Managerial Execution in Public Administration: Practices of Managers When Implementing Strategic Objectives

The monograph Human Resource Management in Public Administration examines the management of employees within public administration as an institutionally structured system, starting from the assumption that the professionalism and functionality of administrative institutions largely depend on the organization and functioning of key employee management processes. Particular attention is given to the normative and organizational conditions shaping human resource management in contemporary public administration, with due consideration of the specific characteristics of transitional administrative systems. The study addresses the theoretical foundations of public administration and the dominant models of its development, including the bureaucratic model, New Public Management, and the concept of good governance, as a basis for understanding the institutional framework within which managerial practices are formed. In this context, the development of the human resource management concept in public administration is examined, with a clear distinction between its administrative, operational, and strategic roles. A significant part of the monograph is devoted to the key processes of human resource management in public administration, including job analysis, human resource planning, recruitment, and employee selection. The analysis also covers phenomena that undermine administrative professionalism, such as politicization of recruitment, nepotism, and discrimination, as well as their implications for legality, efficiency, and public trust in administrative institutions. Employee development, performance management and appraisal, together with reward and motivation systems, are examined in terms of strengthening professionalism and accountability in public administration. The analysis of these areas highlights the limitations of existing practices, while also identifying opportunities for improving managerial approaches through clearer criteria, competency development, and the strengthening of a responsible organizational culture. The monograph is intended for students, researchers, and practitioners in the field of public administration, as well as for decision-makers involved in the reform and modernization of administrative systems.

Combining insights from traditional thought and practice and from contemporary political analysis, Madison's Managers presents a constitutional theory of public administration in the United States. Anthony Michael Bertelli and Laurence E. Lynn Jr. contend that managerial responsibility in American government depends on official respect for the separation of powers and a commitment to judgment, balance, rationality, and accountability in managerial practice. The authors argue that public management-administration by unelected officials of public agencies and activities based on authority delegated to them by policymakers-derives from the principles of American constitutionalism, articulated most clearly by James Madison. Public management is, they argue, a constitutional institution necessary to successful governance under the separation of powers. To support their argument, Bertelli and Lynn combine two intellectual traditions often regarded as antagonistic: modern political economy, which regards public administration as controlled through bargaining among the separate powers and organized interests, and traditional public administration, which emphasizes the responsible implementation of policies established by legislatures and elected executives while respecting the procedural and substantive rights enforced by the courts. These literatures are mutually reinforcing, the authors argue, because both feature the role of constitutional principles in public management. Madison's Managers challenges public management scholars and professionals to recognize that the legitimacy and future of public administration depend on its constitutional foundations and their specific implications for managerial practice.

Research in Public Administration and Public Management has distinctive features that influence the choices and application of research methods. The standard methodologies for researching from the social sciences can be difficult to follow in the complex world of the public sector. In a dynamic political context, the focus lies on solving societal problems whilst also using methodological principles to do scientifically sound research. The second edition of Research Methods in Public Administration and Public Management represents a comprehensive guide to undertaking and using research in Public Management and Administration. It is succinct but covers a wide variety of research strategies, including action research, experiments, case studies, desk research, systematic literature reviews and more. It pays attention to issues of design, sampling, research ethics and data management. This textbook does explain the role of theory, but also offers many international examples and practical exercises. It takes the reader through the journey of research, starting with the problem definition, choice of theory, research design options and tools to achieve impactful research. New and revised material includes, but is not limited to: A closer look at popular methods like the experiment and the systematic literature review; A deeper examination of research ethics and data management; New examples from a wide range of countries; Updated ‘Further Reading’ material and additional useful websites. This exciting new edition will be core reading for students at all levels as well as practitioners who are carrying out research on Public Management and Administration.

Research in public administration and public management has distinctive features that influence the choices and application of research methods. Periods of change and upheaval in the public sector provide ample opportunities and cases for research, but the standard methodologies for researching in the social sciences can be difficult to follow in the complex world of the public sector. In a dynamic political environment, the focus lies on solving social problems whilst also using methodological principles needed for doing scientifically sound research. Research Methods in Public Administration and Public Management represents a comprehensive guide to doing and using research in public management and administration. It is impressively succinct but covering a wide variety of research strategies including among others: action research, hypotheses, sampling, case selection, questionnaires, interviewing, desk research, prescription and research ethics. This textbook does not bog the nascent researcher down in the theory but does provide numerous international examples and practical exercises to illuminate the research journey. Sandra Van Thiel guides us through the theory, operationalization and research design process before explaining the tools required to carry-out impactful research. This concise textbook will be core reading for those studying research methods and/or carrying out research on public management and administration.

