Introduction to Public Management

This course aims to introduce selected topics of public management research and reform discourse. It is designed to serve students who aspire to work for a public organization or to become informed citizens who can critically assess the functioning of their government organizations. The lectures cover theories and empirical research findings, as well as real-world examples, and the treatment of topics is comparative and international in scope; this approach helps students to look at their own countries from an outside perspective and to see their distinctiveness. It also helps students to see trade-offs involved in different approaches to public management, which can differ substantially at the international level. Discussions are based on cases and questions prepared by the instructor.