Abstract
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1.Introduction
The paper summarises a research work as part of a PHD thesis. It publishes the outcomes of a survey among Polish and Russian public servants and managers 1) on the use of training to facilitate administrative reform during a reform process, and 2) on if personal development and organisational learning has improved in reformed institutions.
The survey in Poland and Russia started in November 2007, and is going to be finalised by December 2008.
The PHD thesis is about administrative reform, and how employees need to be trained to adequately prepare them to adopt a new organisational paradigm. Administrative reform is nowadays mostly connected with a paradigm called 'New Public Management': Public institutions shall no longer work as bureacracy, but as managed public organisation, functioning as public 'firm' (Lane, 2000, Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004,
Barzelay 2001). The state sector shall work with internal markets, regulating goods allocation via contracts
(Lane, 2000).
If this be the outlook casted by academic theory, implementing these visions in practise seems the true challenge. Processes of institutions need to be newly structured, changing the focus from rule-orientation to producing and offering services for the citizen as customer (Lane, 2000). Much conceptual work is still needed to adopt a theory related 'new public management' inside public institutions.
What does these changes mean for public institutions' workforce? Theory predicts with the job-man fit model
(Conradi, 1983) enormous gaps of the skills within public workforce. A mainly rule-applicating (Elsner) public
servant is not automatically also skilled in allocating, selling or buying resources.
1. But, how are these training needs adressed in administrative practise?
2. And, how are these correlations between reform changes and preparing workforce investigated and
supported by research and theory?
3. Moreover, how does this situation look like in countries that are not in the center of the 'New Public
Management' movement, Republic of Poland and Russian Federation?
As for question 1 and 3, an empirical study will be carried out to investigate the use of training before, during
and after reforms.
For 2, a desk research will describe how this field has been investigated in theory and by empirical studies.
Moreover, the findings will help and enable to formulate success factors for training workforce adequately in
the context of administrative reforms.
The work offers a feedback if reforms have more results and impacts, whenever they adopt training
theories to equip their workforce for new tasks. Or, for the contrary scenario, must reform campaigns fail if
they do not prepare their workforce through organisation of training and learning. The work finds out if
applying training theories makes a difference in reform practise of organisations.
This topic also has an implication for the new public management theory: We see if public organisations
show differences in developing personnel, or if the paradigm of private management for human resources
management is equally and fully applicable. This is what the 'new public management' theory postulates and
assumes, however it might not be true for all disciplines of management or organisation.
We hereby also understand for which type of reform (introduction of quality management system, egovernment
etc.) training campaigns are more or less important.
Moreover, data on reform practise become available for Russian and Polish administration through an
independent study. The empirical data provides a knowledge basis and reference, that reform campaigns
can draw upon for training design.
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