Public Administration Training Research Articles

Training, development and performance (Case study of the Albanian Public Administration)

<p>Training and development as a practice and procedure of procedures undertaken for the improvement of employee's performance in terms of his attitude, skills, knowledge and behavior has become a very important practice in human resource management in successful organizations. The realization of this practice in its full range of public organizations is a real challenge, it's because public organizations often operate under a strict legal framework and of these practices use and flexibility and efficiency is difficult. The main purpose of this paper is to present the main theoretical approaches related to training in public administration all specials presents this practice in the budgetary sectors. Further, in a more practical level, other purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship of training with performance seen in two levels; individual and organizational.</p><p>To realize the goals of this paper are following two main ways. Initially he conducted a theoretical picture of attitudes to assess performance and its position in view of the performance of public administrator. Later in order to answer to key questions of research is designed and distributed a questionnaire on the Albanian public administration whose data are processed further. At the end of this work based on literature review and practical results reflected some recommendations and conclusions.</p>

An Advanced Degree in Public Administration – is it Valued by City Councils?

Does holding an advanced degree in public administration matter to city councils, the local political institution that makes the hiring decision? Previous studies of city manager education place emphasis on city managers receiving professional training in public administration, and do so from a strong normative tradition stressing the professionalization of local government. The analysis presented in this paper asks whether city councils in fact place greater value on hiring a manager who holds an advanced degree in public administration compared to managers with other educational backgrounds. We employ logistic regression analysis of responses provided by city managers in the state of Texas to determine the extent to which this is the case. We find that an advanced degree in public administration is valued more than other educational backgrounds by city councils, and this value is independent of social and economic characteristics of cities and traits of individual managers.

Challenges and Prospects of Public Administration Education and Training in Africa: The Case of Ghana

In more recent times, education and training in public administration have become very important because the public service is expected by the citizens to provide value for money spent. In developing countries, and especially in Africa, in view of the numerous developmental challenges, the call for effective public administration education and training has been extremely intensified. Consequently, there is the need to examine what governments are doing in this regard and whether initiatives being undertaken will yield the needed results. In this paper, the intention is to examine the challenges to and future prospects of public administration education and training in Ghana. What, exactly, are the major challenges facing public administration education and training in Ghana? Are there, indeed, any prospects for those pursuits? How can such education and training help in establishing the developmental state for which many, including international organizations, are calling?

Public Administration Education and Training in Nigeria: Problems, Challenges, and Prospects

This article describes the evolution of public administration education and training in Nigeria through an exploratory method of inquiry. It traces the practice of public administration through the British superstructure and the indirect system of local administration created in the 1900s, which ended in 1960 when the country gained independence from Britain. As a multiethnic nation, Nigeria has experienced various forms of government and administrative reforms that not only affected the evolution of public service, but continued to pose serious challenges for universities and other institutions charged with public administration education and training. On the basis of lessons learned from public service reforms and pedagogical approaches and methods, the analysis concludes by offering recommendations for improving the public administration curriculum in Nigeria.

Public Administration Training and Development in Africa: The Case of the Republic of South Africa

South Africa is a developmental state that suffers from a lack of management capacity in the public service. Hence, a national imperative focuses on addressing talent management and building a cohort of qualified and competent public servants. The synergistic link between public sector management and the content of public administration can be associated with and contribute to addressing critical skills shortages in the public service. Training in this regard with the demand for and supply of competent managers raises some serious consideration. Given that academicians and scholars often criticize the history and evolution of education and training in public administration as being overly administrative and outdated, how has the need for a transformative management-governance context advanced in South Africa? In this regard, a range of “soft skills” deemed necessary for the developmental agenda in South Africa is a focal point of contemporary public administration. From a training perspective, methodologies include problem-based learning, performance-oriented and situation-emergent training, project management approach to managerial problems, and emphasis placed on indigenous management knowledge in a developmental context. We hope that these innovative approaches would address the wide managerial gap in the public administration environment.

