An agenda for rethinking mid-career master programs in public administration

Abstract

The pace of societal change and the development of societal challenges have speeded up considerably during the last couple of decades, with substantial impact on different levels, i.e. ranging from global to local, or from business to government. When focusing on the public domain, these changes and challenges have had a major impact on public professionals, who face different and frequently changing questions. Mid-career programs in Public Administration (MPA) have the mission to support enrolled professionals in dealing with these changes and challenges. This article is about the development of such MPAs. Both substantive and didactic development is needed. To counter institutional inertia it seems vital to institutionalize a regular rethinking and adaptation of curricula and didactic strategies. This article identified some important points of attention and some options to deal with these in order to continuously improve the contribution of MPA programs to relevant and effective professional development and ongoing professional learning.

The deep organisation: The organisational view in a public management and leadership development programme

“…The article contributes to the literature on MLDPs in two ways. It extends the existing focus on programme design (Greve and Pedersen, 2017;Kearns, 2019;Sandfort et al, 2017;van der Meer and Marks, 2018), pedagogical methods (Engbers, 2019;Henson, 2019), skills (Day, 2011) and identities (Carroll and Levy, 2010;Gagnon and Collinson, 2014;Petriglieri and Petriglieri, 2010) by exploring and showing the important role of representations of organisations in MLD programmes. Secondly, it adds a theoretical understanding of the role of the discourse of MLDPs through the notion of a deep organisation.…”

The societal impact puzzle: a snapshot of a changing landscape across education and research

“…The rationale for wanting to better understand outcomes often revolves around return on investment (ROI) considerations. However, some have argued this is a "bad" line of questioning, one that becomes about defending investment, rather than considering it (see Tuff and Goldbach 2018;Dennett 2019). That is a narrow and retrospective approach to impact which focuses primarily on "proving" impact depending on what the nominated criterion is, misses the opportunity to holistically consider impact at the outset and a deeper level throughout the entire activity to continually improve and learn.…”

Introduction to the special issue of teaching public policy in Australia

“…This includes training generalist bureaucrats and educating specialists for instrumental and technocratic approaches. On the other hand, however, contemporary teaching environments draw on a range of didactical strategies that encourage students to engage in deep levels of learning and understanding that aim to reinforce the ideals of democracy (Van der Meer and Marks, 2018: 136). In effect, teaching public policy and administration attempts to cover two main components which, at times, may be in conflict: one technocratic, and the other deeply couched in the principles of fairness, equity and freedom.…”

“…According to Leighninger (2010), teaching policy and administration alerts students to the principles of democracy and the importance of values and integrity necessary to deliver sound and effective public services. Van der Meer and Marks (2018: 130–131) argue that this is especially important for contemporary society as it encourages students to be attentive to a range of complexities – from recognising the interdependency between local, national and international policy networks, to the fact that increasingly diverse populations may engender underlying tensions that are difficult to comprehend. Teaching public policy and administration therefore requires attention to skills as well as engendering high-level conceptual ability that enables students to link theories with practice, while also enabling students to reflect upon their own values and positions (Van der Meer and Marks, 2018: 136).…”

“…The increasing use of the digital world and the implications associated with e-governance and digital platforms that aim to increase community participation also have an impact on teaching public policy and administration. In terms of teaching, these changes relate to two key areas: first, the increasing use of online, digital formats, including blended classes and online discussions, that aim to free up time for more interactive teaching (Van der Meer and Marks, 2018); and second, the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to communicate and deliver open data (Lnenicka and Komarkova, 2019) within the broader community. As public agencies and political institutions enable open access to large amounts of data, students of policy and administration require the capacity and skills necessary to examine and analyse large data sets, or at the very least to understand the basic assumptions upon which the data is based.…”