Increasing the Professional Management Orientation of Public Administration Courses

Wooldridge, Blue

doi:10.1177/027507408701700409

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…A goal is a general statement of what the teacher hopes to accomplish during a course (Hannah and Michaelis, 1977). After the training goals have been specified, participant-oriented behavioral learning objectives (POBLOs) can be developed (Wooldridge, 1987(Wooldridge, , 2000. Mager (1962: 3) describes an objective as 'an intent communicated by a statement describing a proposed change in a learner -a statement of what the learner is to be like when he has successfully completed a learning experience'.…”

Section: Identify Behavioral 'Smart' Learning Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preparing Public Administrators for an Era of Globalization and Decentralization: a Strategic-Contingency Approach

Wooldridge

2004

International Review of Administrative Sciences

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For public sector management development professionals to be given the recognition and resources that we deserve, we must be seen to contribute to the organization’s ‘bottom-line’, which is to prepare employees to perform at the level needed to achieve the organization’s strategic mission and objectives. Governments can only respond effectively to the challenges of increased globalization and decentralization if we, as instructors in schools and institutes of administration, prepare adequate learning experiences for public administrators. The objectives of this article are to describe the steps in my strategic-contingency approach to management development, an instructional design approach which links the strategic mission of the organizations in which our clients work to the instruction that we prepare. I believe that following the steps of my strategic-contingency approach to management development will produce a curriculum that is more responsive to the needs of the client organization and to the participants. Such instruction will not only benefit the organizations we serve but will also enhance our professional reputations.

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Section: Identify Behavioral 'Smart' Learning Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…objectives that reflect the familiarity, understanding, and application levels of knowledge. More than syllabi in the arts and sciences, the syllabus of a professional course should emphasize POBLOs that describe the ability to apply skills (Wooldridge, 1987).…”

Section: Time-boundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preparing Public Administrators for an Era of Globalization and Decentralization: a Strategic-Contingency Approach

Wooldridge

2004

International Review of Administrative Sciences

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“…Do we teach, then, analytical skills that pre-service students will need first and hope, as they move up the ladder, they will acquire the skills they needremembering that research has indicated that managers who perform brilliant analytical work often cannot develop the action orientation needed in a line position (Yukl 1998, 259)? Or do we teach management skills, knowing they will not be the skills graduates will need first, but hopefully will some day (Wooldridge 1987)? If we are teaching both pre-service and in-service students, do we separate them and teach different material to each group, material appropriate to the career stage, or do we keep them together, perhaps hoping that each group will learn from the other?…”

Section: The Big Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Big Questions of Public Administration Education

Denhardt

2001

Public Administration Review

130

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Following Behn's observation that scientists in other fields understand the big questions of their disciplines and focus attention and their discussions on those questions, public administration scholars have attempted to identify the “big questions” in public management and public administration. In this article, I suggest that scholars in public administration should also be attentive to the big questions of public administration education, those timeless and enduring concerns that speak to the basic perspectives that we bring to the educational process. Specifically, I identify four big questions: Do we seek to educate our students with respect to theory or to practice? Do we prepare students for their first jobs or for those to which they might aspire later? What are the appropriate delivery mechanisms for MPA courses and curricula? What personal commitments do we make as public administration educators? I argue that these big questions in public administration education are far more connected than we usually think, and by posing these questions in terms of processes of human development we can at least provide a framework through which we might develop more coherent answers to these big questions, answers that recognize and build on the diversity of our students and our faculty.

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“…Public management education must, moreover, embrace the domains of public management, public policy and public administration if it is to prepare civil servants for management functions and responsibilities, which places it between two proverbial stools; neither just management nor just public affairs (see, for example, [94] ). The twain must meet; the questions of interest to all public management education stakeholders is where and how [95]?…”

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confidence: 99%

Reinventing civil servants: Public management development and education to meet the managerialist challenge in Australia

Dixon¹

1996

Journal of Management Development

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IntroductionAustralia has been engaged in a comprehensive process of federal civil service reform for more than 20 years [1][2][3][4][5][6]. It began in the 1970s, when the long undisturbed Australian Public Service (APS) was confronted with a major review process and with a set of administrative law reforms. Soon after gaining office, the Hawke Labor Government (1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991) introduced radical administrative reforms, under the influence of economic rationalists, who were the dominant professional group in APS management and who advocated "managerialism", "commercialization", "deregulation", "corporatization" and "privatization" as their key reform strategies [7][8][9][10][11]. By so doing Australia followed, albeit somewhat idiosyncratically, the path of public sector reform first articulated by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain and repeated, in various shades, in New Zealand, Canada and elsewhere [1,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].By the mid-1980s APS agencies began to feel dramatic change. First, they had to achieve cost-efficiency and cost-effectiveness in all that they did. Second, serious efforts were made to identify and deal with inefficiencies in budgetfunded service delivery. Finally, pressures built up for the adoption of business practices that would achieve productivity improvements, lower costs, generate more extra-budgetal revenue and improve customer services.The purpose of this paper is to examine the 20-year metamorphosis of the APS's traditional, passive and non-directive, almost dilettante approach to management development into a proactive, directive and systematic approach that involved the acquisition of articulated management competences, in part by means of employer-financed, post-experience public management education. Management development in the Australian public serviceThe traditional approach The traditional approach to public management development in the APS reflected the sacrosanctity of two long-held principles. First, that the APS could be administered by the application of common sense by reasonably educated people. Second, that any administrative and policy-advising techniques, concepts, paradigms and information required were best learned on-the-job, with experience as the teacher, augmented by appropriate administrative

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Increasing the Professional Management Orientation of Public Administration Courses

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Preparing Public Administrators for an Era of Globalization and Decentralization: a Strategic-Contingency Approach

Preparing Public Administrators for an Era of Globalization and Decentralization: a Strategic-Contingency Approach

The Big Questions of Public Administration Education

Reinventing civil servants: Public management development and education to meet the managerialist challenge in Australia

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