Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG7: Public Administration Education (Physical) Author(s) Mirko Pecaric University of Ljubljana Ljubljana Slovenia / Title Learning the match between the administrative structures and tasks: follow the information File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Mirko Pecaric Abstract This paper aims to narrow the gap between the complex adaptive systems (CAS; the examples of CAS are a human and the public administration system) and their models in the public administration (PA). PAs operate in the more and more flexible and dynamic and hence complex environments for which the stable, centralised and hierarchic models of administration are not suitable. To emphasise this, some elements of CAS will be presented that are not properly addressed in the PA to be able to show that ordinary regulatory approaches are already prima facie inappropriate to cope with a complex environment. There is a need to clearly distinguish the appropriate regulatory approaches (hierarchic, professional, exchange-based and participatory) to their appropriate institutional contexts (closed, trust, market, net) and types of knowledge (encoded, embrained, embodied and embedded). This gap is narrowed based on alignments between the knowledge types, institutional forms and societal institutions that all up to a point differently address of the same information. The underlying idea is that a decision’s nature or its background – connected with different types of knowledge and institutional structures – could be better understood through a framework that integrates individual-group activities with institutional forms and the latter with societal institutions. For this aim, after the enumeration of some elements of CAS, different knowledge types and institutional structures, the framework will be presented that could serve as a starting point to use the most appropriate approach in the real-time situations. This idea is not simple, but neither is CASs. Given alignments can provide new aspects on the work environment, organizations, individuals, and decisions that are present in PA, i.e. how different types of institutions can address different administrative tasks; the knowledge on such network of interactions, can be useful for the learning, training, and development of public servants, administrative implementation and simplification. To further make this point just one "control" question is needed: How many public servants really know elements of complex adaptive systems or even elements of systems as such?