Performance management has become a ubiquitous part of public administration thanks to the New Public Management (NPM) reforms, which were introduced in Anglo-Saxon countries at the end of the 20th century and diffused later into different settings (e.g. the EU). It plays a central role in improving public sector management and fixing bureaucratic issues. This entry discusses the key ideas about performance management in public administration. It first demonstrates the background, definition and development of the concept of performance over the last decades. It examines the link between performance and NPM and the debate surrounding its definition and multi-dimensional nature in the public context. It briefly describes three successively evident multidimensional performance measurement frameworks: Inputs- Outputs-Outcomes (IOO), Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Total Quality Management (TQM). The entry also notes the recent studies of identifying new dimensions for measuring performance. The entry concludes with a demonstration of the main challenges to integrating performance into public administration management.

Crisis management in public administration: The three phases model for safety incidents

Behn's (1995) recent delineation of the questions of public makes an important and compelling argument that any field of inquiry should focus on major questions and should be driven by those questions, not diverted to more tractable questions nor limited by methodological orthodoxy. This is a strong critique of much of the contemporary public administration and public management literature, both in terms of the questions addressed and efforts to establish an orthodoxy of methods somehow judged to be most appropriate. Behn is careful to limit his suggestions to public management and to invite others to offer alternative definitions of big questions. In this article, I respond to this invitation, arguing that the big questions of public administration in a democracy are quite different from the big questions of public management, a position also recently suggested by Newland (1994). To begin, I identify Behn's big questions, give an initial preview of the critique more fully developed later, and offer a listing of the seven big questions of public administration in a democracy. Big Questions Behn's three big questions for public management (1995; 315) are: 1. Micromanagement: How can public managers break the micromanagement cycle - an excess of procedural rules, which prevents public agencies from producing results, which leads to more procedural rules, which leads to ...? 2. Motivation: How can public managers motivate people (public employees as well as those outside the formal authority of government) to work energetically and intelligently toward achieving public purposes? 3. Measurement: How can public managers measure the achievements of their agencies in ways that help to increase those achievements? These questions, asking public managers can address each of the three big questions, place the public manager (implicitly operating from a public bureaucracy) at the center of the enterprise of governmental action. This approach, in common with others focused on public management, and much traditional public administration focused on public agencies, fails to confront adequately the issues of public administration in a democracy. It gives management of organizations primacy over the democratic polity, a position effectively critiqued by Appleby (1949) nearly half a century ago. It similarly fails to address the argument of Rosenbloom (1983) that public administration theory includes three distinctive approaches - managerial, political, and legal - all of which must be incorporated if public administration theory is to be legitimate in this nation. Primary attention here is focused on the important questions for public administration in a democracy, particularly the United States. Four criteria the big questions of public administration in a democracy must satisfy are: (a) achieving a democratic polity; (b) rising to the societal level, even in terms of values also important at the level of individual public organizations; (c) confronting the complexity of instruments of collective action; and (d) encouraging more effective societal learning. Seven big questions emerge from the analysis: 1. What are the instruments of collective action that remain responsible both to democratically elected officials and to core societal values? 2. What are the roles of nongovernmental forms of collective action in society, and how can desired roles be protected and nurtured? 3. What are the appropriate tradeoffs between governmental structures based on function (which commonly eases organizational tasks) and geography (which eases citizenship, political leadership, and societal learning)? 4. How shall tensions between national and local political arenas be resolved? 5. What decisions shall be isolated from the normal processes of politics so that some other rationale can be applied? 6. What balance shall be struck among neutral competence, representativeness, and leadership? …