Rethinking of Curriculum for the Senior Staff Course of Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre: An Empirical Analysis

One of the mandates of Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC) is to develop human capital of senior level civil servants of Bangladesh. This study has identified the development needs of the Joint Secretaries of Bangladesh Civil Service in order to facilitate knowledge and skills through Senior Staff Course (SSC) organized by BPATC. This study has used quantitative research approach. Data were collected from different levels of respondents that include officers of the rank of Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary and Secretary. The results have yielded seven thematic areas, in respect of knowledge and skills where Joint Secretaries are required to develop and with these seven thematic areas course contents need to be developed to achieve present and future priorities of the Government of Bangladesh.

Professionalization of Civil Service in Hungary: The Potential Impacts of Centralizing Public Administration Education

The article examines the recent developments in public administration training in Hungary and draws conclusions for the future. The paper analyzes the connection between legalism and professionalism in Hungary. Legalism and professionalism are displayed as contrary notion by a considerable number of theorists. It appears that »legalism« is an appropriate label for the past status of public administration that reformists long to abandon. Since Hungary is considered to be part of the legalistic culture of European public administration (PA), the assumed conflict between legalism and professionalism appears more vividly. As part of the currently undergoing reform, professionalism received an influential institutional promoter within the Hungarian PA: the National University of Public Administration that is primarily a university but is also a successor of the government agency that used to be in charge of civil service professional training. The article concludes with summarizing the currently undergoing reform regarding professionalism that is also presented as being contrary to the legalistic PA in the government reform program for modernizing PA.

Escolarização de alunos com deficiência e as inter-relações família, escola e gestores públicos da Educação Especial

http://dx.doi.org/10.5902/1984686X8592 Neste texto objetiva-se evidenciar as implicações do processo de ressignificação do conhecimento social relativo à educabilidade da pessoa com deficiência na inter-relação família, escola e gestores públicos da educação especial. Articula-se os resultados de duas pesquisas que focalizaram as políticas de Educação Especial no Estado do Espírito Santo. A primeira pesquisa abordou as relações entre as instituições especializadas e a escola comum e ancorou-se na perspectiva de pesquisa do tipo etnográfico. A segunda, focalizou a formação continuada de gestores públicos de Educação Especial e assumiu os pressupostos da pesquisa-ação colaborativo-crítica. Ambas utilizaram como instrumento de coleta de dados: questionário, entrevista semiestruturada, estudo de documentos e a dinâmica de grupo focal. Na análise dos dados adotou-se os pressupostos da Sociologia Figuracional elaborada por Norbert Elias, fundamentalmente, a noção de conhecimento e suas implicações no processo de distribuição de chances de poder nas inter-relações humanas. Os dados evidenciam que os conhecimentos relativos à inclusão social, acessados de diferentes formas pelos participantes da pesquisa, assumem sentidos e significados que possibilitam a uns e a outros questionarem situações que limitam o percurso formativo-educativo do aluno com deficiência. Conclui-se que, nas sociedades recentes, as inter-relações dos pais e dos profissionais, balizadas pela ressignificação do conhecimento social sobre a educabilidade das pessoas com deficiência, vêm produzindo outras necessidades emocionais nessas pessoas, nos seus familiares e nos profissionais do ensino, movimentando a balança de poder nas suas inter-relações. Palavras-chave: Conhecimento. Equilíbrio de poder. Deficiência.

Towards Excellence in Public Administration Education and Training: an African and South African Experience

Not only did globalization bring about profound changes to public administration worldwide, but it also challenged the implementation of the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm in terms of service delivery, posing the question whether public administration must reinvent itself to address these challenges more effectively. Many changes that have been implemented in the public sector have not been based on evidence that change would benefit those using the services, those working in them and the community as a whole. Taking cognizance of especially the current African and South African higher education environment, it became clear that in order to move towards excellence in public administration education and training, the curricula must be amended and should the focus be on particular skills to be transferred to learners to address the above- mentioned situation. The question arises whether the nature of these developments would be relevant to the needs of both the learner as well as public institutions.

