Organisation, Management and Leadership

Governments are faced with increasing demands to enhance public sector effectiveness and efficiency and to base policy choices on sound evidence. As a response, various forms of new organisational arrangements, management concepts and new leadership demands have been promoted throughout the last decades. However, the design and application of such new structures and mechanisms faces a number of challenges in the specific context, both within public sector organizations, but also in the increasingly relevant context of governance networks and the interplay of public, private, and third sectors.

How do new systems interact with existing governance arrangements that operate according to long-established and deeply-embedded practices, institutional logics, and identities? What types of unintended consequences and side effects on factors such as motivation, integrity, or quality can be observed? What kind of public leadership is required to overcome the various constraints limiting the acceptance and use of these new management concepts?

Projects 

• Coordinating for Cohesion in the Public Sector in the Future (Gerhard Hammerschmid & Kai Wegrich): The COCOPS project seeks to comparatively and quantitatively assess the impact of New Public Management-style reforms in European countries, drawing on a team of European public administration scholars from 11 universities in 10 countries. COCOPS analyzes the impact of reforms in public management and public services that address citizens' service needs and social cohesion in Europe. Evaluating the extent and consequences of NPM's alleged fragmenting tendencies and the resulting need for coordination is a key part of assessing these impacts
• Public Sector Leadership and Reform in Germany (Gerhard Hammerschmid): based on an executive survey
• Public Sector Corporate Governance - Agentification and Corporatisations (Gerhard Hammerschmid): part of the EU funded COST Action IS0601 "Comparative Research into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization"
• E-Government (Jobst Fiedler): eg. cloud computing for public administration; citizen relationship management via 3-1-1 systems in NYC and other US cities
• Public Sector Motivation and Identity(Gerhard Hammerschmid)
• Performance, "Careering" and Leadership Selection in Hierarchies (Klaus Brösamle)
• Career Patterns, Wages, and Responsiveness to Incentives: Comparing the Swedish Private and Public Sector (Klaus Brösamle)
• Assessing the Performance of East European Public Universities. Measuring Integrity in Higher Education Systems. The Case of Postcommunist Europe (Alina Mungiu-Pippidi)