City Management Program Launched at ASU

Since October 2014, Astrakhan State University will run its retraining courses in the program “City Management (Municipal Administration)” to realize the State Plan of Training Managers for Russian Companies in the academic years 2007/08-2014/15. This is already the 7th Presidential Program to be executed at Astrakhan State University.

Dynamic development of municipalities is regarded in close relation to “the development of human capital and the social sphere, enhancement of quality and level of state and municipal services provided” in the message “Investment Climate & Investment Policy of Astrakhan Region in 2013” by Mr. Alexander Zhilkin, Governor of Astrakhan Region, to the Parliament of Astrakhan Region and to the regional executive bodies. The level of municipal administration is that very level with which the public begins to trust legal authorities in general. It implies that issues of areal development should be tackled in close cooperation with citizens. It is rather often that the local self-management is substituted with the local management, which is not so efficient. Enhanced development of any area depends on how successful the dialogue between the authorities and the population is; as the practice shows, both parties have to learn how to support such a dialogue. Realization of the program “City Management” will contribute to tackling those issues.

In late 2013, ASU confirmed its intention to participate in the contest and began to prepare its application documents. One should remark that any contest participant had to meet very tough requirements. First of all, it was crucial for any participating university to have gained experience in the field of training managers (in particular, staff of municipal authorities), to perform joint projects with state and municipal bodies in areal development, and to maintain high quality of delivering the academic material (including manuals and technical appliances to be used by discipline instructors). There were also serious requirements towards the contents of a program, which had to provide competitiveness in the development of municipalities. Application of project-oriented management in the academic process was of great value, since it is one of the most efficient management techniques.

The three-month program (120 hours) is intended not just for staff of municipalities, but also for managers of civil-society institutions, for mass media, and for private companies involved in municipality development. It aims to train managers who will have a distinct view of what a municipality development strategy is and how all the interested parties should provide a joint realization of top-priority aspects of areal development after agreeing on rules and principles of their interaction.

The program includes five modules: Block of Economy & Law, Social Block, Management & Planning in Municipal Administration, Organizational Management Block, and Project-Oriented Work (Areal Development Workshops). The academic process shall include innovative techniques that have successfully been tried at our University: lean production technologies, strategic maps development, case studies, business visits, etc. The program shall be completed with a defense of projects aimed to provide a sustainable social and economic development of a local community. It is also possible to cover a two-week practical training in Russia or abroad as a part of project preparation activities.

The Astrakhan Resource Center has already begun to select candidates: they are to take a test in marketing, in Economics, in management, and in a foreign language.

A graduate of this program is a qualified city manager. It is a professional manager hired on a competitive basis to develop infrastructure of a municipality. Such a specialist often approaches management from the view-point of a crisis manager, who is to drive this or that municipality to a particular level of sustainable development. A city manager is to tackle issues related to areal marketing, to finances, to public relations, etc. “Researches undertaken in the field of state and municipal administration reveal that even in if the level of professionalism is high, both civil and municipal servants follow the principle of authority-focused culture, while their current task is to follow the principle of service-focused culture. When they provide services for the population, they have to arrange their activities by dwelling on a client-oriented approach, on well-organized internal processes, and on the best application of available assets. Such activities should aim at the result of administration, not at its process“, Dr. Tatyana Mordasova, Chief of the Manager Training Programs Administration Center of ASU, points out.

Realization of this program will make it possible for Astrakhan State University to demonstrate its resource base to train managers of different profiles. One would say it still makes no sense to speculate how demanded the program graduates will be: our region still has no qualified city managers now.

Russian original information source: T.Yu. Gavrilkina (the Innovative Laboratory of Information Linguistics of ASU)