Teaching international comparative public management through a development lens

The article tackles the question, how to provide students with a comparative orientation to public administration. We eschew the older tradition of comparing major systems such British parliamentary system or French bureaucratic approaches to organizations’ structure. Rather, we seek to understand public administration in countries with different cultures, histories, and political regimes by focusing on international development. Our students are drawn from the Master of Public Administration degree program and the Master of International Affairs degree program. What unites them is an interest in international affairs and the desire to work internationally; international students take what they learn and apply it in their home countries. We ground the course on a model of international development with a strong focus on development in governance. We spend the first third of the class creating a development lens for understanding global practices in public management in which they use what they learned in the first part of the course to analyze a range of public management issues within governmental institutions and/or in working in the nongovernmental organizations and intergovernmental organization sectors. We use detailed case studies drawn from several case data banks to apply some of the core concepts of public administration such as leadership, stakeholder analysis, complexity, and implementation to development challenges such as fiscal issues, poverty alleviation, interorganizational collaboration, and human rights. We do this with a range of in-class exercises and assignments that students do out of class. One goal we have is to provide students with knowledge and skills to enhance their ability to work internationally since many have gone on to work for donor and various implementing organizations in international development. We believe that this is a reasonable measure of success of the approach we have taken to comparative public administration.

The creation of international collaborative governance discourse during the process of teaching vocabulary at the university

To improve the practice of public administration (PA) work at the time when collaboration governance principles and values have been especially needed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the new educational approach providing the creation of international collaborative governance PA discourse has become a very important task for public administrations of all the countries of the world because the common terms could help to make the communication of public servants and citizens more effective both in one and the same country and between different countries and regions. The literature concerning collaborative governance PA discourse creation has been thoroughly studied by the author. The experience of the creation of international collaborative governance PA discourse during ELT (English Language Teaching) and ESP (English for Specific Purposes) training of PA students at the Institute for Social Sciences (the ISS) of Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) has been analyzed. The research methods included theoretical research, analytical research methods, methodology of empirical research, and methods of comparative research. The results of the analysis made it possible to conclude that in modern conditions of globalization and international communication in order to understand better the common values of citizens, to avoid discrepancies in vocabulary application and to improve mutual understanding of civil servants speaking different languages, the unification of the descriptive list of English terms concerning public administration activity is needed; the creation of international collaborative governance PA discourse during educational and training process of future public administrators should contribute to PA activity. The International PA Vocabulary as well as the process of writing new textbooks and teaching aids based on it and using new digital technologies and new methodology should be introduced into educational process.

Challenges in curriculum development process aimed at revising the capabilities of future public financial managers

Traditionally, civil servants and public officials are highly educated and have strong administrative expertise. Public financial managers have been regarded as ‘guardians of the public purse’, who have solid budgeting, accounting and auditing skills. However, the development of ‘mega-trends’ such as digitalization and e-government affect the future of the public sector by challenging the traditional competencies of public managers. This paper examines an attempt to redefine the capabilities of future public financial managers as part of the curriculum development process at Tampere University, Finland. The study reflects the tensions and institutional pressures between what is traditionally taught and what will be needed in the public sector in the future. Although in our teaching we emphasise the constant changes happening in public administration, we may be failing to provide our students with the broader skills they will need for dealing with the dynamics of change in a complex working environment.

Understanding the case method: Teaching public administration case by case

Case studies provide helpful teaching tools to capture the complexity of administrative problems from an action-oriented perspective. With increasingly complex policy problems at hand, more interdisciplinary, interactive, and discursive approaches to teaching are also in demand. However, the case method offers a broad variety of options for teaching programs, ranging from short case illustrations or vignettes to full-length case studies. Attached to various types of case materials are different didactic approaches that pursue different pedagogic logics and are likely to make different contributions to in-classroom teaching. The case method in teaching public administration, however, comes at a cost and requires extra capacity, higher time budgets as well as new qualifications and roles of teachers plus a good fit of student (self)-selection and teaching objectives. If meaningfully utilized, it enhances our capacity to prepare (future) executives for complex environments.

Internship alternatives: Solutions for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Internships are an integral component of most undergraduate and graduate public administration programs. These learning opportunities allow students to get practical experience in a workplace setting before graduation and provide them with an opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom to the “real world.” But what are students, departments, and employers to do when circumstances—including major disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic as well as situations unique to specific students—complicate or even prevent on-site internship experiences? This article outlines a variety of approaches to finding a solution to this problem, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each.

The rationale for embedding ethics and public value in public administration programmes

When crises occur, revisiting given knowledge and practices seems sensible and necessary. For instance, the recent financial crisis in 2008 lead to questioning the role played by financial institutions and business schools in precipitating the crisis by allowing questionable professional ethics to go unchallenged. There is a current crisis in public administration in the UK, visible in the growing challenges to public sector professionals in their practice and in the increased questioning of the government as a guarantor of public services and welfare. To understand the current situation, exploring the role of public administration teaching and professional organisations in the UK is key. Have we perhaps neglected the teaching of ethics and public value as crucial tenets to the profession and to its practice? This paper explores the necessity, merits, and difficulties of embedding ethics and public value concepts into the curriculum.

Wildavsky or a workbook: Advice for the novice faculty member teaching undergraduate public finance

The article examines five areas novice instructors should consider before teaching public finance. First, instructors should ascertain their comfort level along the qualitative-quantitative continuum. This ranges from a high-level overview of the budgetary process, politics, players, and outcomes (qualitative) before descending into spreadsheets with formulas for decision making (quantitative). Second, instructors should know which resources to assemble including textbooks, government documents, and spreadsheet guidebooks. Third, instructors should understand the department’s expectations for the course along the qualitative-quantitative continuum based on students’ career paths. Fourth, instructors should assess students’ capabilities to grasp budgeting exercises and spreadsheets competently. Finally, instructors should monitor how the course content aligns with regional employers and the academic program’s advisory board. Many academics would argue that these five points are rudimentary for any instructor’s pedagogy, until they teach public finance.

Everything old is old again

A purpose of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program is to translate theory into practical concepts to prepare leaders of the public and nonprofit sectors. The practice continues to employ entrepreneurial activities throughout the world. The academy has researched, written, and published extensively about entrepreneurship to build knowledge. The author pulled together aspects of the research to build an applicable framework for entrepreneurship—presenting, publishing, and designing an MPA course. This paper discusses that journey. The author sought to find the extent of similar courses in other accredited programs. The findings did not reveal widespread dissemination of entrepreneurship courses. An unintended finding shows that core course offerings appeared to be largely unchanged for decades. Is it time to “reinvent” the MPA program?