SMART
PRACTICES TOWARD INNOVATION IN PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Colin
Campbell, Canada Research Chair in U.S. Government and Politics, Professor of
Political Science and Chair of the U.S. Studies Program, University of British
Columbia
Twentieth
Anniversary of the International Political Science Association Research
Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government (SOG)
Department of Political Science and the
U.S. Studies Program, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, June 15 to 17,
2004
Theme
Innovations designed to sharpen
principal-agent relations have from the standpoint of many observers also
greatly constricted the latitude for officials to function creatively. Successive waves of fiscal stringency have
exacerbated further the resultant shortfall between the rhetoric associated
with “new public management” and reality.
The latter increasingly seems to place public servants within
relentlessly constricting frameworks.
These conditions in many circumstances call upon an element of heroism
for officials still choosing to risk creativity.
Eugene Bardach has employed the term “smart
practices” to capture the inventiveness required for public servants to
overcome obstacles to innovation. Such barriers have assumed especially acute forms
over the past twenty years or so as politicians have become substantially
antagonistic toward officials taking initiative and tight budgets have
preordained that organizations must struggle even to fulfill adequately
governments’ highest stated priorities.
Bardach’s contribution stresses the need when devising innovative
practices not just to pursue new methods for coping with specific sets of
circumstances but, more crucially, to identify and tap latent opportunities for
creating value. Bardach underscores his
view that smart practices can focus as much on development of processes as
design of products—for instance, inventing coordinating mechanisms and not just
revamping objectives. In search of
smart practices, officials draw upon their capacity for “craftsmanship
thinking,”
namely “creativity combined with public spiritedness.”[3] Such
exhortations, however, seem to be
counseling collaboration and resourcefulness in the face of actual trends toward
increasingly constrictive mandates and morale-destroying parsimony. To what extent can we say that officials in
real-life organizations actually have opted for seemingly heroic public
spiritedness?
This
conference will probe the degree to which public service organizations have
actually attempted to rise to the challenges of their current context. To what degree have they been able to
foster, preserve and mobilize significant autonomy? Have they been able to channel themselves toward collaborative
and resourceful initiatives that not only allow them to address quotidian
immediate issues but position themselves institutionally so that they might
prepare their organizations strategically for addressing future opportunities and
challenges? What conditions seem to
prompt heroic endeavors?
The conference’s
overarching theme and the questions arising from it fit well within the compass
of SOG, especially this research committee’s seminal concern both with
organization of governance and relations between political leaders and career
civil servants. It is anticipated that
the conference will start with a session probing the theoretical issues
associated with devising smart practices within the wider frame of innovation
in public management during our current era of governance. It will then offer a succession of panels,
organized broadly in relation to policy domains, which review specific cases of
smart practices in contemporary bureaucracy.
The papers on these panels might focus on smart practices within a
policy domain or bureaucratic institutions within a specific country, or
provide a comparison examining innovation within a sector in two or more
countries. Papers reviewing cases which
touch upon issues associated with core opportunities and challenges of
contemporary governance will receive priority.
Such issues include responsible government, alternative models for
public service, horizontal management, and legitimacy and public confidence
Support
According to SOG guidelines, the conference
organizer must assume responsibility for most ground expenses of participants
serving as paper givers and/or discussants.
In line with SOG practice, participants will cover their own travel
costs. Participants not giving papers
or serving as discussants are welcome to all events associated with the
conference and will be eligible for the discount hotel rate (see below) but
will be responsible for all costs associated both with attendance and
accommodation.
Coverage by the conference organizer will
likely include:
- Hotel accommodation for the nights of June 15 to 17 inclusive.
- Continental breakfast at the conference site on June 16 and 17.
- Box lunches at the conference site on June 16 and 17.
- Formal dinners on the nights of June 15 and 16 (One at a local
restaurant; the other at the UBC campus on Point Grey).
- A closing reception at the organizer’s home.
Conference
participants will be accommodated at a greatly discounted rate in the Four
Seasons Hotel in downtown Vancouver.
This is arguably Vancouver’s best hotel with magnificent harbor, city
and mountain views. The rate offered,
US$90 at the current (8/15/03) exchange, also allows participants to extend
their stays three nights before and/or after the three covered by the sponsors. An extended
stay, for instance, the
maximum of nine nights, in this accommodation at approximately US$90 hopefully will
entice many participants to plan a vacation in Vancouver.
Deadlines
October 1, 2003
Those wishing to present papers should
submit their proposals to the organizer.
These should include a title, a 300-word abstract, a cv and a bio-sheet.
October 15, 2003
The organizer will inform those submitted
proposals as to whether their paper has been accepted and circulate the program
for the entire conference.
May 1, 2004
Completed papers will be due for review by
the organizer, panel chairs and discussants.
May 15, 2004
Completed papers not received by this date might
be subject to deletion from the conference schedule. All completed papers will be posted on the conference web site.
June 15, 2004
Discussants will provide the organizer with
written critiques (approximately one page each) of the papers on their panel.
Publication
The guidelines presented in the above
section should facilitate publication of a selected group of conferences papers
in relatively short order. Governance—which is sponsored by
SOG—has the right of first refusal for all papers presented at its conferences. The early submission of
papers should provide ample lead time for Governance
to ascertain which papers they want to send out for review. These papers plus all others will be
considered simultaneously for publication in an edited collection focused on
the conference theme. Authors invited
to contribute to the collection will be asked to submit revised versions of
their papers by August 1.
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