Theories and Research Methods for Public Administrations

As part of the interdisciplinary training of Public Policies and Administration Post graduate Course, this course aims to provide a set of analytical, theoretical and methodological skills. A sort of "toolbox" useful for the analysis of Public administrations understood as complex organisations aimed at the production of public policies and public goods. These skills will be provided on the basis of a theoretical approach grounded in organisational theory, appropriately related to the experience of public administrative systems in the main Western countries (USA, Germany, France, UK, Italy). And they will be integrated by methodological aspects inherent to the empirical study of Public administrations as complex organisations.

a) Knowledge and Understanding: at the end of the course, the student will have got a set of analytical skills, both theoretical and methodological, related to decision making and the realisation of analysis and research aimed at the institutional design of public policies within public administrations. In a theoretical perspective, these skills will be part of an ideal toolkit for interpreting the functioning, for diagnosing the main dysfunctions, as well as for acting possibile interventions aimed at improving the performance.

b) Applying Knowledge and Learning Skills: those skills should allow the student to autonomously proceed with the organizational analysis of sector, offices and activities of the Public Administration, as well as the design of analyzes or research/intervention actions aimed at improving their organizational and policy performance.

c) Communication Skills: the student should learn to design, organize, carry out analyzes and research/intervention actions for the Public Administration, in many and different sectors and offices, as well as to communicate the results of those activities to interlocutors of various kinds, specialists and non-specialists ones.