Public Management Recap for Exam PDF

RECAP FOR THE EXAM Different eras in public management Classic Public Administration - Focuses on efficiency, legality, and predictability - Hierarchy, bureaucracy and rules-based decision making are core principles - Large organizations rely on top-down leadership and coordinated informat...

RECAP FOR THE EXAM Different eras in public management Classic Public Administration - Focuses on efficiency, legality, and predictability - Hierarchy, bureaucracy 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 Public sector management Core concepts: - Political pressure: public sector managers face constant pressure from political leaders, voters, and interest groups. For example, during an election year, public institutions may prioritize projects or decisions that align with the ruling party's agenda. - Dynamism and Complexity: Unlike the private sector, which can pivot quickly, the public sector must balance diverse needs and interests. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide had to adapt quickly, balancing public health priorities with economic concerns. - Organizational Structure and Culture: Public organizations may be bureaucratic or decentralized, influencing their effectiveness. A hierarchical structure like in ministries of health or education may slow down decision-making, while decentralized agencies, such as local governments, may act more swiftly but lack coordination. Public vs Private Management Public Sector: - Bound by laws and political decisions, the main goal is the public good, not profit. - Tends to be more risk-averse due to political scrutiny and the need for transparency. Private Sector: - Focused on profit and efficiency, with greater flexibility in decision-making. - Big scope of action Public Administration vs. Governance Public Administration: Refers to implementing policies set by the government. It is more process-oriented, focusing on how government operations are managed: planning, organization, directing and controlling of government operations. (Real-life Example: The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is a public administration body responsible for executing the government’s policy on national postal services.) Governance: Deals with how entities are managed, including how resources are used and how stakeholders are engaged. Governance is more goal-oriented, ensuring that the organization’s objectives align with public interests. (Real-life Example: In Sweden, the government’s emphasis on transparent governance ensures that citizens have access to government data and decision-making processes through open-data policies.) Public management and politics Legitimacy of executive power: parliament grants legitimacy to the executive by establishing laws and policies that govern public administration Role of public administration: public administration focuses on practical implementation, executing policies and programs in alignment with political goals Feedback loop: political decisions inform administrative action, while administrative feedback can influence future political considerations and reforms Policy vs. Politics Policy: A system of guidelines that directs decision-making. Policies are developed to address specific issues, outlining strategies and procedures for implementation. Policies can be formalized in documents, such as laws and regulations. process-oriented Politics: Involves the power dynamics and negotiation processes that shape policy decisions. Politics often involves the interplay of differing interests, ideologies, and values in shaping public affairs and governance. goal-oriented Policy Making Process: Policy-making starts with identifying a problem and setting a political vision. This vision is then translated into concrete policies or programs. Key Skills: Creativity, analytical thinking, and communication are critical for effective policy-making. (Real-life Example: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like New Zealand used creative policy tools such as strict lockdown measures and quarantine hotels to effectively manage the spread of the virus.) Policy Tools Regulatory: laws and regulations, standards and codes Economic: taxes and subsidies, grants and loans Administrative: programs, public procurement Information: public awareness campaigns, research and data collection Market-based: cap-and-trade systems, certificates or credits Collaborative: PPP, stakeholder engagement Incentive-based: performance-based funding, rewards and recognition Capacity building: training and educational programs, technical assistance Self-regulation: voluntary agreement, code of practice, co-regulation Johnson, Scholes and Wittingham’s Stakeholder Mapping Theory 1. Low Power, Low Interest (Minimal Effort): Keep these stakeholders informed but do not actively engage with them since they are unlikely to significantly influence the outcome (example: citizens who are not directly affected by a local government project, like those living outside the area of impact) 2. Low Power, High Interest (Keep Informed): Regularly inform these stakeholders about the project’s progress. They care about the outcome but lack the influence to shape it (example: community groups that are concerned about environmental impacts but have little decision-making power)  3. High Power, Low Interest (Keep Satisfied): Maintain their satisfaction and address any concerns to avoid them becoming actively opposed. While they have influence, they may not be fully invested unless negatively affected (example: large corporations or governmental bodies with the power to affect the outcome but minimal direct interest) 4. High Power, High Interest (Key Players): These are your key stakeholders, and their active involvement is crucial for the project's success. Collaborate closely with them and ensure their needs and concerns are incorporated into the decision-making process (example: government agencies, policymakers, or organizations directly responsible for the project) Strategic Management vs. Planning Strategic Planning: This process involves setting long-term goals for an organization and defining how those goals will be achieved. process-oriented Strategic Management: This involves not only planning but also executing and continuously monitoring these strategies to ensure goals are met. goal-oriented Global Trends Refer to significant, pervasive developments or changes that are occurring around the world, influencing societies, economies, and environments over the long