Suchergebnisse

Reviews political developments for Australian Capital Territory, Jan-June 2004, highlighting political campaigns, elections, policy, & other pertinent issues.

Public services are increasingly delivered through many forms of 'external' service-provision such as contracting, partnering and regulation. This new text assesses when and how public sector organizations might better draw on the work of these external parties and examines the wider implications for public leadership and management.

Collaboration has emerged as a central concept in public policy circles in Australia and a panacea to the complex challenges facing Australia. But is this really the cure-all it seems to be? In this edited collection we present scholarly and practitioner perspectives on the drivers, challenges, prospects and promise of collaboration. The papers, first presented at the 2007 ANZSOG Conference, draw on the extensive experience of the contributors in either trying to enact collaboration, or studying the processes of this phenomenon. Together the collection provides important insights into the potential of collaboration, but also the fiercely stubborn barriers to adopting more collaborative approaches to policy and implementation. The collection includes chapter from public servants, third sector managers, and both Australian and international academics which together make it a stimulating read for those working with or within government. It adds considerably to the debate about how to address current challenges of public policy and provides a significant resource for those interested in the realities of collaborative governance.

In this article we present a unique study of how a nation, Bhutan, is using a specific change management approach-organisational development-as the lever for system-level change in pursuit of a complex, multi-level suite of goals to, ultimately, enhance Gross National Happiness (GNH). We argue that this represents one of the first attempts at using OD for wide-scale change, something hinted at decades ago, and flagged by recent work coming out of the United Nations Development Program and civil society organisations (CSOs). Conceptually, we point to a high level offit between the Bhutanese development philosophy and OD, and argue there is great potential for using OD in the context. However, we raise a series of issues around the practical feasibility of this approach highlighting important points of tension which pose major challenges for the Bhutanese experiment.

Reform is never far from the centre of public administration practice and scholarship. In this article Doug McTaggart, the chairman of the Queensland Public Service Commission, and Janine O'Flynn, from the University of Melbourne, explore the challenges of reform and the state of play. McTaggart, who was a commissioner on the Queensland Commission of Audit, sets out the case that business as usual will no longer suffice given the range of challenges faced by governments. He sets out to explain how we ended up in our current state and what needs to happen to repair it, drawing on deep experience in the practice of reform. O'Flynn positions reform as one of the central questions in public administration and management and makes the case for rethinking reform conceptually to drive change in practice. In doing so she points to our weaknesses in determining whether reform fails or succeeds and makes the case that, until we rethink reform, business as usual might be all we end up with. McTaggart and O'Flynn bring together the expertise of practice and academia to bring new insights in this persistent challenge of public administration, and raise a series of questions for debate.

AbstractIn this article we present a unique study of how a nation, Bhutan, is using a specific change management approach—organisational development—as the lever for system‐level change in pursuit of a complex, multi‐level suite of goals to, ultimately, enhance Gross National Happiness (GNH). We argue that this represents one of the first attempts at using OD for wide‐scale change, something hinted at decades ago, and flagged by recent work coming out of the United Nations Development Program and civil society organisations (CSOs). Conceptually, we point to a high level of fit between the Bhutanese development philosophy and OD, and argue there is great potential for using OD in the context. However, we raise a series of issues around the practical feasibility of this approach highlighting important points of tension which pose major challenges for the Bhutanese experiment. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.