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Political Science Comparative Politics

Probing the Bureaucratic Mind

About Canadian Federal Executives

by (author) Ruth Hubbard & Gilles Paquet

Publisher
Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2014
Category
Comparative Politics, General, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781927465127
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $15.95
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780776638522
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $16.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780776638539
    Publish Date
    Aug 2022
    List Price
    $15.95

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Description

This book explores the thinking of Canadian federal public service senior executives through conversations. The transformation of the environment and of the institutional order has created quite a challenge: maintaining some sort of adequacy between these evolving realities and the frames of reference in use by public sector executives. Complexity is often nothing more than a name for a new order calling for a new frame of reference, and the reluctance to abandon old conceptual frameworks is often responsible for fundamental learning disabilities.
Through a series of conversations with Canadian federal senior executives about more and more daunting problems - from coping with an evolving context, to engaging intelligently with a new modus operandi, to trying to nudge and tweak programs in order to correct toxic pathologies, to reframing perceptions and redesigning organizations to meet the new challenges—weaknesses of the capabilities of the Canadian federal executives to respond to current challenges were revealed, and suggestions made about ways to kick start a process of refurbishment of these capabilities.

About the authors

Ruth Hubbard is a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa, and a senior partner of INVENIRE. She is the author of Profession: Public servant (INVENIRE Press, 2009) and co-author of Gomery's Blinders and Canadian Federalism (University of Ottawa Press, 2007).

Ruth Hubbard's profile page

Gilles Paquet is professor emeritus at the Telfer School of Management and senior research fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. He has authored or edited over 35 books and published a large number of papers on economics, public management and governance.

Gilles Paquet's profile page

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