DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN THE VICTORIAN PUBLIC SERVICE

Abstract: The Public Service Board of Victoria initiated a project in March 1989 to plan a framework for the development of competent managers. The methodology involved an examination of the current practices of 23 organisations, together with a worldwide literature search. The major findings were that the managerial task is similar across sectors, but the manager level and the environment are qualifying variables; that training, management education and development in private sector organisations and statutory bodies has total commitment from the chief executive, is closely linked to the business plan, forms part of an integrated human resource management system, and is continually reinforced by the organisation's culture and values; and that there is no strategic and focused approach to developing managers across the Victorian Public Service. The 21 recommendations covered the areas of investment and commitment, the development of a systematic approach by providing quality management programs based on core managerial competencies and the integration of training, education and development with performance management processes.
The implementation plan calls for pump-priming funds for resourcing and delivering high quality programs, a change in the culture, the adoption of a set of principles, the establishment of a management education unit, acceptance of a common language of competence for managers, and an integration of education and development needs with corporate plans through the performance improvement system. Commitment to implementation should result in a systematic approach to the formation of competent managers with the benefits flowing to the community through improved services, the government gaining by increased performance of the agencies, and public servants being able to reach their full potential.     

INFORMING WILDERNESS POLICY: THE DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF WILDERNESS CONSERVATION1

Abstract: Over the last two decades wilderness conservation has resurfaced to become one of the most contentious issues currently on the public agenda. The "politics" of wilderness preservation has been extensively reported in the media, but academic analysis has been on a superficial level and usually by the supporters of "conservation". This analysis has not proved particularly helpful for policy practitioners in this field.     

THE CAREER SERVICE IN THE 1980s: WHAT ARE THE FACTS?

This paper seeks to provide statistics on how the career service has developed within Commonwealth Government administration over the past decade or so. On the basis of trends in these data some speculations are offered on how the career service might look in the 1980s. The views expressed are speculations, not forecasts. In Commonwealth administration, the career service concept has by and large been held to embrace staff employed in the Commonwealth Public Service (CPS) under the Public Service Act, particularly permanent staff. While it is possible to debate the extent of the career service, this paper will confine itself to full-time permanent, temporary and exempt staff of the CPS, employed under the Public Service Act. It thus excludes staff employed under other Acts, although the opportunities for movement of CPS staff to statutory authorities and back again should not be overlooked.     

METHODS OF THE SECOND TYPE: COPING WITH THE WILDERNESS OF CONVENTIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS

Policy analysts, like allegorical homesteaders, face the seemingly unmanageable task of coping with the wilderness of ill-structured problems, while concurrently attending to well-structured problems, which can be addressed with conventional methods of policy analysis. What has appeared thus far as an unmanageable task may become manageable once analysts acknowledge the principle of methodological congruence: The appropriateness of a particular type of method is a function of its congruence with the type of problem under investigation.
To be sure, conventional methods of the first type are appropriate and useful for solving first-order problems, which are relatively well-structured. Contexts of practice, however, are pervaded by second-order problems which, variously described as squishy, messy, or ill-structured, are the class of all first-order problems. Just as methods of the first type are congruent with the simple analytic demands of first-order problems, so are methods of the second type congruent with the complex analytic demands of second-order problems. When policy analysts fail to observe this principle of methodological congruence they are likely to solve the wrong problem.
Methods of the second type are not limited to general heuristics, but include specific and readily comprehensible procedures for estimating the boundaries and structure of ill-structured problems. Since these estimation procedures appear to satisfy requirements of inductive estimates in general, policy analysts can assess their own performance in providing approximate answers to the right question, thus coping with the enemies who lurk in the wilderness of conventional policy analysis.     

COMMONWEALTH STATUTORY AUTHORITIES: EXPLORING THE FIELD

In the December 1977 number of this Journal (vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 357–366), I presented a number of charts which had developed out of my consulting work on statutory authorities for the Coombs Royal Commission, and which sought to trace the pattern of creations and abolitions of such authorities over the period from 1901 to mid-1975. A supplementary list traced developments up to the end of 1976, when the article was prepared. Though I believed the listings were reasonably comprehensive, some statutory authorities are notoriously elusive, and readers were invited to suggest any additions or alterations that should be made.     

THE FORGOTTEN ROYAL COMMISSION: PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The publication Public Service Inquiries in Australia edited by R.F.I Smith and Patrick Weller (1978) concentrated on the wave of inquiries that swept Australia in the 1970s with most attention being given to the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration (RCAGA). While the focus of the book was on contemporary developments, Roger Wettenhall's chapter 2 outlined "A Brief History of Public Service Inquiries" so as "to set the present generation of inquiries more firmly in a historical context" (1978, p.15).