Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly interested in the idea of public value as a way of understanding government activity, informing policy-making and constructing service delivery. In part this represents a response to the concerns about ‘new public management’, but it also provides an interesting way of viewing what public sector organisations and public managers actually do. The purpose of this article is to examine this emerging approach by reviewing new public management and contrasting this with a public value paradigm. This provides the basis for a conceptual discussion of differences in approach, but also for pointing to some practical implications for both public sector management and public sector managers.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00545.x

From New Public Management to Public Value: Paradigmatic Change and Managerial Implications

The challenge of problem-based learning

Effective deliberation is central to democracy and so should enter any definition of democratization. However, the deliberative aspect now ubiquitous in the theory, practice, and promotion of democracy is generally missing in comparative studies of democratization. Deliberation capacity can be distributed in variable ways in the deliberative systems of states and other polities. A framework is described for locating and analyzing the contributions of its components and so evaluating the degree to which a polity’s deliberative system is authentic, inclusive, and consequential. An emphasis on deliberation reveals important determinants of democratic transition and consolidation, thereby providing substantial explanatory as well as evaluative and normative purchase.

/pdf/democratization-as-deliberative-capacity-building-a0pax8c36u.pdf

Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building

Policy capacity: A conceptual framework for understanding policy competences and capabilities

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14494035.2020.1787628

Mobilizing Policy (In)Capacity to Fight COVID-19: Understanding Variations in State Responses

The Contract State: Public Management and the Kennett Government

This article explores how organizational policy capacity can be developed, drawing on a study conducted in a large human services agency in Australia. Building policy capacity within government agencies is widely acknowledged as important for successfully responding to complex policy problems. The existing literature suggests a range of strategies for building organizational capacity. Findings from interviews with policy workers support the principles for building policy capacity identified in the literature but uncovered a surprising degree of scepticism pointing to significant barriers to their realization. These barriers are identified as emerging out of the tensions between policy capacity and two other domains of governing capacity: administrative capacity and state capacity. These tensions however are highly contingent and dynamic; managing them requires a degree of discretion and judgement, in brief, policy leadership. A focus on developing policy leadership at the level of policy units an...

Negotiating Tensions in Developing Organizational Policy Capacity: Comparative Lessons to be Drawn

The health sector in Australia faces major challenges that include an ageing population, spiralling health care costs, continuing poor Aboriginal health, and emerging threats to public health. At the same time, the environment for policy-making is becoming increasingly complex. In this context, strong policy capacity – broadly understood as the capacity of government to make "intelligent choices" between policy options – is essential if governments and societies are to address the continuing and emerging problems effectively. This paper explores the question: "What are the factors that contribute to policy capacity in the health sector?" In the absence of health sector-specific research on this topic, a review of Australian and international public sector policy capacity research was undertaken. Studies from the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia were analysed to identify common themes in the research findings. This paper discusses these policy capacity studies in relation to context, models and methods for policy capacity research, elements of policy capacity and recommendations for building capacity. Based on this analysis, the paper discusses the organisational and individual factors that are likely to contribute to health policy capacity, highlights the need for further research in the health sector and points to some of the conceptual and methodological issues that need to be taken into consideration in such research.

/pdf/evaluating-health-policy-capacity-learning-from-2iqkkiabo9.pdf

Evaluating health policy capacity: Learning from international and Australian experience

The Contract State

There are questions about how ethics is best taught to undergraduate business students. There has been a proliferation in the number of stand-alone ethics courses for undergraduate students but research on the effectiveness of integrated versus stand-alone mode of delivery is inconclusive. Christensen et al. (J Bus Ethics 73(4):347–368, 2007), in a comprehensive review of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability education, investigated how ethics education has changed over the last 20 years, including the issue of integration of these topics into the core course offerings. We use Brenner and Molander’s (Harv Bus Rev 55(1):57–71, 1977) situational ethics survey instrument to examine the effect of the mode of delivery of business ethics education on undergraduate student responses. We found a significant difference on mode of delivery. Studies have also found interesting results in respect of the effect of cultural differences and gender on the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. While not the primary focus of this study, we also looked at the influence of gender and culture on students’ responses. Our results indicate significant differences in respect of mode of delivery and culture. In contrast to other studies, we found that gender was not significant. We did test for any interactive effects of gender, culture and mode of delivery. However, no significant differences were found.

Deirdre O'Neill

Papers

The Contract State: Public Management and the Kennett Government

Negotiating Tensions in Developing Organizational Policy Capacity: Comparative Lessons to be Drawn

Evaluating health policy capacity: Learning from international and Australian experience

The Contract State

Teaching Ethics to Undergraduate Business Students in Australia: Comparison of Integrated and Stand-alone Approaches