Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 17th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview IV. Working Group on PA Reform in CEE&CA Author(s) Iwona Sobis Goteborg University Göteborg Sweden de Vries Michiel, Michiel S. de Vries Title Restoring professionalism: What can public administration learn from social psychology? File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Administrative reform is about changing structures, institutions and about changing the attitudes, motives and work conduct of the people working within those structures. In our previous research (Sobis & De Vries, 2004,. 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) into the process of technical assistance to governments in CEE countries in transition during the period 1990-2004 we found that the flaws that were visible were especially caused by the emergence of a new form of professionalism that became dominant in recent years. This is a kind of professionalism in which standard setting, aiming for financial gains, keeping up appearances, goal-orientation, being detached and just having a higher education are dominant instead of showing commitment and empathy, having the clients interest in mind, building expertise, seeing solutions as contingent and starting with a diagnosis of the problems. The increasing dominance of practices to change the attitudes, motives and working conduct of public officials in this direction has mainly been influenced by spread of principles of new public management [NPM]. This approach, however, has proven to have serious negative side-effects. This paper starts by describing this approach and its side-effects and continues by investigating alternative ways to change the basic assumptions, values, norms, and motives for behaviors and actual conduct of public officials. We examine whether these could be equally effective without having the negative side-effects that NPM seems to have and which do improve values and norms of effectiveness, efficiency, ethics, economy and equity. Finally, we will apply the findings to possibilities to improve public administration reform. The main objective of this paper is to search for such solutions in research conducted within the discipline of social psychology. It is in this discipline that human behavior is seen as the result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. What is to be learned from such investigations and how could this apply to organizations in the public sector? The investigation will be illustrated with findings from our previous research into the technical assistance by western advisors to the governments in CEE countries in transition.
