Purpose-Driven Public Management in a Complexity Environment

• It is an illusion to govern the complexity. Public and private managers must understand that they need to manage in a complexity environment.

• We need to change the mindset, to invest in education, to promote experiences in different types of organizations, and to activate communities of practice that can generate and share knowledge, skills, methodologies, and technics.

During the IIAS-EUROMENA 2022 Conference, the third plenary session was dedicated to the Braibant Lecture, an award granted by the International Institute of Administrative Sciences to an individual for his/her contribution to the advancement of the public governance discipline, named after Guy Braibant, IIAS Past President and Director-General.

The IIAS Scientific Committee has awarded Prof. Dr. Elio Borgonovi as Braibant lecturer 2022. Elio Borgonovi is Emeritus Professor in Public Management and Policy of SDA Bocconi, founder of the Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management (CERGAS), author of numerous publications and instrumental in the development of the academic field of public administration in Italy.

In his lecture, entitled “Purpose-Driven Public Management in a Complexity Environment”, Prof. Elio Borgonovi highlighted that the evolution from bureaucratic to governance model of public administration is currently at a turning point. “It’s time to shift from the principle of evolution of public administration to the principle of structural redefinition”, said Elio Borgonovi. He also underlined that one of the critical issues is the increasing difficulties in measurement and agreed key performance indicators (law and procedure compliance, equity, managerial (output indicators), social responsibility (outcomes) and public value creation).

Additionally, prof. Borgonovi also mentioned that the current environment is characterized by some megatrends such as dramatic development of science and technology innovation, global warming, green transition, digital transformation, circular economy, humanitarian emergencies, political instability, and new geopolitical realities. The consequence is that the present and the future society is and will be more and more characterized by velocity, volatility, variability, volume, and vulnerability. In this complex environment, a central issue for next Generation public managers and leaders is how to adapt and how to manage the change process.

In the end, Prof. Borgonovi stated that it is an illusion to govern the complexity. Public and private managers must understand that they need to manage in a complexity environment. Hence, we need to change the mindset, to invest in education at university level and lifelong learning, to promote experiences in different organizations (public and private, national and international), and to activate communities of practice that can generate and share knowledge, skills, methodologies, and technics.