Professionalism and Public Service: Essays in Honour of Kenneth Kernaghan (review)

This Festschrift honours the life work of Ken Kernaghan, a giant among Canadian (and international) scholars in public administration. Despite some unevenness, the 13 essays in this volume constitute a worthy tribute, reflecting both the diversity and thoughtfulness that have marked Professor Kernaghan’s contributions throughout his active career of more than 40 years.

The variety of topics on which Ken Kernaghan has written is remarkable, ranging across the fields of governance, accountability, the public service, privatization, service delivery, information technology, and perhaps most crucially, values and ethics. Distinguished colleagues offer their reflections on these topics, paying tribute to Ken’s often pioneering work and developing their own assessments of the state of debate.

Part I on “The Evolution of Traditional Institutions” is particularly strong. Peter Aucoin, for example, writes about finding a balance between the empowerment of public servants which is essential to improved management, and the pressures to concentrate control in a perhaps too-politicized centre. Paul Thomas traces recent twists and turns in our search for the holy grail of accountability, arguing for a “back-to-basics approach” and warning against the danger of “multiple accountabilities disorder.” David Good takes an intriguing look at the real world of harmonizing the political neutrality of public servants with ministerial responsibility. Especially interesting in Good’s piece is a fictional dialogue between a minister and a deputy minister that dramatizes how easily rhetoric risks succumbing to hypocrisy.

Ironically, in view of Ken Kernaghan’s leading role in developing thinking on public service values and ethics, Part II on “The Public Service” is weaker. Ian Gow seeks to distill and rank values into a coherent and practical order. His central argument that “the basic values of the public service are ‘constitutional stewardship’ or ‘regime values’ tempered with justice” is sound. However, several of his judgments along the way seem doubtful; for example, the idea that the Tait Committee’s categories of ethical and people values ought to be merged is misguided. Evert Lindquist presents an interesting commentary on the destabilizing impact of sustained change on the public service and the need for superior leadership to transform turmoil into positive change. However, the second half of his piece explores the murky area of “commitment, meaning and spirituality in public administration,” which appears only loosely connected to the first half. Jacques Bourgault and Esther Parent examine the contribution of pride and recognition programs to building professionalism in the public service. The analytical aspects of the piece present well the idea that morale is more important than qualifications; however, the results of their survey of pride and recognition programs between 2000 and 2005 are meagre.

Part III on “Service Delivery” presents several informative overviews. Sandford Borins and David Brown look at several federal and Ontario examples of e-consultation, illustrating that results so far have been modest. Jennifer Berardi draws out the lesson that if partnerships are the way of the future, the Niagara Casinos partnership with the Ontario Lotteries Corporation is a cautionary example of secrecy, uncertainty, and political posturing. Brian Marson summarizes Canada’s remarkable world leadership in citizen-centred service, involving admirable intergovernmental collaboration, clarity on the “drivers” of service satisfaction in the public sector, and most importantly, tangible improvements in such satisfaction.

Finally, Part IV on “Spreading the Word” looks at what might be called the infrastructure of the public administration field, describing the successful evolution of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada from a creaky membership association to a sustainable non-governmental organization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the apparently unbridgeable gulf between theory and practice in public administration journals, and the evolution of the case study method in the field in Canada. In each of these areas, Ken Kernaghan was far-sighted and central to moving ahead constructively.

As a recently retired associate deputy minister in the federal public service, this reviewer was struck by the lack of dialogue or even much interaction...