Adopting a Purposeful Approach to Hybrid Working integrating notions of place,space and time

Hybrid working is a prevalent way of working, representing a significant change for public sector organisations. The change management literature brings together the notions of place and space; however, little research on hybrid working has used this framing. In this article, we extend this framing to include time, arguing that key to hybrid working effectiveness is the adoption of a purposeful approach to integrating place, space and time. This article has the potential to assist public sector human resource practitioners, managers, employees and policymakers as they navigate their way through these changing times

Beyond Control Towers, Vending Machines, Networks and Platforms towards more dynamic, living metaphors for governance

Metaphors affect how humans perceive and interact with reality, not least in governments, so our metaphors for government and governance matter. In this article, early metaphors such as government as Leviathan, machine, control tower and vending machine are shown to be limited, as are their replacements, like government as network and government as platform. Instead, the article suggests conceptualising government and governance as a ‘moral ecology’, to do justice to the complex and evolving roles of public sectors and public officials amid global turbulence and increasingly challenging domestic circumstances

A Farewell to Fragility: Critical Notice of Gillian K. Russell, Barriers to Entailment

This is a critical notice of Gillian Russell, Barriers to Entailmen

Zombie Ideas: Policy pendulum and the challenge of effective policymaking

Ideas are important as a foundation for public policy, but they can also become ‘zombie ideas’ which survive even though they have been proven to be ineffective. Both the political right and the political left have their own zombie ideas, and when there is a change in government old ideas may return. This article presents the concept of zombie ideas and discusses its relevance for policy in New Zealand

First Nations First: First Nations public servants, the future of the Australian public service workforce

This article imagines a future public service that is culturally safe and supportive of First Nations employees and end users, a place wheretransformative policy can emerge. The authors, First Nations and settler/non-indigenous academics and public servants, offer visions for change in five key areas, drawing on our academic research and public service practice

How do New Zealand Scientists perceive the benefits and limitation of Citizen Science?

Public engagement with science in New Zealand adopted a more participatory approach with the 2014 launch of the Strategic Plan for Science in Society, joining the groundswell of citizen science research seen internationally. This study interrogates the views of scientists on the benefits and limitations of citizen science (CS) before and several years after the strategy was launched. Three groups of scientists were compared: NZ marine scientists with an international group of marine scientists around the time of launch, and NZ marine scientists four years later. At initial comparison NZ and international scientists held largely similar views on the benefits and limitations of CS, with only a few exceptions. Awareness of and involvement in CS projects were significantly higher in NZ four years later. Scientists with CS experience generally perceived more benefits, such as expanded data collection, community engagement and public awareness of science. The most frequently identified limitation was quality of data. Although this perception increased in the NZ cohort, the vast majority of scientists felt limitations could be overcome by careful project design and improved infrastructure support and professional recognition. These findings guide further recommendations for high level support systems to facilitate scientists’ involvement in citizen science

Institutional Amnesia in Government: How much is enough?

The concept of institutional amnesia represents a means of describing the loss of policy-relevant knowledge across time. This loss is keenly felt in all government institutions and typically leads to a conclusion that institutional amnesia is a problem to be fixed. However, there are positives that can be associated with a lack of memory. This article explores the good and the bad of memory loss by asking ‘how much amnesia is enough?’ This question prompts a discussion of the nature of amnesia in government, where it is most keenly felt, what causes it and the effects it produces

Must Indigenous Rights Implementation Depend on Political Party? Lessons from Canada

Canada and New Zealand were two of only four countries which voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, before eventually moving to support. Since then, this declaration has influenced Canadian politics and practices, particularly the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 ‘calls to action’, legislation, and subsequent action plans on both the federal and provincial levels. Different political parties’ priorities affect the implementation of indigenous rights policies. Nonetheless, Canada demonstrates the importance of normative change, outside of legislation or formal policy change. Norms of co-development, co-design and co-drafting create opportunities for indigenous peoples to have a say in policies that affect them

Functional Labour Markets Revealed by Travel to Work Data 1991 and 2001

Regional labour market analysis is ideally based on functional rather than administrative areas. Travel-to-work data obtained from the 1991 and 2001 Census are used to define a set of functional labour markets for New Zealand. Considerable stability is found in the boundaries of the identified labour markets 1991 and 2001 although with a reduction in the number of areas from 140 to 106. The overall stability in the identified areas suggests that they provide a robust basis for regional analysis. The reduction in the number of areas is explained in part by data deficiencies associated with the 2001 Census and in some instances by changes in commuting patterns

The destruction of Sciences at Massey University and why we need an independent entity that can investigate universities

This article summarises the events that led to the dismantling of the School of Natural and Computational Sciences at Massey University, Albany campus, and the unsuccessful attempts to preserve the school in some form by staff, the public and various learned societies including the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS). Here we suggest that the reasons given by the university for the need to dismantle the school changed throughout the process. This made it difficult to identify and react to the real motivation behind the destruction of the sciences on the Albany campus. We argue that the failed attempts to save an academically successful and financially viable school expose a weakness in the current Education and Training Act and demonstrate why New Zealand (NZ) needs an independent entity that can investigate universities, guard the national interests, ensure accountability of tertiary institutions’ administration, and protect the academic freedom of individual academics