term. Governments need to anticipate changes in areas like technology, climate change, and demographic shifts Strategic Foresight Involves preparing for multiple possible futures, associated opportunities and challenges, and ensuring policies are adaptable Different type of changes Incremental: ○ Question: How can we do more of the same? ○ Purpose: Improve current governance methods. ○ Example: Estonia refining its use of public-private partnerships (PPP) for infrastructure projects. ○ Tools Logic: Negotiation to enhance existing projects. ○ Power and relationships: confirms existing rules ○ Archetypal actions: copying, duplicating, mimicking Reform: ○ Question: What structures and processes do we need? ○ Purpose: Adjust governance to improve efficiency. ○ Example: Decentralizing power to local governments in Estonia. ○ Tools Logic: Mediation, balancing central and local interests. ○ Power and relationships: opens rules to revision ○ Archetypal actions: changing policy, adjusting, adapting Transformation: ○ Question: How do we create new possibilities? ○ Purpose: Rethink governance for new forms of interaction. ○ Example: Estonia’s e-Governance system, transforming citizen-state relations. ○ Tools Logic: Envisioning a digital-first approach to public services. ○ Power and relationships: opens issue to creation of new ways of thinking about power ○ Archetypal actions: visioning, experimenting, investing Public vs Private sector Change Management (Kotter’s 8 Stages of Change) 1. Establish Urgency: Identify crises or opportunities (e.g., climate change urgency). 2. Form a Powerful Coalition: Assemble key players (e.g., government agencies, private sector). 3. Create a Vision: Outline the desired future (e.g., a sustainable economy). 4. Communicate the Vision: Ensure everyone understands the goal. 5. Empower Others to Act: Remove obstacles to change. 6. Create Short-Term Wins: Show early successes to build momentum. 7. Consolidate Gains: Build on successes and continue to improve. 8. Institutionalize New Approaches: Make changes permanent through policy or cultural shifts. 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 Behavioral insight (BI) - To achieve desired public outcomes, governments around the world are using behavioural insights in the development of public policies - Integrates science and research methods from various behavioral fields (sociology, psychology, economics) 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. - Means of mitigation: crisis management plan, risk assessment, communication plan, training and drills, resource allocation - Where do crises come from? Digital transformation in public sector Digital transformation is the shift from traditional public administration practices to ones that leverage digital technologies like cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation. This isn’t just about implementing new technology but also about changing how public sector organizations operate, deliver services, and interact with citizens. It involves rethinking processes, governance structures, and workforce capabilities to align with a rapidly evolving technological environment. Key challenges with digital transformation: 1. Lack of clear destination- There is confusion between digital transformation and public administration reform, causing ambiguity in policy formulation. 2. Decentralized governance- The fragmented digital approach leads to inconsistent outcomes across ministries, lacking a unified vision and clear standards. 3. Legacy systems- Outdated legislative and governance models hinder the full potential of digital transformation. 4. IT over strategy- The focus on technology over business architecture leads to inefficient services design and delivery. 5. Lack of administrative capacity- Civil service struggles with inadequate capacity to drive and manage digital initiatives effectively. 10 principles of service design and delivery 1. Identify the user’s real problem and need 2. Involve a team with diverse knowledge and innovative people 3. Simulate possible solutions and choose the best one 4. When considering solutions, also look to future 5. Create necessary and simple service 6. Develop the service together with users and other stakeholders 7. Ensure interoperability, reuse existing solutions, and make your creation accessible to others 8. Work agile 9. Make and keep the service secure and transparent 10. Manage your service Innovation Innovation involves the application of inventions or new ideas to create value. It refers to improving, refining, or making a practical use of an invention to solve problems, increase efficiency, or improve quality of life. Innovation is focused on implementation, making inventions useful and marketable. Whereas invention is a creation of an entirely new product or service. Public sector innovation often aims at improving the delivery of public services, increasing government efficiency, and addressing societal challenges through new and better approaches. 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. - ‘‘How might we do X better?’’ Mission-oriented innovation - Takes an active role in coordinating actors around complex issues that cannot be resolved with existing methods. - New or improved technological, social, or organizational solution that aims to respond to one or several objectives tackling grand societal challenges (missions) and create public value to society. 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 (increased resilience of their public systems). VUCA Volatility- The challenge is unexpected or unstable and may be of unknown duration, but it is not necessarily hard to understand. Knowledge about it is often available. Uncertainty- Despite a lack of other information, the events’ basic cause and effect are known. Change is possible but not a given. Complexity- The situation has many interconnected parts and variables. Some information is available or can be predicted, but the volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process. Ambiguity- Casual relationships are completely unclear. No precedents exist. You face ‘‘unknown unknowns’’. Messy wicked issues Complex and multifaceted problems that are difficult to define and solve due to their interconnectedness and the involvement of many stakeholders with competing interests. These issues often lack a clear solution, and efforts to address one aspect of the problem can create new challenges elsewhere. Types of problems Type 1 - both the definition of the problem and the likely solution are clear to the decision maker. Type 2 - definition of the problem is clear, but the solution is not (usually the cause-effect relationships are hard to discern) Type 3 - both the problem definition and solution are unclear (extensive learning is required) - Black swan: unanticipated, unpredictable events with large impact (9/11 attack) - Black jellyfish: small changes within complex systems leading to significant impact (human migration) - Grey rhino: highly probable, high-impact events that are often ignored (covid19) - Black elephant: events that are either unseen or ignored, but once they occur, are often mislabeled as blackswan (covid19) Reasons why missions fail 1. Mission washing: Using the language of missions without meaningful changes in actions or strategies. Governments or organizations claim to pursue mission-oriented policies but continue their traditional practices without real innovation or transformation. 