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The Public Servant of the Future: Section Introduction

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The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant

Abstract

Imagine being a public servant in today’s complex and dynamic environment. Unpredictable and ambiguous global events like Brexit, the US-China trade war, and the assertive rise of non-Western powers are changing your international operating environment. At home, ever more assertive stakeholders scrutinize your performance impatiently and sometimes unrealistically, demanding public agencies to deliver value for money while wanting to be involved in policymaking without sharing accountability burdens. Increasingly, public servants operate in a VUCA world, characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, as the popular managerial acronym goes. The VUCA world offers many challenges but at the same time exciting opportunities for achieving unprecedented levels of public service excellence, together with citizens and vanguards of change from other sectors. This chapter outlines key trends and developments in the operating environment of public agencies and how they affect role conceptions of public servants. It concludes by discussing a number of traditional as well as new competencies and values important to public servants in the years to come, and five key qualities of the future public servant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Zeger van der Wal

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  1. Zeger van der Wal
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Correspondence to Zeger van der Wal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Acton, ACT, Australia

    Helen Sullivan

  2. UNSW Australia, Campbell, ACT, Australia

    Helen Dickinson

  3. College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Hayley Henderson

Section Editor information

  1. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Zeger van der Wal

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van der Wal, Z. (2020). The Public Servant of the Future: Section Introduction. In: Sullivan, H., Dickinson, H., Henderson, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03008-7_112-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03008-7_112-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03008-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03008-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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