Public Administration Models Quiz

Classic Public Administration

• Focuses on efficiency, legality, and predictability
• Hierarchy and rules-based decision making are core principles
• Large organizations rely on top-down leadership and coordinated information flow
• Features include tenure-based careers, scientific management, and incremental budgeting

New Public Management (NPM)

• Emphasizes specialization, decentralization, and market-like principles
• A shift towards performance-based management and contractual relationships
• Focuses on achieving desired public outcomes
• Utilizes super-budgeting to achieve performance goals
• Introduces private sector management principles and methodologies into the public sector

Neo-Weberian State

• Modernizes the classic public administration model
• Incorporates elements of NPM and incorporates professionalization
• Promotes effective communication and coordination
• Emphasizes control, accountability, and transparency through technology and data analysis

Skills Needed for Future Public Servants

• Data mining, analysis, and interpretation skills
• Information and data visualization skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Oral and written communication skills
• Project management skills
• Analytical and critical thinking skills needed for advisory work
• Self-management skills and adaptability to change

The Digital Skills Gap in Public Service

• Unclear expectations and lack of mutual understanding between IT and business stakeholders
• Shortage of ICT-professionals in the labor market
• Public authorities perceive a need for systematic skills development
• Variation in maturity levels across government areas and management positions
• Change in expectations and habits regarding learning needs (access to knowledge when needed)
• Lack of systematic approaches for training activities planning

Kotter Change Stages

• Consolidate Improvements and Produce More Change: Uses credibility from early wins to make further changes, promotes employees who support the vision, reinvigorates the change process with new projects and agents, articulates connections between new behaviors and successes.
• Pitfalls of this stage are declaring victory too soon, allowing resistors to undermine the process, and failing to create new social norms and shared values.
• Institutionalize New Approaches: Creates leadership development and succession plans consistent with the new approach.
• Pitfalls of this stage are promoting people into leadership positions who don't represent the new approach.

Emotional Barriers to Change

• Mistrust and low sharing of information: Leads to a "politics first" mentality where appearance management is prioritized over action.
• Low receptivity to effortful change: Leaders must demonstrate their own willingness to change before asking it of others.
• More talk than action: Communication without emotional engagement leads to misaligned actions and difficulty integrating teams.
• Mechanistic action: Under high pressure, employees become creatures of habit and lose innovative drive.
• Complacency: The organization believes the status quo is good enough and avoids effortful change.

Tuckman's Stages

• A framework for team development.

Behavioural Insights (BI)

• Integrates science and research methods from various behavioral fields to understand human behavior.
• Uses those insights to inform public policy levers, potentially yielding more effective and representative policies.
• Key BI levers include: messenger, priming, affect, norms, defaults, salience, commitment, and ego.

Crisis

• An unexpected and significant event or situation that poses a serious threat to individuals, organizations, or communities.
• Requires immediate action and decision-making to mitigate its impact.
• Effective communication is crucial to mitigate negative consequences.

Types of Innovation

• Radically disruptive: Harnesses new technologies and creates new business models with no clear competitors.
• Radically sustaining: Improves on existing products or processes in established markets, providing new value for the customer.
• Incrementally disruptive: Incremental technological improvements that lead to significant disruption.
• Incrementally sustaining: Small, cumulative changes within an existing product, technology, or service.

Enhancement-Oriented Innovation

• Upgrades practices, achieves efficiencies, and improves results without significant system alterations.
• Addresses the need to serve citizens better, faster, and more efficiently while minimizing costs.

Adaptive Innovation

• Tests and tries new approaches in response to a changing environment.
• Supports public administration by strengthening resilience and building adaptive capacity.

Anticipatory Innovation

• Prepares for future challenges and opportunities.
• Continuously identifies, tests, and implements innovative solutions to benefit from future opportunities and reduce risks.

Test your knowledge on the various models of public administration, including Classic Public Administration, New Public Management, and the Neo-Weberian State. Explore concepts like efficiency, decentralization, and the integration of private sector principles in public governance.