Plants, organisms, and the environment in which they live influence one another, and on this relationship depends the survival of a species. Man recently started paying special attention to ecology: this fact has led to the development of adaptive management as an answer to the unpredictable development of the species and has also highlighted the importance of protecting the environment. This paper presents a theoretical and a practical perspective on the adaptive management which is applied in ecosystems and shows the possibilities for implementing adaptive management in public administration, thus transforming it into an adaptive administration with added use of adaptive administration theory. The aim of this work is to approach adaptive management from a historical point of view and to follow its transference from ecology to public administration. The expected result is that public managers will develop new methods to manage public administration for the benefit of the citizens. 
 Keywords: ecosystems, public administration, adaptive management

The literatures on public management and on the characteristics of policy instruments have developed independently. The two literatures should, however, be related, given that instruments are rarely capable of being effective in implementing policy without adequate management. Further, public management should be understood in the context of achieving policy goals and hence of a relationship to policy. This article makes a preliminary linkage of those two approaches to policy and administration. It demonstrates that each approach helps to illuminate the other and also helps to understand contemporary reforms in the public sector.

The article deals with building a public administration system based on the implementation of project management. The article defines the role, place and possibilities of application of project management in public administration. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the identification and analysis of the most significant problems today related to project management in public administration. In this study, methods of qualitative, quantitative and multi-criteria analysis, as well as methods of systematization and generalization were used. When writing the article, we used methods: analysis, comparison. The author proposes ways to create favorable conditions for the effective use of project management in the state structure, among which are increasing the knowledge of employees, improving the office work system, the regulatory framework, and peer review of projects according to the five-criteria methodology. 1 criterion - economic and financial part of the project; 2nd criterion - the social part of the project; 3rd criterion - the political part of the project; 4th criterion - the cultural part of the project; Criterion 5 - the environmental part of the project. The main conclusion of the study is the identification and use of the most significant scientific approaches, methodologies and best organizational management practices in public administration, which allows clarifying the reasons for the failure of some projects, as well as improving the quality of assessing the level of government projects. This makes it possible to adapt the proposed methodology to the evaluation of specific government projects.

This insight highlights the concept of creating public value by public managers through the assets entrusted to them by the public, including public money, authority to regulate private actors, and the pre-existing public spirit. To achieve this, public managers need to have entrepreneurial skills and a restless, value-seeking imagination to identify and exploit opportunities for public welfare. However, this management style requires a full understanding and adherence to democratic legitimation and public accountability processes. Finally, I emphasizes the importance of public managers focusing on creating public value, as it provides a framework for effective public service delivery and the advancement of the common good.

Purpose – Talent management is becoming an increasingly important area of research and implementation in organisations as is the importance of the organisation's internal resources, i.e. people. The purpose of the paper is to present the results and key findings of the research on how employees in Slovenian public administration rate the implementation and its effects of talent management activities to attract, develop and retain young talented individuals from generation Z. Aims(s) – The aims of this paper were to evaluate the talent management activities for young talented individuals in Slovenian public administration and develop a model of Gen Z talent management. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data was collected with the help of an online questionnaire and the questionnaire, which was designed for the empirical research, consisted of several sets of questions. The collected data was processed in the SPSS statistical program and Microsoft Excel. Findings – The results of the survey show that the respondents do not rate attracting, development and retention of young talented individuals in public administration the best as the average rating of all sets is 3.0. Results show that some attraction and development activities have a positive impact (p < 0.05) on the retention of young talented individuals in Slovenian public administration organisations. Limitations of the study – The limitation was related to the fact that the survey was conducted only in the Slovenian public administration and not in the entire public sector. It would be reasonable to expand the research in the future to the entire public sector and abroad. Practical implications – The paper is useful for practice mainly because it presents the possibility of using the developed model of Gen Z talent management in public administration. Originality/value – The originality of the topic is reflected in the lack of empirical research on the topic of Gen Z talent management in public administrations and the first such research in Slovenian public administration.

