The first chair in public management was established at BI Norwegian Business School in 1983 as BI was quick to identify the development trends in public management. In the early 1990s BI started to experiment with master programmes in Public Management.
When the Master of Management degree was established in 1995, it quickly became apparent that around one-third of those participating in these programmes came from the public sector.
Public Governance Institute (Institutt for offentlige styringsformer)
Many of the participants expressed their desire for BI to develop programmes, based on the specific conditions which apply in a public sector exposed to strong change mechanisms. In 1999, BI’s experts in public governance and management gathered together to establish the Public Governance Institute (Institutt for offentlige styringsformer).
BI Public Management (BI Offentlig ledelse)
The next natural step was to establish BI Public Management (Offentlig ledelse), which took place in autumn 2001. The body coordinates the development, marketing and provision of BI’s programmes targeted specifically at the public sector.
New master programmes - strategic restructuring
We have now acquired considerable experience as a result of a number of in-house programmes run for organisations, including the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, Oslo city council and a number of hospital organisations.
All this experience combined with research-based knowledge from the Public Governance Institute has meant that BI Norwegian Business School can now launch this coming autumn four open master programmes which will deal with issues linked to strategic restructuring in and around the public sector.
Sector-specific
The first of these programmes is aimed at the management of public administration in general and provides a general introduction to what the concept “governance” means. The other three programmes are sector-specific and are aimed at management in hospitals, schools and institutions in the health and social welfare sector.