2. Mission dilution: The mission’s scope becomes too broad, with vague objectives that lead to weakened focus and action. Over-expanding a mission without sufficient resources or clear targets results in ineffective implementation. 3. Mission fatigue: Overwhelming amounts of meetings, documentation, and reporting processes can exhaust teams, diverting attention from actual implementation. This leads to reduced motivation and engagement, especially in long-term missions. 4. Mission as cure-all: Assuming that missions can solve all complex problems, even those that don’t align well with the mission-oriented approach. In areas with rapidly shifting challenges, relying solely on a mission strategy can be ineffective. 5. Mismatched mission conditions: Missions are introduced into existing governance structures that are not designed for mission-oriented approaches. Lack of mission-specific frameworks (e.g., budgets, leadership, tools) hampers effective implementation.  6. Siloed missions: Missions are often led by one sector (e.g., science and technology) without cross-sector collaboration. This isolation prevents the mission from leveraging broader expertise, resources, or synergies needed for success. 7. Orphan missions: Missions lack a clear “owner” or champion within the government or organization. Without clear leadership and responsibility, missions struggle to move forward and lack accountability. 8. One-tool missions: Relying on a single policy instrument (e.g., funding or regulations) to achieve mission goals. This narrow approach limits the ability to address complex challenges that require a broader set of tools and strategies. 9. Mission portfolio blindness: Failing to see how various mission activities interact or contribute to the overall mission. There’s no cohesive strategy to leverage synergies between different projects or ensure they align with the broader mission objectives. 10. Politically dependent missions: Missions are heavily influenced by current political contexts, making them vulnerable to shifts in political priorities or leadership changes. This can lead to mission instability or premature abandonment when political support fades. 11. Ill-equipped mission teams: The teams responsible for implementing missions lack the necessary skills, tools, or expertise. Missions are adopted without ensuring that the team has the capacity to plan, execute, and manage the complex requirements. 12. Under-resourced missions: Missions are not given sufficient funding, human resources, or infrastructure to achieve their goals. This resource gap makes it difficult to scale efforts or sustain mission activities over time. 13. Non-systemic mission evaluation: Missions lack comprehensive, systems-based evaluation frameworks. Without proper monitoring and assessment, it’s hard to measure success, identify gaps, or make necessary adjustments to improve mission outcomes. How can governments support public sector innovation? Institutionalizing innovation in organizations or whole systems through new rules, routines, norms, tool: - Innovation funds within budgets and rules on innovation expenditures - HR practices: recruitment, rotation, training - ‘‘Start-up’’ culture in government (mentoring, HR, hackathons) - New tools creating new insight (big data, AI, co-creation, design thinking etc) - Institutional ‘‘inefficiencies’’: sunset clauses on policies/organizations - Slack (not the app) Creating organizational variety into existing bureaucracy systems: - Central but politically insulated agencies (centralizing innovation) - Temporary networks, task forces - Innovation labs Experimenting in public sector Refers to testing new policies, processes, or solutions on a small scale before full implementation. This approach allows public institutions to assess the effectiveness of an idea, reduce risks, and gather data for informed decision-making. - Limited trials: Experiments are conducted in controlled or limited environments, such as pilot projects, to test potential solutions before scaling them up. - Delimitation: The scope of experimentation is confined to a specific time frame, geographic area, or group of users. This helps mitigate risks and control variables to better evaluate the outcomes. - Experimentation involves systematic data collection to measure the impact and performance of the tested solution. The results inform future decisions and adjustments. - By testing new ideas on a smaller scale, governments can minimize the financial and political risks associated with large-scale reforms. - Experimentation encourages innovation by allowing public agencies to try out creative solutions, learn from failures, and refine successful approaches. Sandboxes: Regulatory sandbox- A controlled environment for businesses to test innovations with relaxed regulatory requirements. It allows companies to operate temporarily under modified regulations while remaining under the supervision of regulators. Key features: - Limited scope and duration for testing - Temporary regulatory exemptions - Consumer protection safeguards - Collaboration among stakeholders - Global adoption in various sectors Technological sandbox- A testing environment focused on developing and validating new technologies. It provides researchers, startups, and businesses with tools, resources, and a collaborative space to rapidly prototype and experiment with technologies before full deployment. Key features: - Facilitates rapid development and prototyping - Encourages interdisciplinary collaboration - Provides access to tools and resources - Prioritizes research and development