Overview
In this unit, you will be equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to identify and analyse practical issues in the complex environment of public administration. This unit introduces you to the core principles and functions of public administration and the complex global setting within which public administration operates. You will develop a critical understanding of the different levels of government and their respective jurisdictions and responsibilities and the challenges of managing between these levels. You will also consider public sector reforms (both in Australia and internationally), and use relevant theories to evaluate their implementation. This includes developing your understanding of the shift from the provision of services by public authorities to mechanisms such as collaboration and competition, public-private partnership, and contracting the private and not for profit sectors to deliver services on behalf of the government.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
There are no requisites for this unit.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 1 - 2020
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Class Timetable
Assessment Overview
Assessment Grading
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of 'pass' in order to pass the unit. If any 'pass/fail' tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully ('pass' grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the 'assessment task' section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%). Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades.
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - Domestic Students
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - International Students
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Student Feedback - Compliments and Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
- Identify, analyse, and apply the knowledge, skills and abilities required by public sector managers
- Examine the functions and operations of public administration organisations
- Assess the rationale and effectiveness of public sector reforms
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge and skills required to effectively manage across the public, private and not for profit sectors.
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Research Assignment - 40% | ||||
| 2 - Research Assignment - 40% | ||||
| 3 - Presentation - 20% | ||||
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | ||||
| 2 - Communication | ||||
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | ||||
| 4 - Research | ||||
| 5 - Self-management | ||||
| 6 - Ethical and Professional Responsibility | ||||
| 7 - Leadership | ||||
| 8 - First Nations Knowledges | ||||
| 9 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | ||||
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Graduate Attributes
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | |
| 1 - Research Assignment - 40% | |||||||||
| 2 - Research Assignment - 40% | |||||||||
| 3 - Presentation - 20% | |||||||||
Textbooks
There are no required textbooks.
Additional Textbook Information
The selected articles and cases will be posted for each week's topics.
Lecture notes will be prepared using the prescribed readings.
IT Resources
- CQUniversity Student Email
- Internet
- Unit Website (Moodle)
No referencing style set.
q.alam@cqu.edu.au
Week 1: Public Administration in the 21st Century
Begin Date: 09 Mar 2020Module/Topic
Explaining Public Administration - Unit overview and
Introduction
Chapter
Selecting weekly readings and resources: where to go, what
to look for, and introducing our own discoveries and reflections.
United Nations, Economic and Social Council. 2006.
Definition of basic concepts and terminologies in governance and public
administration. UNPAN022332. New York.
Frederickson, H. G.,
Smith, K. B., Larimer, C. W., & Licari, M. J. 2012. The Public Administration
Theory Primer. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [Access
available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/34073851/Frederickson__
The_Public_Administration_Theory_Primer.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DFrederickson_The_Public_Administration_
T.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20190616%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190616T005952Z&X-Amz-
Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=54b9143a00b117d2513fdca006d32ce173e476f5e995d
0c19395d68dcd623e2a
Events and Submissions/Topic
Students will have a clear understanding of the structure
and expectations of the unit, teaching methods, discussion sessions, learning
materials, and assignments.
Students will understand the role of public administration
in government, the basic concepts that inform it, including diversity of
approaches, how it differs from other forms of administration and how it builds
on acceptance of core principles and functions that are also subject to review
and change.
Students will get a better understanding how the currents
in public administration are subject to constant movement, even fashion, and
they will be able to identify the main directions of public administration
reform. A theme throughout the unit will be the importance of understanding and
acknowledging historical context together with socio-political context.
Using the UN
Secretariat Note as a starting point, students will be equipped with broadly
agreed key definitions.
Week 2
Begin Date: 16 Mar 2020Module/Topic
Shifts in paradigms of public administration in a globalizing environment
Chapter
Adelman, I. 1999. The role of government in economic
development. Working Paper No.890, California Agricultural Experiment Station,
Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
Christensen, T., & Lægreid, P. 2011. Post-NPM reforms: The whole of Government approaches as a new trend. New Steering Concepts in Public Management 21: 11-24.
