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Biography
I have been conducting research and teaching in public management for 30 years at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), following 10 years at Harvard's Kennedy School. Some of my best known work are books, including Breaking Through Bureaucracy: A New Vision for Managing in Government (1992), The New Public Management: Improving Research and Policy Dialogue (2001), and Preparing for the Future: Strategic Planning in the U.S. Air Force (2003).
My main interest in the last 15 years has been to develop a conception of public management as an academic discipline centered on two kinds of endeavors: implementing public programs and managing public organizations. Tied to this aim has been the development of a research practice called design recovery in cases, the implementation of which allows for bringing Lucidity, Intelligence, and Fertility (LIFe) to domain knowledge about the kinds of endeavors central to public management as an academic discipline. A milestone in this effort was the open access book, Public Management as a Design-Oriented Professional Discipline (Edward Elgar, 2019). This effort has been taken further in a collaborative volume due out from Edward Elgar in 2025, Public Management: Recovering Designs through Case Study Research.
My service to LSE has included being Head of Department of Management during 2013-15. My service to the academy has included serving as Co-Editor of Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions. I have been co-editor of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance and an associate editor of International Public Management Journal.