IPMN Newsletter
Winter 1997

Dear Members of IPMN:

We have some interesting news to report as developments for the International Public Management Network. The first bit of news is that our membership has grown with the addition of some new people. At this point we are being quite selective in that we want members working in the field of public management specifically and active as researchers or practitioners. We are pleased that there is so much interest in joining IPMN given that we have not made much effort to promote the existence of the Network. However, we are ready to change our level of exposure. With this newsletter we are announcing the "grand opening" of the IPMN web site. You may access it at the following address: http://www.willamette.org/ipmn While some parts of the site are not complete it is close enough now so that we can open it to member and public view. The site shows members, papers from the St. Gallen conference, a bibliography of references for published research on public management, news, upcoming events and, perhaps most importantly, the first issue of the IPMN Journal. Check out the IPMN web site and give us any changes that you see are necessary, plus any suggestions to improve the site. Most of the credit for construction of the web site is due to Mark Green, our associate who works at the Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University. Mark and I have been working little by little to get the web site completed and this work continues.

Volume one, number one of the IPMN Journal includes revisions of St. Gallen conference papers by Sandy Borins, Howard Frant, Larry Lynn, Fred Thompson and Gil Reschenthaler, and June Pallot. These and other conference papers also will be published in our conference book now under final editing and hopefully to be out by June 1997: International Perspectives on the New Public Management. L.R, Jones and Kuno Schedler, eds., (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1997), in the excellent series Research in International and Comparative Management.

The next item of relevance is that while we will publish two issues of the electronic journal this year, next year the IPMN Journal will move into print. IPMN has reached an agreement with JAI Press to publish the journal beginning with the spring 1998 issue in print format. According to our schedule the printed journal will appear semi-annually in 1998 and move to quarterly issues in either 1999 or 2000. The editorial board of the journal has been assembled (see the IPMN web site) and the editorship established. Fred Thompson at Willamette University will be editor-in-chief, with Larry Jones and Kuno Schedler serving as editors, and several other IPMN members serving as associate editors. We are pleased that our desire to publish a printed journal is to be fulfilled.

Other news is that the IPMN Journal Board of Editors will meet in a workshop this summer to discuss the journal, to review invited papers and to conduct other IPMN business. This meeting will be held in Berlin / Potsdam, Germany in June. The next IPMN conference is scheduled for summer 1998 in Monterey, California. However, there is some possibility that the 1998 conference will be held in Maine as the Muskie Center, University of Maine has submitted a proposal to sponsor this conference. We will provide more information on the conference in future newsletters on the list server and on the IPMN web site. Interest has been expressed for sponsorship of future conferences and workshops in Geneva, Switzerland, Tokyo, Japan and several other sites. Our 1999 workshop already is scheduled for Siena, Italy.

Another bit of news...we ask present IPMN members to think carefully about suggesting the addition of some new members to the network. Please send nominations to me or to Kuno Schedler at our e-mail addresses. Please include brief biographical information and a note as to why you would like to have the nominee added to the network (i.e., information on current research or publication, etc. -- whatever you think is relevant). We want to expand our membership slowly and carefully and we want to stay relatively small. Whether the Network remains small or grows, our conferences and workshops will always be small by design to facilitate the type of communication we all enjoy.

Please send me any news that you would like to appear in the IPMN Newsletter and remember, we always can communicate with the entire network through our list server maintained by Kuno Schedler and his colleagues at the University of St. Gallen. Message traffic has been light on the server thus far because we all are busy trying to stay up with our normal workload (what is normal? I don't know) and because, after all, the IPMN is only six months old. It will take time to develop network communication; establishment of our web site, and publication of our book and journal should stimulate more communication using the list server.

In this regard I would like to reply to the messages sent out by Kuno Schedler, Nathalie Halgand and Michael Barzelay in the fall. Kuno announced the establishment of an IPMN visiting student scholar position at the University of St. Gallen and encouraged us to think about doctoral student exchange, something we all applaud as a model to emulate at our own institutions. In reply to this message Nathalie supported Kuno's offer and suggested some interesting ideas about creating pools or groups of international scholars (presumable through IPMN) to assist in providing support and reference groups to those of us who supervise doctoral students. The idea is to create international teams by area (e.g., health care) to advise doctoral research electronically by e-mail or other means. This is a challenging idea and probably something we should discuss further. Read Nathalie's message on the list server if you haven't already done so. Also, Nathalie noted that we can use the list server to suggest themes and individual contributions to future IPMN conferences and workshops. We have done this to some extent using the server and through direct e-mail contact in setting the agenda for the workshop in Berlin/Potsdam this summer. However, we will all be doing this more as we begin to search for themes, ideas and contributions to our 1998 conference. There is also a location on the IPMN web site for exchange of views and for drafts of research papers in progress. This is a good way to get some feedback on your work prior to submission for publication. Working drafts in Word 6.0 can be sent electronically (we can decipher most code now) or on diskette by mail to me or to Mark Green for mounting on the web site at any time.

Additionally, Nathalie observed that we need more exchange on methodology and public management theory to use in the various applied areas in which many of us are working. Michael Barzelay replied to Nathalie that we need exchange on theory in part because without good theoretical foundation much effort is wasted or misdirected in public management research. We all agreed in St. Gallen that there is no single agreement on the theoretical basis for the applied field or sub-field of public management. We know it is different from traditional public administration and public policy and we understand that we define public management and NPM in different, although somewhat overlapping and generally congruent, ways. We are an interdisciplinary group and consequently should not expect to view the field in the same way. However, I agree that we need to have more theoretical work written and to discuss and debate it. As coordinators of IPMN Kuno Schedler and I promise that these demands will be pursued in future workshops and conferences, and the results of our inquiry will be published. We want to use IPMN to communicate and recommend to each other new work (papers, conference presentations, articles, books, etc.) that lends to development of this very exciting international field that evolves as we attempt to document the nature and conditional character of change.

Best Regards,

Larry Jones