Professor Michael Barzelay (NAB 4.06) and others.

This is a compulsory core course for all MPA Public Policy and Management students.  It is an option on the MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA International Development/MPA European Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public and Social Policy. Also available as an option on MSc Management, Information Systems and Innovation.

The course develops the perspectives, knowledge, and intellectual skill required for rational discourse about intelligent practical action in the core public sector. In Michaelmas Term, the course focuses on the design of organizational strategies in public sector contexts. This general issue is subdivided into the design of organizational strategies for start-up, realignment, and success-sustaining transitions. In Lent Term, the course delves specifically into scholarship and teaching cases about the design and operation of practices whose logic is to perform three functions instrumental to sustained organizational achievement: strategy development, developing innovative capabilities, and delivery (encompassing both production and management control). Overall, the course provides a foundation for further coursework about management in the public sector as well as the ability to engage constructively and critically in the development of public management practice.

Students should complete two formative essays during the year.

A weekly session of three hours, during Michaelmas and Lent Terms (10 weeks each). Two revision sessions will be offered during Summer Term. Consult timetables for details.

MH Moore, Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (1995).
KE Weick, 'The Collapse of Sense-Making in Organizations: The Mann-Gulch Disaster' (1993).
C Heath and N Staudenmayer, "Coordination Neglect: How Lay Theories of Organizing Complicate Coordination in Organizations" (2000).
J Tendler and S Freedheim, 'Trust in a World of Rent-Seeking: Health and Government Transformed in Northeast Brazil' (1994).
E Bardach and R Kagan, Going by the Book (2002).
JL Mashaw, 'Conflict and Compromise among Models of Administrative Justice,' (1981).M Zollo and SG Winter, 'Deliberate Learning and the Evolutionof Dynamic Capabilities' (2002).
E Bardach, 'The Extrapolation Problem: How Can We Learn from the Experience of Others?' (2004).
D Vaughan,'Organizational Rituals of Risk and Error' (2005).
M Barber, Instruction to Deliver: Fighting to Transform Britain's Public Services (2007).

Two assessed group presentations (5% each), one in Michaelmas Term and one in Lent Term. One assessed essay of 1,500-2,000 words due in week 1 of Lent Term (worth 20%), and one assessed essay of 2,500-3,000 words due in week 3 of Summer Term (30%). Final two-hour examination held in normal exam period of Summer Term (40%).