The document discusses skills needed for public administrators in the 21st century. It notes that fiscal constraints and rising stakeholder expectations are creating a "new normal" for the public sector. Key priorities identified include building leadership capacity, driving innovation in service delivery through citizen engagement and third parties, and focusing on stakeholder engagement and building trust. Effective change management, collaboration, and performance management are also emphasized. The document argues that public managers need more flexibility to function effectively within these constraints. It discusses the role of institutional entrepreneurs and tempered radicals in driving innovation within bureaucratic organizations and creating cultures that empower creativity.

1. Module 2
Public Administration Skills in the
21st Century
PRESENTER

2. A “New Public Sector Norm” emerging for our Survey
2
Relative to the nine core questions, fiscal constraints and rising stakeholder expectations are
the “new norm”, and public sector executives need to respond by:
1. Human resource priorities are on Building leadership capacity and Driving change
management
2. Driving human resource capacity is being impeded by short term focus and lack of HR
tools
3. Policy and program priorities focus on Innovative Service delivery (citizen self-service
and engagement of third parties)
4. There appears to be a growing divide between academic and practitioner
communities
5. Advanced analytics and mobile communications are two powerful forces impacting
government in the coming years
6. Focusing on stakeholder engagement around programs / services and building trust
in public institutions are key priorities
7. More effective inter-jurisdictional collaboration is required, with enhanced roles for
municipalities and central government
8. Performance management frameworks are generally in place, but not effective enough
for management
9. Government needs to find better ways to function effectively despite fiscal constraints

3. A thought about organizations
 Open data resides mostly within organizations.
 We can think of organizations as structures that have
been created to handle recurrent problems in acceptable
ways.
 Organizations modify individual behaviour.
 Organizations create pathways, cultures and roadblocks
both internally and externally to achieve this result.
3

4. Old and New Organizations
 The structure and rules of an organization
are dependent on the reasons for its
creation, its history, its resources, and so
forth.
 They can tell us a lot about the
relationships of power and aptitude for
change that these organizations have.
4

5. What Affects Innovation in
Organizations?
 Structure
 Goals
 Incentives
 History
 Resource availability
 Culture
 Leadership
 Environment
 Research and
Development capacity
 Human Resources
 Economic cycles
5

6. Traditional Bureaucracy
 Hierarchical/Central Command
 Role-governed and Upward
accountability
 Static
 Standardized Citizen’s Right to Public
Services
 Tayloristic Operations
 Process-Driven Organization
 Fordist Production System
NPM Bureaucracy
 Flattened and decentralized
 Results-Centered
 Change-Driven
 Client-Focused
 Empowering Employees
 Learning Organization
 Flexible Workplace
Less Innovative More Innovative
The Theory

7. The practice
 Government are often still
designed structurally on
the Weberian model.
 Organizations are based
on hierarchy.
 Hierarchy is based on
authority.
 Roles are bound by the
office (job description).
7

8. Challenges
 Overcoming top-down
messaging
 Overcoming challenges
to horizontal cooperation
 Overcoming challenges
to knowledge sharing
 Overcoming hierarchical
patterns
 Overcoming path
dependency
8

9. HERE MODERN PA MODEL

10.  Often open information and technology are
complements to institutional change not
substitutes.
 Open data and technology are interesting
because they are (relatively) very cheap
and straightforward.
 Open data and technology are not a
substitute for change management
planning. 10

11. Implementing Change
Rejection
Lack of
Response
Compliance
with rules
Focus on
strategic
data
Full
commitment
11

12.  Four outcomes are key to create lasting
change:
 Examples (I see it): Provide an image of
success
 Assessment (I need it): how will change
improve the problem
 Practice (I do it): begin change
 Support (I live it): build a community
supportive of the change
12

13. Policy Roles for Public Managers
 Decentralization and devolution: increased
responsibility of Public Managers
 Emergence of network/collaborative government
practices built on participatory and consultative
processes: governance is often bottom-up
 Increased customer-orientation in public sector
governance: strengthen the agencies delivering
the services (hence the Public Managers
overseeing delivery)

14. Policy Functions
 Not all
managers take
up all policy
functions
 Policy functions
do not occur in
a sequence, but
are discrete and
interrelated.
14
Policy
Formulation
Decision
Making
Policy
Implementation
Policy
Evaluation
Agenda
Setting

15. Policy Perspectives
 These perspectives must
be taken into account
simultaneously by Public
Managers.
 These perspectives guide
the managers’ activity.
 The relative significance of
the dimensions differs
across levels of
government and policy
sectors.
15

16. Policy Competencies
 Competencies
accumulated
over time by
the managers
round out the
framework

17. Potential Roles of Public Managers
Agenda Setting “Gatekeeper”
Sustaining attention to a given policy issue
Identifying emerging issues from programs they
manage
Attention to less visible issues
Policy
Formulation
Preemptive and proactive as supposed to reactive
Further development of issues passing through
policy agenda
Decision Making Decision-makers themselves
Conducting policy analysis
Making policy recommendation
Policy
Implementation
Responsible for Implementation strategies and
measures
Securing resources for successful implementation
Policy Evaluation Evaluators themselves
Collection of information/data for evaluation
Assisting external evaluators

18. Tempered Radicals
 Tempered radicals are people who work
and seek advancement within mainstream
organizations and professions, but also
want to change them.
 Tempered because:
 Dislike the incongruities between their values
and those of the organizations;
 Are forced to tone down their action.

19. Institutional Entrepreneurs
 To qualify as institutional entrepreneurs,
individuals must break with existing rules
and practices associated with the
dominant institutional logic(s) and
institutionalize the alternative rules,
practices or logics they are championing
(Battilana 2006; Garud and Karnøe 2001).

20.  Tempered radicals and institutional
entrepreneurs are not reproducing the
rules and behaviors of existing structures.
They are in fact rewriting rules while
generating new resources to develop the
innovation ecology to further assist them in
this change process.

21. Internal Forces Driving Change
The devolution of responsibilities,
client-centered approaches, and
strong focus on satisfaction- and
result-based assessments typical of
the most recent phase of New
Public Management increasingly
make public managers answerable
for crafting rather than just
implementing policy choices

22. ANSWERING THE CALL
The most efficient way to answer the
seemingly conflicting demands of better
client-centred approaches and shrinking
budgets is to foster innovative problem-
solving within the public administration by
triggering untapped capabilities through
innovation ecologies and the spread of
institutional entrepreneurship.

23. Role of institutional entrepreneurs
in innovation
Basins of Attraction (Olsson et al. 2004, Folke et al. 2009)

24. Showcase
and reward
intraprene
urial
thinking
Encourage
organizational-
wide involvement
by insisting on
truth and honesty
about what’s
working, what’s
not, why?
Focus on
network
BUILDING
Empower,
Enable
Encourage
Catalyze
creativity &
demand new
ways to do
business
THERIGHTTIMING
WINDOWSOF
OPPORTUNITY
CREATING AN INTRAPRENEURIAL
CULTURE?