Prof Richard M. Walker receives the IRSPM Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award

Prof Richard M. Walker, Head of the Department of Government and International Affairs and Lee Shau Kee Foundation Chair Professor of Public Administration at Lingnan University, has been given the prestigious Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) in recognition of his sustained dedication and outstanding contributions to the field. Prof Walker is the first scholar in the Hong Kong SAR to receive this honour, bringing distinction to Hong Kong's academic community and emphasising Lingnan University's international leadership in the discipline.

Prof Walker said he was greatly honoured to receive this international recognition, and that “I believe one of the research endeavours that contributed to this award is a replication project that I led, funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and the Public Policy Research Funding Scheme of the Chief Executive’s Policy Unit. The project analyses the applicability of Western public administration theories in Asia. Given that university education and research in Asian public administration draw predominantly on Western concepts and often overlook the unique economic, political, social, and institutional contexts in Asia, replicating experimental studies of citizen satisfaction with public services as well as performance indicator data analysis, are essential, and allow us to develop updated theoretical frameworks grounded in empirical findings and to bring Asian data into the global scholarly conversation.”

The Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award is presented by the council of the IRSPM. It was first given in 2007, and goes to only one distinguished scholar each year.