Proceedings from the Fifth NISPAcee Annual Conference held in Tallinn, Estonia, April 23-26, 1997

The Conference was structured around four thematic workshops:

- Attitudes of Public Servants and Citizens;
- Corruption and Ethics in Public Service;
- Productivity and Quality in the Public Service;
- The role of Technical Assistance in the Development of Training in Countries in Transition

Strategies, tactics and methods to improve professionalization of public servants were open for discussion and emphasis was given to empirical contributions. The fifth NISPAcee conference had set the objective of identifying possible roles for schools and institutes of public administration to promote professionalization of public servants. Possible roles include training, information sharing, consultancy, research, preparation of self and distance learning packages, as well as more subtle functions, such as socialization and maintaining continuity. Consideration of these roles leads to an exploration of how East and West should cooperate in helping “professional” public services. Papers which were selected for publication revolve around these objectives. Some of the workshop conclusions can be construed as research agendas and the interest in the subject matter will be addressed in upcoming NISPAcee conferences.