Who it’s for

This program is aimed at those who are currently managers and are considered potential candidates for senior management positions within municipal and regional organizations. We expect that you have previous management training and are therefore familiar with the terminology, methods, and principles within the field of leadership.

Purpose

The purpose is to prepare you, as a participant, for the issues you are expected to grapple with in a future senior position. You will examine organizational problems and challenges from a higher management perspective, where you will see the connections between different problem areas and take a longer-term view in your assessments. The course’s goal is to help you, as a participant, discover opportunities, not to advocate for specific solutions.

Content

The program is based on a fundamental conviction that the development and renewal needed in publicly governed professional organizations must emerge through close interaction between political ambitions on one hand and the professions’ own judgments and experiences on the other. Strategic leadership in such organizations must be able to manage this balancing act while also driving initiatives for change. The course aims to establish a fundamental perspective in which opportunities always exist, but seizing them requires examining one’s own assumptions and daring to question certain established views.

Topics covered include:

• Strategy and organization
• Leading professional organizations, the manager’s role and responsibilities
• Politically governed organizations
• Environmental scanning
• Systems thinking, resources, economy, and efficiency
• Strategy development and change

Course Director

Christian Jensen, Docent, Senior Lecturer
christian.jensen@handels.se
+46 31-786 44 88

Who it’s for

This course is aimed at those in a management position who want to develop their own, their team’s, and their organization’s creativity and capacity for innovation.

Purpose

There is a lot of talk about innovation in the public sector right now. However, it can be difficult to know how to put it into practice. The course focuses on how you lead and organize innovation in your organization. The course also aims to develop your own creative ability and give you insights into the processes that govern creativity and innovation capacity at the individual, group, and organizational levels.

Content

During the course, you will train your own “creativity muscle” and delve into current research on creativity and innovation. The course literature, which is partly in English, provides an overview of the research frontier in innovation psychology and offers you practical advice and tips, such as methods and tools for working in a more innovative and creative way – both for your own sake and in your role as a leader or organizational developer.

Themes covered from a leadership perspective are:

• The innovation process: From ideas to innovations.
• The individual: How to become more creative yourself.
• The team: Developing employees’ creativity and capacity for innovation.
• The organization’s capacity for innovation and how it can be measured.

Course Director

Leif Denti, Senior Lecturer
leif.denti@gu.se
+46 31-786 16 66

Who it’s for

This course is aimed at managers and leaders in public administration who want to gain greater knowledge of how artificial intelligence affects governance, organization, and working methods in the public sector.

Purpose

The purpose of the course is to prepare you, as a participant, for the issues, dilemmas, and opportunities that come with digital transformation. In the course, you will have the opportunity to discuss and reflect, together with fellow participants and lecturers with diverse expertise, on public sector organizations’ ability to govern digital change processes related to artificial intelligence in accordance with public values and principles.

Content

The course focuses on the intersection between public administration’s mission and fundamental values, and the processes for introducing digital technology. We will explore questions of roles and division of responsibility between the parties involved, and how the relationship between public administration and citizens is changing through AI solutions.

Examples of questions that will be addressed include:

• How are public values such as legal certainty, accountability, non-discrimination, and efficiency ensured in the introduction of new digital technology?
• What does the relationship between the private and public sectors look like in the implementation of AI solutions in the public sector?
• What are the main opportunities and challenges in introducing AI solutions in public organizations and operations?

Course Director

Vanja Carlsson, PhD, Senior Lecturer
vanja.carlsson@spa.gu.se
+46 31-786 10 97

Who it’s for

This course is aimed at managers and leaders in the public sector who are responsible for or involved in change initiatives and want to strengthen their ability to communicate and lead change processes. The course is especially suited to those working in politically governed organizations, where change occurs through the interplay between societal mandate, governance, profession, and residents. The course places particular emphasis on the central role of communication in understanding and driving change processes.

Purpose

The purpose of the course is to develop participants’ ability to understand change – before, during, and after implementation – and to strengthen understanding of how different values are expressed in the communicative processes that permeate every change effort.

Content

The course introduces change management and explains why change is initiated and how it is organized and implemented in public sector organizations. The course consistently focuses on the role of communication in change processes and examines how communication can be understood from tool-based, process-based, and critical perspectives. The starting point is the complex context of public sector organizations, where communication and change occur at the intersection of political governance, professional norms, organizational structures, and residents’ needs.

In the course, change work is viewed as a communicative process in which language and dialogue are central to leadership and understanding change processes. The course also introduces basic rhetoric and argumentation analysis as tools for understanding how change is motivated, legitimized, and questioned.

The course examines how communication can foster engagement and participation, but also how a lack of communication can lead to uncertainty and resistance. The course also addresses how resistance to change can be understood and managed. Resistance is viewed not only as an obstacle but also as a potential source of learning and dialogue. Participants are given tools to analyze different forms of resistance and develop professional and constructive strategies for addressing them.

Course Director

Oskar Svärd, PhD
oskar.svard@spa.gu.se
+46 31-786 44 85

Who it’s for

This course is aimed at those who have already completed courses included in the Bachelor’s/Master’s program in Leadership in Public Sector Organizations (LiOV). At the information meeting, the requirements for a thesis at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, respectively, will be presented.

Purpose

The purpose is for you to independently conduct a major scholarly investigation and link a theoretical framework to the problem under investigation. You will present your findings and argue for their validity. You will also analyze and discuss other researchers’ findings. An important degree objective is to strengthen your “information literacy,” i.e., the ability to search for, evaluate, and use information. This includes the critical review and use of sources, as well as the ability to keep up with developments in the field.

Content

You will analyze, formulate, and solve a larger, complex problem. The thesis should be characterized by a scholarly approach. You choose the subject matter within the field of public sector organizations yourself. The thesis is an academic examination, but the work is also a qualified investigative undertaking. It is an advantage if you write about a question relevant to the organization in which you work, and it is important to anchor the thesis writing in your own home organization.

The course begins with an introductory meeting. You will be assigned a supervisor for your thesis. This is followed by a series of seminars that will guide you through the work.

Some examples of seminar content:

• Designing a study methodology.
• Different ways of gathering information.
• From thought to text.
• Combining different parts into a whole.

Course Director

Petra Adolfsson, Docent, Senior Lecturer
petra.adolfsson@gu.se
+46 31-786 56 16