Professor Rodney Scott is a leading researcher and practitioner in public service strengthening, having held senior positions in the New Zealand government for 15 years, written several influential books, and supported governments around the world.
Rodney is a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at RMIT University Melbourne, an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales, and an Affiliated Researcher with the Bennett Institute of Public Policy at Cambridge University. He was a 2018 Fellow in Practice at Oxford University, and a 2017 Innovations Fellow at Harvard University.
Rodney was the Chief Policy Advisor and Deputy Chief Executive – Strategy Policy and Integrity at the Public Service Commission of New Zealand, where he was responsible for leading advice on the overall design and direction of the New Zealand public service. He was also the Deputy Commissioner responsible for establishing the Public Service Fale, New Zealand’s programme for supporting public service strengthening in partnership with Pacific Island nations across the region. He has supported reform efforts in over 20 countries and provided professional education to senior public servants from six continents, including partnering with the UNDP and OECD.
Rodney has written several books on public administration, including Contemporary Public Administration in New Zealand: Stories, culture, values (Bristol University Press 2025), Contingent Collaboration: When to use which models for joined-up government (Cambridge University Press, 2022) Targeting Commitment: Interagency performance in New Zealand (Brookings Institution Press, 2022), Institutional Memory as Storytelling: How networked government remembers (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Group Model Building: Using system dynamics to achieve enduring agreement (Springer, 2018).
Rodney completed a PhD at the University of Queensland. His current research interests are public management reform, public service motivation, stewardship, interagency collaboration, and machinery of government.