The article is aimed at a comprehensive study, generalization and detailed analysis of scientific and practical information, risk management experience in the public sector. The author examines the experience of implementing a risk management system in the UK, the United States of America, their features and the main directions of development in the public sector. The study identifies the main components, stages and requirements necessary for the use of risk management in public administration. The article examines the regulatory framework of the Republic of Kazakhstan regulating the instruments of the risk management system at the level of strategic planning of public administration, and in the implementation of control and supervisory functions of state bodies. As a result of the study, the points confirming the low level of implementation and use of risk management tools in the public administration system of the Republic of Kazakhstan are indicated. The paper pays considerable attention to the main causes of risks characteristic of organizations operating in the public sector. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the formation of conceptual foundations for the introduction of risk management into the public administration system of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The introduction of risk management methods will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of decisions made by public authorities, and become an important component of the strategic development of public administration. The author, using the methods of system analysis, such as generalization, scientific abstraction, comparison, analysis, identified the main problematic issues of implementing risk management in the public administration system of the Republic of Kazakhstan. In the future, the results of the study can be used as a scientific and methodological basis for training and advanced training of specialists in the field of public service.

Public administration in Brazil has a very negative image in society, largely due to a history of inefficiency combined with patrimonial and clientelistic practices. In order to change this type of administration, the school of thought known as New Public Management (NPM)or managerial public administration, as it is commonly known in Brazilproposes new methods and management techniques, many of which are adapted from private business practices. Similarly to other previous Brazilian state reforms, NPM has been restricted to the federal level, rendering it difficult to be observed or studied at subnational (states or municipalities), or even intraorganizational levels. Given this, the aim of this research is to study, through a single case study, the implementation of some of the values and practices of New Public Management in a state-level Brazilian public agency, historically linked to the typical procedures of traditional bureaucracy. The agency studied is the So Paulo Department of Transit (Detran-SP), which is currently undergoing a restructuring process and can be seen as a laboratory to understand and analyze what are the most relevant variables and challenges to make the NPM possible at the Brazilian subnational level.

Background: Diabetes is a group of metabolic disorders that affect the body’s ability to process and use sugar (glucose) for energy. Type II diabetes mellitus resulting from the combination of resistance to insulin action and inadequate insulin secretion. The success of long-term maintenance therapy for diabetes depends largely on the patients’ adherence with self managements practices. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess adherence to diabetes self management practices and its associated factors among type II diabetic patients in Ethiopia. Method: institutional based cross sectional study was employed and 320 study subjects were selected using systematic random sampling technique. And the data was collected using interviewer administered structured questionnaire; data was analyzed and cleaned using SPSS version 16. Scoring method was employed to classify patients’ self-care management practices level. The study period was from sept.2011 to May 30, 2012. Results: Of all respondents, 167 (52.2%) were female. Mean age of the respondents was 55.03 ± 10.7 years with minimum age of 30 and maximum age of 85. The mean duration of diabetes was 12.3+ 7.6 years with minimum of 6 months and maximum of 41 years. From the total respondents, one hundred and seventy (53.1%) were reported to have adhered to physical activities. Two hundred and thirteen (66.6%) respondents were reported to have adhered to the recommended diabetic foot care practices. Overall diabetes self- managements practices were reported as adhered in 178 (55.6%) respondents. Marital status, level of education, monthly income and diabetes complication were showed that association with their adherence condition to physical activity [P=0.047, AOR (95% CI)=2.99 (1.015-8.837) and P=0.006, AOR(95%CI)= 2.79(1.942-5.832)], [P=0.011, AOR (95% CI) = 2.74(1.069-7.064) and P=0.016, AOR (95%CI) = 1.79(1.1182.888)]. Gender and age were found to have association with adherence to diabetic foot care management practices [P=<0.001, AOR (95% CI) =2.03(1.256-3.297)] and [P=0.040, AOR (95% CI) =1.45(0.524-4.060)]. Gender, level of education, diabetes complication and age were showed that association with adherence level to overall diabetes self management practices [P=0.003, AOR (95% CI) =2.37 (1.353- 4.167) and P=0.009, AOR (95%CI) =3.69(1.390-9.830)], [P=<0.001, AOR (95% CI) =2.509 (1.535-4.104)], [P=0.013, AOR (95% CI) =0.46 (0.241-0.879)] Conclusion: findings of this study showed that Almost half of the respondents were adhered to physical activity regimen, diabetes foot care and over all diabetes self managements practices. Marital status, level of education, monthly income, presence or absence of diabetes complication, age were the factors affecting to those diabetes self managements practices