Published Articles

Latest Articles : 2009


Skills deficit and development in the South African public sector : a training and development perspective, Journal of Public Administration : Special Issue, 44 (1) : pp 15-29 : erratum ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:28:37

In order to eradicate the legacy of the past, the South African democratic government adopted a developmental approach to local government. This necessitated a commitment on the part of local government, through the Integrated Development Plan (IDP), in facilitating community participation by finding sustainable ways of meeting their social, economic and material needs and improving their quality of life. A study of the role of community participation in the IDP process in the Govan Mbeki Mun ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:23:28

There has been a lively debate in the last few editions of the Journal of Public Administration. This article focuses on one of the key issues raised in the debate namely the influence of the Minnowbrook and Mount Grace conferences on the discipline of Public Administration. Both of these conferences were held in times of turbulence, Minnowbrook in the United States and Mount Grace in South Africa. This article examines the similarities and differences between Minnowbrook and Mount Grace. The ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:19:32

The challenge facing managers in the South African public sector is to promote a culture of continuous learning if they want their diverse employees to succeed in reaching their full potential and thereby enhance organisational effectiveness. This requires a systematic, multi-level approach to institutionalise an infrastructure for creating a learning organisation. Understanding the notion of the learning organisation provides managers and other stakeholders in the public sector with the skil ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:16:10

Two decades after the advent of a new and democratic South Africa, the exuberance that marked the dawn of a new South Africa has been replaced by growing signs of despair regarding the inability of government to provide the services that the majority of the people waited for. Whilst government has performed far much better than the pre 1994 government, poverty, poor health services, acute shortage of housing, falling education standards, etc still dog the post 1994 government. Shortage of ski ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:13:04

The South African Presidential Participation Programme (imbizo) encapsulates an active reciprocal participatory programme through which South African citizens provide feedback on policy delivery. The imbizo, in its traditional form, has constituted an important aspect of the African political system for many centuries, especially in South Africa. It is only during the presidential term of Mr. Mbeki, the former President of the Republic of South Africa, that the concept was revived to a positi ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:09:53

The amount of time required to define a certain policy proposal, as well as the policy problem itself, is logically determined by the particular issue at hand. Issues that are complex and value-laden generally have higher and more varied levels of involvement by various stakeholders. In some instances, the courts may influence policy content and processes, which sometimes renders this complex phenomenon more shapeless and fluid. The support for, or opposition to the issues involved in the pol ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:06:41

The paradigm of evidence-based policy analysis is an increasingly popular paradigm for public policy analysis. It is still in an emerging state in South Africa. Until recently, no coherent system of systematic policy monitoring and evaluation existed in the South African Public Service. This, state of affairs, however, changed in 2006. The Presidency is currently co-ordinating the implementation of a massive implementation programme known as the Government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation Syste ...

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2021-Jun-16 17:03:07

In general, researchers will agree that social science research is a systematic and organised process whereby enough knowledge (evidence) is gained to provide an accurate or truthful representation of a phenomenon under study. However, agreeing on this does not mean that they will agree on theoretical or methodological issues. In fact, there is a vast difference of opinion between qualitative and quantitative researchers as to how the social world should be studied. ...

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2021-Jun-16 16:50:58