On Monday, 23 of November, the Public Administration subject area of the School of Social Professions organised a guest speaker event as part of the postgraduate programmes in Public Administration (MPA) and Health and Social Care Management and Policy. The initiative builds on a cross-cutting, strong public sector profile in the School of Social Professions, which has a strong legacy of organising similar events with the aim to bridge teaching, research and professional practice in the public sector.
The session discussed the need for interactive management control systems in the public sector in the context of a highly contested policy area – the safeguarding of children. Recent high-profile crises have raised doubts about the effectiveness of the conventional systems of control in place to keep public sector organisations in this area accountable.
Dr Kominis and Dr Duda, from the University of Glasgow, advanced the argument that the government is complementing their traditional diagnostic control systems with more interactive ones, principally in an attempt to more effectively manage the risk and uncertainty increasingly present in this environment. The issues of trust and control in the social care profession was lively debated by an audience comprising London Met staff, postgraduate students from the School of Social Professions and undergraduate students, eliciting praise from the two guest speakers who commended the quality and level of engagement of the students.
The evening concluded with a question and answer session moderated by MPA’s Senior Lecturer Dr Diana Stirbu, which focused on the strategic capacity of public sector partnerships to implement solid management control systems, and was followed by networking opportunities.
