3PM is a research hub for academics, doctoral researchers and professionals with an interest in public services and practice including education, health and social care, policing, fire and rescue and housing.
The way our public services are designed and delivered has changed dramatically over the last decade. From competition and marketisation to collaboration and localism. There is growing recognition that the complexities involved in tacking complex 'wicked issues' require a more collaborative forms of public leadership with community empowerment and localism and more integrated leadership driving innovation and service improvement and a focus on more major transformations ahead.
The 3PM Research Interest Group brings together academics, researchers and professionals from a wide range of backgrounds including political science, sociology, business and management, economics and law who share an interest in public administration, public policy and public leadership. Members of this group are also engaged in related research groups including the Newcastle Living Lab and Little Heresies in Public Policy seminar series.
3PM Webinar Series
3PM host a regular webinar, generally on Thursdays at 3pm. See below webinars for 2020/21. If you would like to attend or speak at an event contact Lorraine Johnston lorraine.johnston@northumbria.ac.uk
Upcoming webinars
Thursday 14th October 2021. Speaker: Dr Steven Parker, De Montfort University, Leicester "The past, present and future lives of the public service ethos"
This presentation is informed by Steven’s previous, and ongoing work, on the meaning of the public service ethos (PSE). The PSE is traditionally described as the duty and values of public sector officers working for the good of the public interest. However, it is also a term that has also been challenged by recent theories in public management and administration, including New Public Management, Public Value and New Public Governance. The presentation considers the meaning of PSE through three lenses of past, present and future, and asks: how is PSE understood historically?; what is its relationship with current public management practices? (e.g., in procurement and commissioning); and, thirdly, what is the future of PSE in traditional organisations that are becoming more project based? Lastly, the presentation considers how research on PSE might be broadened in future, by considering it as being more multifaceted.
Thursday 28th October 2021. Speaker: Sascha Haselmayer "Public Procurement as a Public Service"
What would change if we firmly made Public Procurement a Public Service? We will start by looking into what it actually is today, and how many of the characteristics of this core bureaucratic service are misunderstood. A grand misunderstanding is that procurement is not creative, when in fact it has a major influence on outcomes. We will also cover the question of whether procurement should be an expert system, run and administered by highly qualified professionals and quietly humming away out of public sight as many leading professionals would suggest. My interviews with procurement leaders and stakeholders around the world suggests that the majority would prefer procurement to take the path most other public services have taken over the past years. To focus on public outcomes, and engage the communities it serves in much the same way that we would expect children and families to be involved when we plan a community playground. The session will draw on the recent report "Serving the Citizens--Not the Bureaucracy" authored by Sascha for the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.
Speaker Biography
“Sascha Haselmayer is a social entrepreneur who trained as an architect. He has dedicated his career to helping city governments, social entrepreneurs and communities find new ways of solving urgent urban problems. He works on projects from a diversity range of cities as New York City, San Francisco, Detroit, Lagos, Barcelona, Paris, London, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Fukuoka, Melbourne, Da Nang and Moscow. Sascha has also founded a few companies and organisations and is an advisor to some of the world's leading philanthropies and NGOs. He speaks regularly at global events on themes such as transforming public procurement, government innovation, slow social change, social entrepreneurship and most importantly: how all these pieces can fit together”.
Thursday 11th November 2021. Speaker: Dr Stephen Brookes, University of Manchester (Alliance Manchester Business School). Strategic Consultant (The Healthcare Leadership Academy, Saudi Commission for Health Specialties) and Founding Editor: International Journal of Public Leadership. Seminar title: “Can public
leadership be evaluated? Exploring a Realist Perspective”. The presentation is grounded in Stephen’s practical and academic experience spanning over thirty years as a senior public leader supported by his fifteen years as an academic. He draws on his framework of six Intelligent Leadership Questions which has served him well throughout his various careers in much the same way as they served Rudyard Kipling in his 1907 rendering of the Elephants’ Child:
I keep six honest serving men
Who taught me all I knew
Their names and what and why and when
and how and where and who.
Realist evaluation (RE) asks similar questions: “What works, for whom, in what respects, to what extent, in what contexts, and how?” Stephen will share how he drew on RE at its outset in 1997, supervised in his PhD by the co-author Nick Tilley in examining police and community leadership and how RE and the six ILQs have helped in to shape his research (and his teaching/executive development) in the challenging area of evaluating public leadership. This is particularly relevant as we face a potential global post pandemic paradigm of public leadership. It is even more important to understand that contexts differ globally, that horizontal as well as vertical learning can be achieved in comparing mechanisms and that this combination has potential to deliver socially desirable outcomes.
Thursday 25th November 2021. Speaker: Professor Rob Wilson, Northumbria University. Seminar title: TBC
Thursday 2nd December 2021. Speaker: Toby Lowe, Visiting Prof of Public Management at the Centre for Public Impact (on secondment from Newcastle Business School). “The point is to change it: Reflections on seeking to purposefully create paradigm shift in public management".
How can we (academics/researchers/think tankers) purposefully create paradigm shift in public management? What is the role of research in enabling paradigm shift in public management? By reflecting on the process of creating our latest ebook: “Human Learning Systems: public service for the real world” we will reflect on the idea of using paradigm-shift as a Theory of Change, and the role of (action) research in enabling that paradigm shift.
Thursday 9th December 2021. Speaker: Professor Hannah Hesselgreaves, Northumbria University. Seminar title: TBC
Thursday 17th February 2022. Speaker: Dr Kate Broadhurst, Loughborough University. "Multi Level Governance: Resilience in times of crisis"
The presentation explores England’s intergovernmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis to determine the extent to which the UK’s adoption of multi-level governance has provided a level of resilience. The focus is primarily on the responses of institutions tasked with responding to the economic crisis with a recognition of the interlinked health and environmental crises. It draws on the findings of an empirical study that conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with a range of key stakeholders from some of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic (North East, Teesside and East Midlands) to consider whether the application of multi-level governance in and English context provides a resilient system to absorb the shocks of the pandemic.
Further 2022 speakers:
Details TBC. Professor Robert MacIntosh, Faculty Pro-Vice Chancellor, Northumbria University. Seminar title: TBC
Details TBC. Norma Redfern CBE, Elected Mayor of North Tyneside Council. Seminar title: TBC
Previous webinars
Thursday 20 Jan 2021. Speaker: Prof Alex Murdock, London South Bank University, “Public provision by the private sector: A four country comparison of emergency ambulance services using the experience of Falck A/S”
Thursday 18th Feb 2021. Speaker: Dr Ian Elliott, Northumbria University “Collective leadership in the Strategic State”
Thursday 4th March 2021. Speaker: Dr Adina Dudau, University of Glasgow, “With a little help from my friends: the positive contribution of teamwork to safety behaviour in public hospitals”
Wednesday 17 March 2021. Speakers: Professor Joyce Liddle & Professor John Shutt, Northumbria University, “Publishing in High-Quality Journals”
Thursday 6th May 2021. Speaker: Dr Alistair Bowden, Northumbria University, “Addressing the Anthropocene: grand challenges, strategy, and novel stakeholder relationships”
Thursday 13 May 2021. Speaker: Dr Ewan Speed, University of Essex, “The politics of integrated care”
Thursday 3rd June 2021. Speaker: Dr Hannah Kendrick, University of Essex & Dr Ewan Mackenzie, University of Newcastle, “Integrated care policy discourse: austerity and the shaping of the ‘waste watching’ health professional”.