USA-Croatian cooperation in education and training for public administration in Croatia

For the past six years the Unger International Center for Local Government Leadership in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio USA, has been collaborating with the Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka and USAID’s Local Government Reform Project to advance education and in-service training for local government officials in Croatia. This paper presents an in depth review and analysis of focusing on its successes and challenges and the application of lessons learned to the future of public administration education, training and professional development in Southeast Europe.

Putting first things first: critical issues for public administration education

This article begins by reviewing developments in the field of public administration over the past 50 years and identifying factors that have served, in some cases unintentionally, to undermine public confidence in the actual practice of public administration. It then examines a number of important conditions that must be addressed in the preparation of the next generation of public administrators and the professional development of those currently in the field. The most important of these involves the recognition of the centrality of government, and thus public administration as well, for the building of an effective and productive society. Before concluding, a major initiative to encourage enhanced excellence in the education and training of public administrators, which was initiated by the United Nations in conjunction with the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, is examined.

The dilemma of public administration education in South Africa

This article points to the adverse circumstances in which public administration education and training has to take place in developing countries, more specifically in South Africa. This is especially seen in the combination of scarce resources and rapidly increasing enrolment. The consequence thereof is that the didactics of education and training suffer in becoming characterized by mere teaching instead of the promotion of learning. The article points to a serious dilemma especially faced under such difficult circumstances, namely that a curriculum either addresses all the subjects relevant from an academic perspective and conform to international accreditation criteria, and becomes deficient in the way all these topics are taught—or opts to prioritize topics based on a skills-needs analysis and optimizes the way in which this limited number of topics is learned.

Working Within Constraints: Can Transformational Leaders Alter the Experience of Red Tape?

ABSTRACT Can leadership, an understudied variable in red tape research, create conditions that mitigate how followers experience red tape? To answer this question we employ data from a survey of agency heads in U.S. city government, asking them about the transformational leadership qualities of their city manager, and estimate how this is associated with the organizational conditions followers experience and, in turn, red tape. We hypothesize that transformational leadership alters perceptions of red tape through its influence on goal clarity, political support, and communication. Results from a structural equation model provide empirical evidence consistent with our theory. We also find that respondents with public administration training and those who work in control agencies reported themselves less likely to experience red tape.

Unlimited Possibilities for Fiscal Transparency Improvement

Unlimited Possibilities for Fiscal Transparency Improvement

Public Administration Training and Education in the University of Malawi: A Critical Analysis

Public Administration Training and Education in the University of Malawi: A Critical Analysis

Building a New Democracy in Ukraine: The Unacknowledged Issue of Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity in Public Administration Education and Training

The fall of the Soviet empire and the transition to democracy that has taken place in Central and Eastern Europe (and elsewhere) during the past three decades has focused new attention on both the processes of, and the issues involved in, democratic institution building. These experiences have shown that issues of linguistic and ethnic difference are often key elements in such matters. Ukraine, a country of considerable strategic importance, has struggled with both the transition to democracy and the relative roles of the Ukrainian and Russian languages in the task of nation‐state building. This article examines the emergence of linguistic conflicts in Ukrainian government and public policy and explores, through a survey of higher education institutions, its impact on the preparation of the next generation of the nation's public administrators. The article concludes by explaining why the impact of this politically divisive issue has been more modest than might have been expected.

Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environment for the Professional Training in Public Administration

