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Public sector management education in the developing countries of the third world is focused on with regard to the situtation in Nigeria. The efforts and potential of a particular management training institution, the Faculty of Administration at Obafemi Awolowo University, are reviewed, first by tracing the development of its management training programmes and then outlining the current courses and activities. An assessment is made of the institution′s programmes as a credible management training response to the particular problems it faces in the current African situation, and it is found that the institution may not fully appreciate the new role‐expectations built around it as detailed in The World Bank report (1987) on management training for African development. Recommendations are given for African training institutions in general: future policy cannot exclude the reality of the particular country′s economic situation; existing personnel must be encouraged to specialise; there must be flexible arrangements for teaching and consultancy; adequate resources must be available; and there must be a fundamental change in the philosophy of the training institutions.

Bidhya Bowornwathana is associate professor at the Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. His research interests are on governance and administrative reform. His writings appear in journals such as Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Public Administration and Development, Australian Journal of Public Administration, Asian Survey, Public Administration Quarterly, Public Administration: An International Quarterly, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, Asian Review of Public Administration, and Asian Journal of Political Science. He has written several books in Thai on administrative reform and public administration. He co-edited a book with John P. Burns on Civil Services Systems in Asia (Edward Elgar, 2001). He also has chapters in recent books such as in Christopher Pollitt and Colin Talbot, eds., Unbundled Government (Taylor and Francis, 2004), Ron Hodges, ed., Governance and the Public Sector (Edward Elgar, 2005), Eric E. Otenyo and Nancy S. Lind, eds., Comparative Public Administration: The Essential Readings (Elsevier, 2006), and Kuno Schedler and Isabella Proeller, eds., Cultural Aspects of Public Management Reform (Elsevier, 2007). He was Chairman of Department of Pubic Administration, Chulalongkorn University. He has served several times as member and secretary of the national administrative reform commissions appointed by Thai governments.

This article serves as an introduction to this symposium on spirituality and Dialogue. The purpose of the symposium is to explore if spirituality and dialogue have a place in public administration. A brief description of the six articles in the symposium is given. Finally, this introduction presents various complementary themes that the reader can find in the symposium as a whole. In brief, this introduction argues that the twenty-first century will be noted for its decentralization that is prompted by the information age. These phenomena will require a much higher ethical level in public administration than has existed in the past. The current approaches to bureaucracy, religiosity, modernism, and postmodernism are dysfunctional to that need. In contrast, spirituality and dialogue are functional to lifting public administration to a higher ethical plateau. A one-day discussion between members of the American Society for Public Administration and the Global Dialogue Institute held in May 1997 in Philadelphia prompted this symposium and a later symposium that will appear in this journal. The purpose of that This article serves as an introduction to this symposium on spirituality and Dialogue. The purpose of the symposium is to explore if spirituality and dialogue have a place in public administration. A brief description of the six articles in the symposium is given. Finally, this introduction presents various complementary themes that the reader can find in the symposium as a whole. In brief, this introduction argues that the twenty-first century will be noted for its decentralization that is prompted by the information age. These phenomena will require a much higher ethical level in public administration than has existed in the past. The current approaches to bureaucracy, religiosity, modernism, and postmodernism are dysfunctional to that need. In contrast, spirituality and dialogue are functional to lifting public administration to a higher ethical plateau. A one-day discussion between members of the American Society for Public Administration and the Global Dialogue Institute held in May 1997 in Philadelphia prompted this symposium and a later symposium that will appear in this journal. The purpose of that meeting was to explore the viability of spirituality and dialogue to the field of public administration. Although interrelated, this symposium primarily deals with the topic of spirituality and a subsequent symposium shall deal primarily with dialogue. Both topics have extreme importance to the development of public adminis-tration as it moves into the twenty-first century. This introduction to the symposium shall proceed by first discussing the symposium in general, then provide a quick overview of each article, and end with some concluding observations that should help the readers as they proceed with the symposium.

Explores, from an insider’s perspective, human resource’s (HR’s) critical role in establishing spirituality practice at the Guangxi Institute of Public Administration, for enhancing academics and administrative staff’ intrinsic satisfaction.

Describes the various forms of spiritual human resource management (HRM) practice that the Guangxi Institute of Public Administration applied in the workplace.

