Programme overview
Public sector reform presents a challenge for central government if it is to become responsive to the changing demands on public services. It involves not just structural change but also a real cultural shift in behaviour among all public servants.
The top-down policy regime can no longer operate effectively in isolation from other players. There are a chain of players involved in policy implementation, and responsiveness to citizens requires an awareness of the whole system and collaborative working from all involved. The traditional silos and demarcations within government and between government and regional services, presents a challenge for government.
The MSc in Leading Public Service Change and Organisational Development is jointly delivered by the University of Birmingham and the Tavistock Institute|.
It aims to enable participants to both learn about the theory of developing organisations and apply that learning to their workplaces. With the modernisation process at its heart, participants will explore a range of topics including diagnosis, strategising, collaboration and review within the context of a complex wider system and political environment.
Programme Design
This programme is designed and delivered by the University of Birmingham and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (Tavistock Institute).
Live Organisational Case
Comprises an organisational change intervention that you are required to identify, negotiate and implement within your work place during the course of the programme.
The live case provides the continuity and link between your workplace, the five taught modules and the Inquiry and Application Groups (module six), and is the focus of assignments.
Two Programme Symposia
Located at the beginning and at the end of the programme, these are designed as opportunities to set the context for the programme, provide opportunities to hear and interact with international academics and leaders in public service change and for your workplace sponsors to attend, learn about and participate in, programme leaning.
Five Three-Day Modules
1. Context and Organisational Analysis:
Examines the challenges of implementing public policy into local organisations where the relationship between intervention and outcome is uncertain, meanings of policy are contested, the aspirations of the members diverse and the environmental context complex. This module enables you to develop an analysis that results in identifying the changes which need to take place within and between organisations.
2. Change and Agency:
Develops your understanding of taking up a change agent role, and your competence in engaging and working with the challenges and dynamics that emerge and which need to be addressed.
3. Whole Systems:
Explores theories and practices for whole systems interventions. The module focuses on large-scale organisational developments and changes, which may anticipate or be reactions to perceived challenges in the near or far environment. Leaders, managers, consultants and other agents of change need to distinguish between the focus of change (what is to be changed) and how change will happen (intervention design).
4. Designing Organisational Change Interventions:
Combines information about organisational development and change interventions, with practice on designing intervention approaches. By linking developmental evaluation of public sector change to these topics, you are also provided with a model for reflecting on your own emerging preferred approaches and biases to change.
5. Leading Change:
Examines the relationship between leadership, organisational development and implementation of public policy, with a particular emphasis on the concept of leadership as performance.
Inquiry and Application
This six-day module takes an experiential approach to understanding individual and group development. Experimenting, being reflective and learning from experiences of leading and consulting to change, group members will draw on here and now data and address issues within live cases, in order to learn how to design and implement interventions for change, using resources from programme modules and existing repertoires.
Learning Journal
Offers a (non-assessed) method for documenting a critical reflective analysis of professional learning and development, and experiences of organisational learning and development during the programme.
Organisational Based Learning
Other organisational and inter-organisational experiences are planned as part of programme activity, including an organisational observation within a different part of the public sector, a narrative 360º feedback in your workplace and a whole system evaluation of the programme experience.
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For further information: contact Tracey Gray at T.Gray@bham.ac.uk|