IPMN
NEWSLETTER NUMBER 1, 2001
Dear IPMN Colleagues:
I am pleased to announce that our Sydney-Wellington 2000 conference/workshop
book is out. The citation is Lawrence R. Jones, James Guthrie and
Peter Steane, eds., Learning From International Public Management
Reform, volumes 11A and B, (Oxford, JAI - Elsevier Science, 2001).
Thanks to the more than
40 authors that contributed to this work. The book is in two volumes
(642 pages) and may be purchased from Elsevier through the following
website:
http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/6/2/1/5/1/0/
IPMN continues to grow. We now have about 565 members from approximately
70 nations. Subscriptions to our International Public Management Journal
(IPMJ) continue to rise. Praise goes to Fred Thompson for the fine
job he is doing as editor. To subscribe your library to IPMJ, direct
your librarian to the website: www.elsevier.com/locate/pubman. To
inquire about the IPMJ
institutional rebate program, e-mail me at dukedmb@aol.com.
In addition, we have launched our new review (e-journal). The International
Public Management Review, vol. 1, no. 1 went up on the IPMN website
last November. To read the review, go to www.ipmr.net
and click on "What's New?" IPMR vol. 2, no. 1 will be out
in May. Our next IPMN event, the 2001 IPMN workshop has been organized
for Odense, Denmark, on July 18-20, 2001, to be hosted by Professor
Kurt Klaudi Klausen. We also have selected a theme, location and schedule
for our 2002 IPMN conference. A call for papers is provided below.
Finally, we
have expanded the number of IPMN coordinators as a means for coping
with our success. Kuno Schedler and I are pleased to welcome Michael
Barzelay, London School of Economics and Political Science, Sandford
Borins, University of Toronto, Riccardo Mussari, University of Siena,
and Fred Thompson,
Willamette University as new IPMN coordinators.
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT NETWORK WORKSHOP 2001
Location: University
of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Dates: July 18-20, 2001
Theme: "Developing and Integrating Graduate Public Management
Curricula:
Contrasting Perspectives"
Public management programs face a challenge to reorient their curricula
and pedagogy in a variety of ways to bring them into line with contemporary
societal, organizational and student needs. The disciplinary representation
within public management includes political science, public administration,
economics, administrative law, organizational strategy, behavior
and design, sociology of organizations, psychology, human resources
management, managerial accounting and control, operations research,
quantitative methods
and statistics, information technology and computer science. These
disciplines need to be integrated into the public management curriculum.
Public management pedagogy should be oriented to help students learn
about public organizations, government and governance and the role
of the public sector in society and the economy. We need to structure
the delivery of
knowledge away from entrenched disciplines and organize it more
cohesively around student needs.
To further the development of graduate public management curricula,
IPMN editorial board members from various fields of study will gather,
talk and listen to each other in Denmark. We will address the challenge
of transforming information exchange between the discourse communities
concerned with public management education. The Odense workshop
will explore the
possibilities of using basic tools of discourse analysis to design
more comprehensive and better integrated public management curricula.
Our goal is to more clearly identify the implications of public
management discourse for curricular development relative to the
specific missions of a variety of programs delivered to students
with different needs and preferences for
graduate public management education.
INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT NETWORK CONFERENCE 2002
Location: University
of Siena, Italy
Dates: June 26-28, 2002
Theme: "Corruption: A Barrier to Improving Public Management
in Developing
and Developed Nations"
Host: Riccardo Mussari, Professor of Public Management, University
of Siena
Call for Paper Proposals: Please send proposals for presentation
of papers for the Siena 2002 IPMN Conference to Riccardo Mussari
at mussari@unisi.it with a
copy to L. R. Jones at dukedmb@aol.com
and Kuno Schedler at Kuno.Schedler@unisg.ch.
Proposals should denote author(s), institutional affiliation, title
of paper, and a description of the purposes and themes to be explored
in not more than 100 words. Once the initial proposals have
been reviewed by the conference program committee, selected authors
will be asked to submit more complete proposals as a means for determining
the presenters for the final program. Approximately 12 papers will
be accepted for presentation at the conference. Authors from developing
nations are encouraged to submit proposals for the 2002 Siena IPMN
conference. Limited travel assistance funding will be available
to support presenters from developing nations.
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM: IS THE TIDE CHANGING?
Over the past year I have had the opportunity to visit, lecture
and conduct research on public management reform and to meet, listen
to and read the works of numerous authors writing about change in
a number of nations including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile,
Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the Philippines,
Russia, Switzerland, Thailand, and the UK. And
I have tried to continue to pay attention to developments in the
U.S. I am now writing about what I have learned for publication
and I want to relay a few impressions gleaned from my research.
While comprehensive reform is still on the agenda in many nations
(e.g., Thailand, Switzerland, Italy), the tide appears to have turned
away from NPM-type implementation and towards
critical assessment of the consequences and distributional effects
of change both within government and governance systems and for
the public and the economy (e.g., Australia, Brazil, Denmark, New
Zealand, and to some extent everywhere). In some nations, reform
efforts have been thwarted by a variety of barriers, mostly political
but in some cases fiscal (e.g., Chile, Germany,
Russia, Thailand and the USA). In some nations, reform continues
but has entered into what appears to be a more "mature"
phase of reassessment (Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand,
Finland, the UK). In some nations, a clear movement away from NPM-type
reform has been taken (e.g., Chile, Brazil and perhaps New Zealand).
What is to be concluded about the continuing
evolution of change in the public sector? It is difficult to generalize
between and among nations and levels of government, but to me it
appears that the tide has changed and the era of comprehensive experimentation
with NPM-type reform is coming to a close in many parts of the world.
In some nations, the reform wave has passed without much more impact
than rhetoric
and undelivered political promises. In other nations, lasting changes
have been implemented that will not be easily reversed. To quote
the Bard (roughly from memory), "There is a tide in the affairs
of men that, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune SOmitted, all
the voyages of their lives are bound in shallows and misery. On
such a sea we are afloatS" This is the perspective
of frustrated NPM reformers. From a more moderate view, much change
has occurred. However, we don't know much about the consequences
of change. Another conclusion seems evident to me. One of
the hottest topics in public management presently is networking
and partnerships as strategies for coping with what Nancy Roberts
(our Frieder Naschold Award winner for the Sydney IPMN conference)
has termed "wicked problems" (See N. Roberts, IPMR 1/1).
What wonderful research opportunity all of this presents to academics
and other critical observers of government.
Best Regards,
Larry Jones
IPMN Coordinator
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