For the past 20 years, the New Public Management (NPM) has been the dominant paradigm in public administration theory and practice. Given its affinity with markets and private sector management, NPM is arguably as much a casualty of the global economic crisis as are the markets and market mechanisms which underpin it. In this context, this article explores the impact of the crisis on the current and future development of public administration practice. Starting from some stocktaking analyses written immediately prior to the downturn, four possible scenarios are suggested for public management practice in the UK and elsewhere.

Prior to the EU resignation crisis (the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999), it had long been argued that the European Commission was suffering from managerial ‘overload’. The incoming Prodi Commission embarked on a programme of administrative and managerial reform under the leadership of Commission Vice President, Neil Kinnock. Central to this programme were the objectives of improving managerial capacities and bolstering legitimacy in order that the Commission would be better able to discharge its expanded responsibilities. Using the model of governmental overload developed in the 1970s and 1980s, this article quantifies the impact of the reforms and argues that the overload problem has been aggravated rather than diminished. In this context, the rationale of the reform project is explored with reference to theories of public policy decision making.

This paper shares the reflections of a group of 5 academics who started supervising practice-based doctoral students at a similar time in the same institution. The supervisors engaged in a collaborative research process themselves exploring their supervision practices, due in part to the relatively limited literature available in the field, and in part as a support mechanism to help them understand what they were doing. As the first students have now completed, the learning from taking students through the cycle from start to finish for the first time is also now complete in itself. While the supervisors continue to learn both from and within the supervision process itself, that initial experience of supervising doctoral students is now complete and the supervisors within their own institutions are now considered 'experienced'. This paper offers insight into the doctoral development process from the supervisor's perspective, and offers reflections on the supervision process itself, as well as insight into the difficulties that can be encountered when researching your own practice.

This article is based on findings from the evaluation of a project established to enhance learning and teaching in higher education. This project took place within the University of Hertfordshire School of Education in England through the Change Academy for Blended Learning Enhancement (CABLE) project, the University version of the UK Higher Education Academy and Joint Information Systems Committee Pathfinder programme. The purpose of the project within the School was to increase the support for students' reading at Master's degree level. The evaluation approach for the project was based on RUFDATA, which provides a framework for evaluation activity. Stakeholders' reflections on the process and outcomes of the project included the contribution it had made to teaching and learning, and the opportunities it had provided for personal and professional learning and development. The CABLE project is one example of the many funded projects that are a common feature in higher education settings; all potentially of value for individual, team and organisational learning. In this article, the findings from the evaluation are used to suggest some questions that might be asked in future projects to prospectively and proactively identify opportunities for individual professional learning and development.

Using comparative analytical frameworks developed to explain the incidence, intensity and success or otherwise of managerial reforms in government, this article is a case study of the effects of the Kinnock management reforms in the European Commission. It draws on international experience to identify and evaluate critical success factors, situates the Commission reforms within this comparative international context and then focuses on the reforms and their implementation. Using Commission documentation and other sources including interview material, the article charts the progress of implementation against critical success factors and structural conduciveness, identifying both the unintended outcomes likely to result and the overall likelihood of success.