International Centre for Governance & Public Management

IGPM consolidates all WBS research and teaching on Governance, Public Policy, and Public Management. Over the past two decades, IGPM has established an outstanding international reputation in both academic and policy circles for its work on public management and governance, and this has given WBS one of its unique selling points and a competitive advantage over many other UK and European business schools.

The academic rationale for a distinctive stream of work on governance and public management within a business school is based upon the recognition that public and private management are alike in all unimportant respects. Governance, leadership, strategy and management in the public and voluntary sectors differs from the private sector in at least five ways.

Five key differences between the public and private sectors

Managerial decision-making in the public sector takes place in the context of a democratic political process in which primary accountability is not to shareholders but to elected political representatives.
Public management and decision-making is expected to be fully transparent and accountable to the public, and subject to continuous scrutiny by the electorate, regulatory bodies, stakeholders and the media. Public management is carried out under a continuous public gaze, unlike private management where there is a stronger boundary between the internal and the external worlds.
Public organisations have only limited choice about their products, services or markets (as these are frequently laid down by law), and cannot easily withdraw from difficult or unprofitable markets, (eg. care for offenders, or the elderly mentally infirm), or reposition themselves within new market niches.
The responsibilities of public organisations and public managers are boundary-less, in the sense that they are expected to take responsibility for everything that may happen within an area (eg. natural disasters and civil emergencies) as well as to prevent the occurrence of social problems (eg. gang crime, or alcohol and drug misuse).
Public managers are exposed not only to the risks of competitive private markets but also to the volatilities of politics and budgetary and electoral cycles.

IGPM's research, development and teaching work is based upon an exploration of these and other distinctive characteristics of governance and public management.

Our approach

We have developed an original, critical, cross-disciplinary approach to the theorisation and conceptualisation of governance and public management. Our analysis goes beyond the technical, administrative, organisational aspects of governance and public management which dominate much of the literature, and analyses them also in relation to different political, economic, ecological and social contexts, and to the changing relationships between state, market and civil society.

Public management is now more complex and variable and contested than can be captured in the rather formulaic and technical concepts of public administration - public management now takes place in much more volatile, politicised processes and contested spaces, and through a much wider range of actors, stakeholders and organisational forms, such as partnerships, hybrid organisations, social enterprises, networks and movements within civil society as well as the state and the market.

Our contribution

IGPM academics are well known for their academic research and publications on the changing relationships between state, market and civil society, including specific themes on public governance (Crouch, Davies and Rasche); public leadership and management (Benington, Currie, Grint, Hartley and Kiefer); public finance and commissioning (Allen and Tuck); citizen engagement (Tritter) and public value (Benington).

IGPM contributes to wider intellectual life and logic in WBS by researching with others the changing inter-relationships between markets, states and civil society, and by exploring the implications for leadership and management of the varied contexts of the private, public and third sectors.

The public sector is now undergoing major structural changes in its political economic and social context, and public policy makers and managers are facing fundamentally new challenges, including managing severe cuts in public expenditure. IGPM staff have contributed significantly to shaping the concepts that are helping public policy makers and managers to think critically and to make intellectual sense of this changing context, as well as gaining practical capabilities to become more effective public leaders and innovative managers. Our thought leadership in these fast changing contexts is increasingly recognised by our appointment to high level academic and government bodies, and invitations to undertake large-scale and longitudinal research.

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