Suchergebnisse

This article aims at giving a portrait of Italian philanthropic organizations, highlighting strengths, weaknesses, and challenges that philanthropy is facing in Italy compared with Germany and the United States. The article underlines the extreme variety of the philanthropic sector and suggests that Italian foundations still do not exist as a homogeneous group. Rather, as subgroups, some of them have a sort of strong institutional identity (i.e., foundations of banking origin), while others seem to behave very independently and are less open not only to public oversight but also to communication and peer collaboration (i.e., family foundations, private independent foundations). Moreover, the article suggests that the Italian foundation landscape is experiencing a transition toward new institutional regimes, which will be speeded by the capacity of gaining legitimacy and acting as a more unitary group. Opportunities for growth and access to new resources will be possible only if Italian foundations will proactively contribute to the reconfiguration of welfare systems.

The paper qualitatively infers which factors allow public administrations to be quick when an emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, occurs. For this purpose we analyze the same type of intervention (i.e. conversion of convention centers into makeshift hospitals for coronavirus patients) in two different geographical settings (i.e. New York (USA) and Milan (Italy)) and we trace the two processes on the basis of a systematic analysis of national newspaper articles.The comparative analysis reveals that there is no one single best way to manage emergencies successfully, and it sheds light on which conditions might drive different modes of intervention from the public sector in emergencies and beyond.

Dans le présent article, notre intention est de décrire l'état actuel de nos connaissances dans le domaine du leadership du secteur public afin de proposer des orientations pour la recherche et la pratique. À cette fin, nous passons en revue les différents courants de la littérature sur le leadership du secteur public (PSL, pour « Public Sector Leadership ») et les classons dans un cadre unique. Les résultats de notre étude indiquent que le leadership du secteur public devient peu à peu un domaine distinct et autonome dans les études sur l'administration publique/la gestion publique, même si le débat est encore peu développé par rapport aux études sur l'administration des affaires. Les compétences en leadership jouent bel et bien un rôle important dans l'amélioration de la performance des organisations du secteur public, et il est très probable que le style de leadership optimal soit un style intégré : les responsables du secteur public doivent se comporter essentiellement comme des responsables transformationnels, qui tirent modérément parti de leurs relations transactionnelles avec leurs exécutants et qui reconnaissent avant tout l'importance du maintien de l'intégrité et de l'éthique dans l'exécution des tâches. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens La présente étude sur le leadership public indique que les responsables administratifs dans le secteur public se comportent différemment de leurs homologues du secteur privé et que des programmes de développement du leadership s'imposent, qui prennent en considération ces différences plutôt que de simplement copier des programmes destinés aux responsables du secteur privé.

In this article, we aim to portray the state of the art in public sector leadership in order to recommend directions for research and training practice. To this end, we review the scattered strands of literature on public sector leadership (PSL) and classify them in a single framework. The results of the study suggest that public sector leadership is emerging as a distinctive and autonomous domain in public administration/public management studies, although the debate is still underdeveloped compared to business administration studies. Leadership skills truly do matter in improving the performance of public sector organizations, and it is highly likely that the optimum leadership style is an integrated one: Public sector leaders should behave mainly as transformational leaders, moderately leveraging transactional relationships with their followers and heavily leveraging the importance of preserving integrity and ethics in the fulfillment of tasks. Points for practitioners This study on public leadership suggests that administrative leaders in the public sector behave differently from their counterparts in the business world, and as a result there is a great need for leadership development programs which focus on these differences instead of merely mimicking programs designed for leaders in the private sector.

The traditional portrait of civil servants in Italy, as well as in most other countries, has always been one of not particularly efficient employees yet have the benefit of a secure job and can look forward to a comfortable retirement package. In order to change this image, public management reforms have largely focused on civil servants since the 1990s. However, many academics and practitioners claim some inertia in the reform implementation. In this article we aim to identify the determinants of such inertia in Italy's civil service reforms and we analyze data from 885 Italian municipalities expected to adopt the pay system reform for senior officials, as required by national legislature. Our findings stress the importance of accrued legitimacy, external public endorsement, and the influence of key internal stakeholders (like administrative leaders) as major vehicles to promote or slow down the implementation of administrative reforms in the public sector. Adapted from the source document.