Events and Submissions/Topic
What are, and have been, significant currents in public administration?
How do they respond to context and tradition? Students will come to understand
the shifts in the rationale for government involvement in development and
especially how these impacted on the developing world.
Week 3
Begin Date: 23 Mar 2020Module/Topic
State and public administration
The levels (tiers) of government: national, state /
provincial, local
Chapter
Kraak, A. 2011. Horizontal coordination, government
performance and national planning: The possibilities and limits of the South
African State. Politikon 38(3):
343-365
Samaratunge, R., O’Neill, D., Coghill, K., &
Wijayarathne, B. 2017. Building horizontal coordination in Sri Lanka. Public Administration and Development
37: 319-330.
Egeberg, M., & Trondal, J. 2016. Why strong
coordination at one level of government is incompatible with strong
coordination across levels (and how to live with it): The case of the European
Union. Public Administration 94(3):
579-592.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Through review of case readings and discussion perspectives
on the challenges of coordination, students will develop an understanding about
the contestability of views on it and the challenges that remain.
Students will
understand jurisdictional choices and the implications for administration: the
challenge of coordination – top-down, bottom-up, horizontal, other, and how
these are arrived.
Week 4
Begin Date: 30 Mar 2020Module/Topic
Public sector reform: from traditional through to New
Public Management and beyond
Chapter
Denhardt, J.V., & Denhardt, R.B. 2015. The New Public
Service revisited. Public Administration
Review 75(5): 664-672.
Manning, N. 2001. The legacy of the New Public Management
in developing countries. International
Review of Administrative Sciences 67: 297-312.
Samaratunge, R., & Wijewardena, N. 2009. The changing
nature of public values in developing countries. International Journal of Public Administration 32: 313-327.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Through the readings, discussion and reflection this week students will
understand the significance of the New Public Management direction and the
reforms it promoted – and even imposed – but also foreseeable (but often
ignored) consequences.
Week 5
Begin Date: 06 Apr 2020Module/Topic
Competitive models of administration and service delivery
Chapter
Banks, G. 2012. Competition Policy’s regulatory
innovations: quo vadis? Productivity
Commission, Australian Government, Canberra.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Using the extensive, but not always successful, National Competition
Policy in Australia as a baseline case, students will appreciate the likely
limits to competition as the preferred mechanism for service delivery in the
public sector.
Individual written assignment 1 Due: Week 5 Monday (6 Apr 2020) 11:55 pm AEST
Vacation Week
Begin Date: 13 Apr 2020Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Week 6
Begin Date: 20 Apr 2020Module/Topic
Collaborative models of administration and service delivery
Chapter
Alford, J., & Hughes, O. 2008. Public value pragmatism
as the next phase of public management. The
American Review of Public Administration 38(2): 130-148.
Entwhistle, T., & Martin, S. 2005. From competition to
collaboration in public service delivery: A new agenda for research. Public Administration 83(1): 233-242.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Using the Alford-Hughes reading as a springboard, students will be
encouraged to consider the virtues of ‘agility’ in approaches to public
administration, in place of the more doctrinaire approaches of New Public
Management or, earlier, hierarchical systems that became historically embedded.
Week 7
Begin Date: 27 Apr 2020Module/Topic
Public-private partnerships: do they work and if so how, and what do they
mean for public administration?
Chapter
Hodge, G. A., & Greve, C. 2007. Public-Private
Partnerships: An international performance review. Public Administration Review May-June: 545-558.
Sarmento, J. M. 2010. Do public-private partnerships create
value for money for the public sector? The Portuguese experience. OECD Journal on Budgeting 2010/1:
93-119.
Australian Government, Infrastructure Australia website, https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/policy-publications/public-private-partnerships/
Events and Submissions/Topic
In this, and the following two sessions, students will gain
understanding of the differing challenges for public administration in three
government areas of contracting out service delivery: public-private
partnerships (PPPs), the private sector, and the not-for-profit sector. None of
these indeed remove the role of public administration, but they do subtly and
not-so-subtly change it.
