovation. However as research on innovation in the public sector is rather thin the article suggests a map for further research to substantiate the role of collaborative innovation in the public sector
Consolidating Governance Capacity in Complex Networks: Changing Perceptions,
Get PDFIn this article we address the question how differences in organizational contexts influence the consolidation of governance capacity and thus the sustainability of successful governance reforms. We analyze the outcomes (in terms of consolidation of governance capacity) of two change trajectories in the Dutch public domain in rather different institutional contexts. The first case is a bilateral planning process between Flanders and the Netherlands in which a new way of collaborative decision-making for the Schelde estuary was established. After decades of stalemate negotiations, the governments of Flanders and the Netherlands decided to initiate a collaborative governance process with a variety of public, private and societal actors which was intended to result in an integral (broadly supported) vision on the future of the estuary. The second case assessed is a program in the Dutch ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM), intended to get more interaction between policy-makers and citizens as well as to improve citizen orientation with the organization. A variety of projects were launched to experiment with new ways of working and to enhance the openness of the policy process with regard to environmental policy
Exploring the Relationship between the Level of Stakeholder Participation and Local-Level Government Performance in Papua New Guinea: The Case of Wampar Local Level Government in Morobe Province
Get PDFThe position of the authors of this article is that local community stakeholder participation is vital for successful community development reform of service delivery. In our view critics of public service delivery in Papua New Guinea (PNG) ought to appreciate that the degree of stakeholder participation in enhancing the delivery of basic services is necessary so that intended government reforms in service delivery may be further developed and justified both within and outside of government so as to attract the financial and skill capacities needed by local governments. Stakeholder participation and local-level government management in PNG under the current reform initiatives need to be evaluated to assess the contribution of citizens to the performance of Local-Level Government (LLG) in Papua New Guinea. Research on seven cases of wards in Wampar LLG in Morobe Province (PNG) using the case study method reveals that stakeholder participation in Local-level Government (LLG) is both present to some degree and is vital for effective community development in PNG and other developing countries with needs similar to Papua New Guinea.
Essay: Revisiting the Financial Collapse of 2008: Lessons about Causal Factors and the Path to Serious Economic Stress
No full textThis article disputes the view of financial markets expressed by Alan Greenspan and others in arguing that the economic crisis of 2008 was not caused by an “unquenchable capability” of human beings to seek excessive wealth but instead by a failure of the United States regulatory system to appropriately mitigate speculative investments including those made by Wall Street investment bankers and financial lending institutions. Greenspan may be correct in his assessment of the predictably selfish nature of investors and lending institutions. However, to blame the near collapse of the U. S. and global financial system on “human nature” is grossly oversimplifying a complex string of events in a way that shifts blame away from those who were responsible for the collapse - including Greenspan. In contrast to Greenspan’s claim I argue that overly aggressive lending policies and regulatory failures were the product of theory that assumes markets function efficiently and individual actors within an economy act rationally. What I characterize as failed theory resulted in over-reliance on a vast set of risky investment tools and practices that treated the marketplace as an entity that would function best without significant regulation or oversight
Capacity Building in Public Management in the Times of Economic Uncertainty and Social Stress
Get PDFThe roles and functions of the state in contemporary societies, cultures and economies have expanded to respond to numerous present-day challenges including that of coping with fiscal stress, economic recession and instability. These challenges have accelerated the need for development of more effective, and in some cases less costly, state and public institutional management capacity to recognize, plan, decide and implement workable and politically feasible solutions. Capacity building and development of core public management systems is needed to strengthen the ability of the state to generate methodologies, strategies, and actions to assist public and private sector organizations, communities and individuals in improving performance in the design and delivery of a wide variety of assistance programs and services. This has required and will require in the future enhanced leadership on the part of public officials, increased accountability of public managers and management systems and greater focus on the integrity of governance, economic and social institutions. Recent events clearly demonstrate that development of public management system capacity must be based on a clearer awareness of the growing complexity of global economies and the need for carefully coordinated strategies and innovative approaches to cope with the challenges at hand
Motivating and Steering With Comparative Data
Get PDFSeveral managerial strategies — particularly goal setting combined with performance feedback — can be very effective in improving an organization’s performance at outputfocused tasks. But can such strategies be adapted to achieve societal outcomes that are less operational and definable, more ambiguous and ambitious, perhaps more political? Can they be adapted to help steer social integration by, for example, enhancing social justice and strengthening citizenship? Recognizing how different kinds of targets, different kinds of feedback, and different kinds of reward structures affect team and individual motivation can help public officials design not only better strategies for directly producing output results, but also better strategies for indirectly fostering broader outcome purposes of, for example, social integration
Book Review: Philip G. Joyce, 2011. The Congressional Budget Office: Honest Numbers, Power and Policymaking. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press
Get PDFThe Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was established in 1974, one of a fundamentally important series of measures included in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to strengthen the role of Congress in the budget process. The Act brought to an end a period of presidential dominance in the budget process, and has arguably turned it too far in the opposite direction. Philip Joyce’s new book provides an excellent history of the CBO. Equally important, it relates the CBO’s role to the rough and tumble of Congressional decision making, thus making the book a valuable case study of the political economy of the American budget process
Administrative Styles and Regulatory Reform: Institutional Arrangements and their Effects on Administrative Behavior
Get PDFThe institutional structure of an organization creates a distinct pattern of constraints and incentives for state and societal actors which define and structure actors. interests and channel their behavior. The interaction of these actors generates a particular administrative logic and process, or culture. However, since institutional structures vary, a neo-institutional perspective suggests that there will be many different kinds of relatively long-lasting patterns of administrative behavior - each pattern being defined by the particular set of formal and informal institutions, rules, norms, traditions, and values of which it is comprised - and many different factors affecting the construction and deconstruction of each pattern. Following this logic, this article develops a multilevel, nested model of administrative styles and applies it to the observed patterns of regulatory reform in many jurisdictions over the past several decades
International Public Management Network Symposium: "New Public Management Has Been Completely Discredited, Thank God!"
Get PDFIn late February 2004, well-known and highly respected Canadian academic Donald Savoie was appointed to assist the Canadian government, "to help overhaul the management and accountability of government in the aftermath of [a] scandal." Among the remarks Savoie made to the press upon appointment was the following excerpt, "New public management has been completely discredited, thank God" (The Ottawa Citizen, 2/27/04). Savoie's comment and the article that carried it were brought to the attention of the IPMN community by Alasdair Roberts. The comment stimulated a dialogue about NPM on the IPMN listserver that is represented in this symposium, in roughly the order in which comments were transmitted, with only minor editing. The dialogue tells much about current views on the utility, or lack thereof, of New Public Management and how the maturation of NPM is perceived by the international community of scholars in the field of public management