Master of Public Management in Development Management

Purpose

The purpose of the qualification is to produce public managers who are competent and generalists that can produce competent researchers, analysts and public practitioners. The aim is to equip candidates with skills to perform a variety of specialists tasks that produce public managers who can complete with their international counterparts. The aim is to also produce people with training and development skills that produce future municipal officials and political office-bearers.

Rationale

This qualification prepares learners who aspire to move to the highest level of academic work for doctoral study and to promote an approach based on academic integrity and professional ethics and attitude in a specific field of development management to utilise the opportunities for continued personal intellectual growth gainful economic activity and rewarding contributions to society. It also capacitates learners who are public official to perform optimally in their working place. Provide South Africa with significant numbers of highly trained learners of Development Management to ensure the broadening of the local leadership base of innovative and knowledge based scholarly activity. Finally, it stimulates and prepares learners for further advanced study by the provision of required knowledge, skills and insight to develop as public administrators and researchers on the highest academic levels and to provide South Africa with administrators who will have a clear and continuously growing understanding of the methods and progress needed in the public sector.

Entry Requirements

The minimum entry requirement for this qualification is the

• Bachelor of Administration Honours in Public Management National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 8.
• Postgraduate Diploma in Development Management, NQF Level 8.

This qualification comprises of compulsory and elective modules at National Qualifications Framework (NQF) Level 9 totalling 200 Credits.

Compulsory Modules, Level 9, 167 Credits

• Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development Management, 11 Credits.
• Urban/Rural Community Development and Planning, 11 Credits.
• Development Planning, Programming and Project Management, 11 Credits.
• Research Methodology, 11 Credits.
• Ethics and Accountability, 11Credits.
• Policy and Policy Analysis, 11 Credits.
• Financial Management, 11 Credits.
• Mini Dissertation, 90 Credits.

Elective Modules, Level 9, 33 Credits (choose Three Modules)

• Contemporary Municipal Government, 11 Credits.
• Municipal Government and Democracy Development Aid, 11 Credits.
• Development Aid, 11 Credits.
• Municipal Service Delivery, 11 Credits.
• Productivity and Performance, 11 Credits.
• Municipal Committee Management, 11 Credits.

1. Ability to perform duties effectively and efficiently.
2. Ability to manage resources effectively and efficiently.
3. Ability to identify, analyse and solve political, economic, social and religious problems.
4. Ability to understand the needs and activities of members of the public (clients) and public institutions in regard to how resources are allocated.
5. Understand the public sector and demonstrate how policies are formulated.

• Ability to be responsive to the needs of members of the public.
• Providing public services effectually.

Integrated Assessment

The integration of skills learned in the programme is assessed by means of a Mini-Dissertation of a word length stipulated by the School of Management Sciences. Assessment is based on criteria, which includes: (i) scope and quality of literature review from a variety of text and other media; (ii) accuracy with which the literature is represented and applied to the research questions; (iii) the formulation of a research question and the development of research proposal based on the literature review. The proposal must specify a research design and the method/s to be applied to answer the research questions, and be of appropriate scale and complexity of a Master's Mini- Dissertation; (iv) the demonstration of a professional working relationship by responding to the comments of the projects supervisor; (v) the execution of the research proposed;(vi) presentation of the research is a manner which accords with the publication conventions of the discipline. The learners are assessed in a way of continuous assessment through intensive participation in the class, presentation of specific assignments, writing which is presided by research and studying and then finally culminate in summative assessment in a way of examination. The students are also expected to write a Mini-Dissertation to actually equip them to understand the scientific research principles and the methodology of research. This kind of assessment ensures that the students not only know the contents, but how to do things systematically instil creativity, analytical writing, sound judgement using data and information and communicate this to various audiences.