In this paper, we describe a framework for the evaluation of a virtual learning environment in the Public Administration context. We describe the question of e-learning education of the Italian Public Administration employees and we analyse the characteristics of these learners [11, 13, 9]. These adults do not belong to the Internet Generation but they have to use the new educational tools, with the problems that this implies [9, 10, 15]. 
 Citizens expect transparency and services personalization, efficiency and quality by the Public Administration. The Public Administration began this modernization process aimed at the improvement of the administrative action. The aim is to meet the needs of citizens that live in a complex society. This entails a re-examination of the role and the logic of work that find in the employees a master key for their success [6]. Therefore the most important element for this modernization process and for the reformation of the administrative action is the education of the employees [12, 14].
 The European Council invited the member States to adopt the methodologies of e-learning for the education of their staff [4, 5]. In the last years a large number of employees have received training with the methodologies and the instruments of on-line education. 
 The European Public Administrations had adopted on a large scale the e-learning for the education of their employees because this is a modality of in service-training that removes space and time bonds. Moreover this allows the utilisation of new educational techniques. 
 The learning policies adopted by the governments highlight the importance of education in adulthood to be competitive in the knowledge society [4]. This type of education is oriented to provide and to develop the ability that can be utilised in a professional field, not to make up for knowledge opportunities missed at the time of compulsory school education. 
 It is essential to provide the employees-learners a good quality learning object and Virtual Learning Environment [1, 2, 3]. For these reasons we had worked out a framework to evaluate the quality and the pedagogical efficacy of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) from the point of view of lifelong learning. The evaluation offers feedback to developers, tutors, teachers and the other involved people, and it is an important part for the guarantee of quality [7]. We are interested in finding general principles that are useful in the planning of the learning environment for the Public Administration employees. 
 We describe the pedagogical implications of the adoption of e-learning in adult education, the reasons for its broad use in Public Administration. 
 The virtual environment is a social space, and in this system a set of people (students, tutors, teachers, administration assistant, etc) interact, with different roles and needs. 
 For this reason the evaluation of an e-learning environment embraces the evaluation of the process of delivery, the maintenance and the people involved [8]. The evaluation instruments could be created in order to estimate the quality expected, looked for and reached. For these reasons it is necessary to detect indicators able to find the minimum criteria of quality [3]. In a Virtual Learning Environment there are different elements that can be considered in order to evaluate the quality of the learning system, we have considered these:
 â?¢ The quality of communication system.
 â?¢ The quality of support services and the didactic staff.
 â?¢ The quality of administrative services. 
 â?¢ The quality of learning objects.
 We also analyze the learnersâ?? needs regarding on-line education. The aim of this study was to find a learning environment suitable for Public Administration employees. 
 

Preparing the Public Service for Working in Multiethnic Democracies: An Assessment and Ideas for Action

Successful governance of multiethnic democracies and advancement of social and political equity for minorities in Europe are well-recognized goals. As has been noted recently in the activities of the Working Group on Democratic Governance of Multi-ethnic Communities of the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee),The importance of finding effective long-term solutions to the management of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic difference and reduction of conflict in the region is without question. Strengthening the capacity of the public and NGO sectors to manage diversity is an essential step to improving governance and service delivery in general. Sustained attention to issues of diversity require long term capacity building through public administration education in addition to current efforts to reform laws and intervene in existing conflicts.1The challenge has drawn attention from many sectors and is being tackled in a wide range of ways (Brintnall, 2004; Kovacs, 2002). Solutions have been viewed variously, and often simultaneously, as a matter of law (Weller, 2005), as a matter of education (Tibbetts, 2002), as one of social psychology, community organizing, and social integration (Danchin and Cole, 2002; Petrova, 2002), as a matter of new policy and institution building (Ablyatifov, 2004; Krizsán, 2004; Marinova, 2005), and as one of reform of governance (Gál, 2002). The issue is genuinely multidimensional.This paper explores what the civil service can contribute to achieving these goals, and particularly the role that education and training for public administration can play.2 It reports on a survey of public administration education and training programs in the region intended to learn how they approach this problem and what progress they are making.

Public Administration Training in Botswana: The Case of District Commissioners and District Officers

Public Administration Training in Botswana: The Case of District Commissioners and District Officers

University-Government Partnerships in Support of State Reform: Lessons from the Caribbean

This article describes a multiparty partnership seeking to support government reform efforts in the Dominican Republic through public administration education. The partnership includes two government institutions in the Dominican Republic and two public universities, Utah State University (USU) in the United States and Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD, Autonomous University of Santo Domingo) in the Dominican Republic. Seed money was obtained from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration. Subsequently, the partnership obtained a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the former Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO), now the Higher Education Development office. This article describes the necessity of public administration training in the Dominican Republic, experiences in implementing the academic component of the partnership, a master of public policy and administration program in the Dominican Republic, and the outcomes of the training. The article concludes with lessons learned that can be applied to similar projects in other settings.