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Editorial Note

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorKenneth Kernaghan
DOI10.1177/0020852303069002001
Date01 June 2003
Published date01 June 2003
Subject MatterEditorial
/tmp/tmp-17bXymEcgRrvL6/input 02_IRAS69/2 articles 22/5/03 12:00 pm Page 135
Editorial note
Kenneth Kernaghan
Professor Yehezkel Dror presented the keynote speech to the biennial conference
of the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management
held in Glasgow in September 2002. The theme of the conference was ‘Creating
Self-confident Government: Reflections and New Frontiers’. Professor Dror
interpreted this theme as ‘justified’ self-confident government — ‘as feeling,
knowing and making known that one is doing a good job’. He emphasized the
need for systematic and ‘cold’ self-evaluation and warned that a good dose of
self-doubt is needed because self-confidence can repress learning and innovation
as well as encourage them. Professor Dror’s advice on how to improve ‘the
capacity to govern’ set the stage for the conference’s examination of three major
sub-themes under the heading of self-confident government, namely Organizing
Self-confident Government, Getting Service Delivery Right and People at the
Centre of Government. This issue of the IRAS includes articles dealing with each
of these sub-themes.
In the first article dealing with the theme of organizing self-confident govern-
ment, Stephen Giacchino and Andrew Kakabadse discuss successful policy
implementation as the route to building self-confident government. Their defini-
tion of ‘success factors’ includes both controllable and uncontrollable factors with
the power to influence a successful outcome. On the basis of research conducted
in Malta, the authors identify 18 factors of success involved in policy imple-
mentation. They elaborate on three factors which they note are often overlooked
in scholarly writings but which were central to success in this case — commit-
ment, location of political responsibility and the project management dynamic.
The second article, by Clare Batty and John Hilton, examines the transition
from command and control to self-confidence in government, with particular
reference to the Borough of...

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