In some quarters the
benefits of PPPs are treated as obvious, but they may also be accompanied by
‘commercial-in-confidence’ claims by partners (and government), which means
that transparency of any kind is difficult to gain.
Week 8
Begin Date: 04 May 2020Module/Topic
Contracting to the private sector
Chapter
Friedman, M. 1970. The social
responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The New York Times
Magazine 13 September.
Verspaandonk, R. 2001.
Outsourcing – for and against. Current Issues Brief 18, 2000-01. Parliamentary
Library, Canberra.
Cohen, S., & Eimicke, W.
2010. Contracting out. What is contracting and why is it growing?
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8154S94/download
1. Mulgan,
R. 1997. Contracting out and accountability. Discussion Paper 51. Public Policy
Discussion Papers, Australian National University, Canberra.
Events and Submissions/Topic
In deciding to contract key services previously delivered by government
to the private sector, motivations and underlying approaches to delivery need
to be considered. Friedman’s brief article, famous for its clarity and polemic,
highlights at least some of the challenges that ‘contracting out’ involves.
Students will gain a more nuanced understanding of what is to be considered –
not to reject, perhaps, but to see more clearly the price and consequences.
Week 9
Begin Date: 11 May 2020Module/Topic
Contracting to the not-for-profit sector
Chapter
Ohlin, J. 1997-98. Will privatisation and contracting out
deliver community services? Research Paper 15, Parliamentary Library, Canberra.
Butcher, J. R. 2017. Not-for-profits must adapt as one arm
of government’s ‘three-sector solutions’. The
Conversation, 24 March.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Week 10
Begin Date: 18 May 2020Module/Topic
Accountability in administration and accountability to citizens
Chapter
Schillemans, T. 2008. Accountability in the shadow of hierarchy:
The horizontal accountability of agencies. Public
Organization Review 8: 175-194.
Haque, M. S. 1997. Local governance in developing nations:
Reexamining the question of accountability. Regional
Development Dialogue 18(2): iii-xxiii.
https://crawford.anu.edu.au/pdf/staff/janine_oflynn/OFLYNN%202006%20
EFMD%20Public%20Value.pdf
Events and Submissions/Topic
Considering Haque’s paper, and its date, we might ask how far we have
moved in accountability.
Week 11
Begin Date: 25 May 2020Module/Topic
Government, Governance and Administration
Chapter
Stoker, G. 2006. Public value management: A new narrative
for networked governance? American Review
of Public Administration 36(1): 41-57.
De Graaf, G., Huberts, L., & Smulders, R. 2016. Coping with public value conflicts. Administration & Society 48(9): 1101-1127.
Events and Submissions/Topic
Week 12
Begin Date: 01 Jun 2020Module/Topic
Presentations and Reflection
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Students will present their project-cases as the third assessment
component.
Group presentation Due: Week 12 Monday (1 June 2020) 5:00 pm AEST
Review/Exam Week
Begin Date: 08 Jun 2020Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Exam Week
Begin Date: 15 Jun 2020Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
1 Research Assignment
What have been the principal rationales for trends in public sector reforms? How effective do you think those reforms have been?
Task description
In your view, what have been the principal rationales for trends in public sector reforms? How effective do you think those reforms have been? You may select cases with which you are familiar, and choose any jurisdiction where there has been a program of public sector reform, and over any time period.
You can select some reform initiatives and critically discuss to argue your points of view.
Week 5 Monday (6 Apr 2020) 11:55 pm AEST
Week 6 Monday (20 Apr 2020)
Understanding of public administration theories and concepts
Ability to analyse the factors that influence the public sector reforms.
Critical analysis of the impacts of selected reforms on public sector management practices
Develop your arguments with evidence
You are required to provide a good structure and sequential analysis.
You are required to use minimum16 references (Journal articles, books, government reports etc.