Reports that various forms of spiritual HRM practice could improve the organizational productivity through employees’ engagement; for example, increased use of initiative, helping each other, making constructive suggestions for team work, reducing individuals level of workload and conflict resolution.

Explains that HR managers could develop a highly committed and productive workplace through designing various forms of spiritual HRM practice, including connecting employees with nature by building natural featured campus and bringing in plants at workplace, encouraging employees to take exercise and/or breaks to develop their physical and spiritual wellness, celebrating important milestones and achievements, organizing informal teams to get to know each other better (hobbies, likes and dislikes), decorating office with employee-made art, acknowledging employees’ creative expression and promoting feelings of egalitarianism.

Offers interesting details of spiritual HRM practice, from an insider’s perspective, in a Chinese context.

It is a point of continuing debate whether the study of public administration can in any circumstances be graced by a disciplinary label. Rhodes (1996), for example, has argued that the study of British public administration was traditionally insular, dominated for a long period by an institutionalist tradition characterized by an interest in administrative engineering, but a distaste for theory. As Rhodes also observes, this position emphasized, albeit in a traditional sense, the political and ethical context of administration public administration existed within a wider framework of accountability relationships and political and moral responsibilities. We might add to this the way government and public administration was seen as linked within a framework of administrative law, which, while not formalized in the sense of continental Europe, was important.

This paper addresses the current “big questions” debate in public administration and proposes an appropriate placement for organization theory in the discourse of the discipline. Major scholars in organization theory are analyzed in terms of their relationship to the big questions. Public administration is discussed as a confused discipline, but a discipline nonetheless, and organization theory finds its place as the foundation for discussion and examination of public administration’s “big questions.”

This study aims to investigate the quality level of the leading three Public Administration Institutes’ (PAIs) websites in the Arab world.

A convenient sample of 203 Jordanian Government employees answered the questionnaire that assessed five quality dimensions (content, navigation, interface design, accessibility and educational purpose) for each website.

The website of PAI of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recorded a high level in all quality dimensions, whereas the website of PAI of Jordan recorded moderate quality in all dimensions except for accessibility; the website of PAI of Egypt recorded a high level in all quality dimensions except for the educational purpose. Based on the qualitative analysis, participants agreed that the PAI website has the best quality, accessibility, navigation and design compared with the Egyptian and the Jordanian PAIs websites.

Designers of PAI websites should consider end users’ needs and regularly assess the website’s usability. PAIs developers should also establish more interactive portals to provide transparent and effective electronic services to users. The findings are significant in helping policymakers better understand the importance of distance training and learning using websites and platforms.

Developing a high-quality website enhances the relationship between the government and its employees, consequently establishing the credibility and trust of citizens in public services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that measures the quality of PAI websites in the Arab world. The findings provide more cross-culture evidence for the e-government and digital literature in helping policymakers develop more technology interactive platforms.

While Norway, Sweden, and Denmark share many historic, political, and cultural features, their state systems and public administration exhibit important differences. Likewise, Nordic administrative sciences reflect a significant degree of ethnocentric diversity. Although as a whole, since the 1960s, Scandinavian academic public administration has witnessed rapid growth, an emphasis on local–regional government, and highly sophisticated scientific-empirical research, as opposed to professional training or narrow application of technical–legal methodologies.

This monograph is devoted to the countries of Eastern Europe, which are experiencing the dramatic changes following on from the fundamental developments of the last few years. These countries, Albania, Bulgaria, Czecho‐slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the USSR and Yugoslavia, are likely to become members of a greater Europe in the future. Their economic and educational systems are examined and the structures of their management training systems are described.

What were the functions of public administration within this paradigm? Because of the expanding role of the state in promoting and guiding development and because of the increasing complexity of modern economies, good public management was obviously necessary. The capabilities of the state and of its administrative organs would have to be increased, and rapidly, in order to cope with new requirements both from the productive sectors and from the “nation building” and welfare services instituted by post-colonial governments to legitimatize new regimes. This explosive expansion of the state and its heavy dependency on public administration implied the need for rationalization of government services, in effect Weberianization of the structures and procedures of the burgeoning public bureaucracies.