Abstract: Public management has been dominated by the quest for efficiency and has left us with fundamental ethical questions, which remain unresolved. It is argued that Machiavellian thought may provide us with concepts and tools applicable to ruling societies confronted with uncertainties and...

Public management, as an academic discipline, has been, up to now, inspired by a managerialist approach axiologically neutral that cast aside the great questions regarding the ends of public life, those of the common good and of the good life that were at the very basis of the classical...

This paper is a chapter of the Festschrift offered to celebrate Carlota Perez’s 70th birthday, in September 2009 in Tallinn University (Estonia). Drawing on Carlota Perez' works on technological cycles, long waves of development and systemic crises, the link is made between the evolution of...

The public sector is traditionally presented as reluctant to change. Using an adaptive systems framework and following a grounded theorizing approach, I analyze four cases of successful organizational transformation though the management of crises as a momentum for change. Crises help only if...

The 2001 reform of the France basic law on financial legislation defines a new framework for the monitoring of public policies based on the evaluation of outputs and outcomes rather than resources allocations through a classical budgeting process. A new monitoring process is under design, based...

1. By adopting the organic law relating to public accounts (Loi Organique sur les Lois de Finances - LOLF), in 2001 France modified its budgetary framework and introduced a results-oriented form of public policy management. This is a major new departure, which will not succeed without a profound...