- Identify, analyse, and apply the knowledge, skills and abilities required by public sector managers
- Examine the functions and operations of public administration organisations
- Knowledge
- Communication
- Cognitive, technical and creative skills
- Research
2 Research Assignment
Topic: From your reading and/or experience, what knowledge, skills and abilities do you believe are required by public sector managers? Justify your selection, using illustrative cases of functions and operations, and also justify the priority order you do (or do not) wish to assign to these.
Task description
In the context of shifts in paradigm, what knowledge, skills, and abilities do you believe are required by public sector managers to be an effective public administrator?
Justify your selection, using illustrative cases of functions and operations,
Justify the priority order you do (or do not) wish to assign to these.
You are required to do conduct online research to collect information from published government documents, consultancy reports, journal articles, and books.
.
Week 9 Monday (11 May 2020) 11:55 pm AEST
Week 10 Monday (18 May 2020)
Understanding of various paradigms and the reasons for shifts.
Ability to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities public managers are required to be an effective public administrator.
Use of relevant illustrative cases
Analyse functions and operations of modern public administration systems,
Conduct online research to collect information from published government documents, consultancy reports, journal articles, and books.
Develop your arguments with evidence
Provide a good structure and sequential analysis.
You are required to use minimum16 references (Journal articles, books, government reports, etc.
- Assess the rationale and effectiveness of public sector reforms
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge and skills required to effectively manage across the public, private and not for profit sectors.
- Knowledge
- Cognitive, technical and creative skills
- Research
- Ethical and Professional Responsibility
3 Presentation
Task description
Assignment 3
requires you to do a group presentation at the class in
Week 12.
For this the assignment you will present your case orally, using notes or a script (if you
wish), with the option of any aids, charts or PowerPoint presentation you also
wish to use. The presentation should take no longer than 15 minutes.
Topic:
Selecting an area or case that is part of public administration, present a case
for managing that area effectively in either the public or not for profit
sector, drawing on your learning in the unit.
Week 12 Monday (1 June 2020) 5:00 pm AEST
Exam Week Monday (15 June 2020)
You are required to make a 20-minute presentation.
Well structured
Arguments with evidence
Use of public administration theories and concepts in analysing issues.
Reflection on your ability to prepare a research-based presentation.
- Identify, analyse, and apply the knowledge, skills and abilities required by public sector managers
- Demonstrate advanced knowledge and skills required to effectively manage across the public, private and not for profit sectors.
- Knowledge
- Communication
- Self-management
- Leadership
As a CQUniversity student you are expected to act honestly in all aspects of your academic work.
Any assessable work undertaken or submitted for review or assessment must be your own work. Assessable work is any type of work you do to meet the assessment requirements in the unit, including draft work submitted for review and feedback and final work to be assessed.
When you use the ideas, words or data of others in your assessment, you must thoroughly and clearly acknowledge the source of this information by using the correct referencing style for your unit. Using others’ work without proper acknowledgement may be considered a form of intellectual dishonesty.
Participating honestly, respectfully, responsibly, and fairly in your university study ensures the CQUniversity qualification you earn will be valued as a true indication of your individual academic achievement and will continue to receive the respect and recognition it deserves.
As a student, you are responsible for reading and following CQUniversity’s policies, including the Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure. This policy sets out CQUniversity’s expectations of you to act with integrity, examples of academic integrity breaches to avoid, the processes used to address alleged breaches of academic integrity, and potential penalties.
What is a breach of academic integrity?
A breach of academic integrity includes but is not limited to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, cheating, contract cheating, and academic misconduct. The Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure defines what these terms mean and gives examples.
Why is academic integrity important?
A breach of academic integrity may result in one or more penalties, including suspension or even expulsion from the University. It can also have negative implications for student visas and future enrolment at CQUniversity or elsewhere. Students who engage in contract cheating also risk being blackmailed by contract cheating services.
Where can I get assistance?
For academic advice and guidance, the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) can support you in becoming confident in completing assessments with integrity and of high standard.
What can you do to act with integrity?
