Public Management Development: A Comparative Perspective

For a variety of reasons, public management development policies have become the fad in many Western industrialised countries in recent years. As governments move to see their operations managed other than simply administered, they are looking for ways to provide new management skills to their managers. In addition, senior government officials themselves see management development programmes as a way to strengthen the corporate culture and purpose of public bureaucracies. Attempts at launching new public management policies in several OECD countries are reviewed. The purpose is to draw out the similarities and differences in the approaches being tried. It is revealed that there are a great deal of similarities. For one thing, governments are looking inside their operations for solutions rather than turning to universities or the private sector. For another, the standard lecture approach to teaching has lost much of its appeal in the new programmes. In some instances, participants from the private sector are invited to attend the new courses.