The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) presents:
A special talk by Prof. Dan Honig on
Mission Driven Bureaucrats
Wednesday, 1st October 2023, 6 PM IST at the CPR office conference room (Dharma Marg, New Delhi) and online via Zoom.
Register to attend in person.
Register to attend on Zoom
About the talk
Prof Dan Honig will be discussing his forthcoming book Mission Driven Bureaucrats, which is about how the humans who work for the state often are or can be driven by a desire to help deliver on the things their agency does – educating children, helping sick people get better, ensuring the trains run on time. “Managing for compliance” – rules, regulations, targets – works for some kinds of tasks and people, but not others. Based on his own research and that of many others, he concludes that in some contexts, “managing for empowerment” – allowing autonomy, cultivating competence, and creating connection to peers and purpose – is more likely to lead to better organizational performance. Compliance levers are useful; but we have been pulling those levers (and more or less only those levers) for a half-century now in our attempts to improve Government. In all the many places that hasn’t worked, it’s time to try something else.
About the speaker:
Prof. Dan Honig is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at University College London’s School of Public Policy and an Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Amongst other appointments he is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development; an Associate of Harvard’s Building State Capability Program; and a Fellow of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)’ MHRC; and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Artha Global. The impact of his work has been recognized in a variety of fora, including lists of the 100 most influential academics in government and 50 most influential researchers shaping 21st century politicians.
