Sustainable Public Administration

Dear Colleagues,

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was agreed upon by 193 member states of the United Nations in September 2015. Given the size of the challenge to redirect unsustainable pathways towards sustainable development, state and nonstate actors alike are strongly encouraged by the agreement to contribute.

The private sector, for example, is expected to introduce sustainable management practices and develop sustainable business models; sciences should contribute through the analysis and development of solutions; civil society is invited to participate inter alia in searching and testing new and more sustainable practices; and citizens are invited to support the endeavor through sustainable consumption.

Despite the undisputable importance of nonstate actors for achieving the SDGs, state institutions have a special role to play. On the one hand, policy-making for sustainable development is required at the international, national, and subnational level to shape the political setting in which societal actors can develop and realize more sustainable actions. On the other hand, public administration is challenged to lead by example and develop capabilities to administer transformation processes toward sustainable development professionally.

Even though thirty years of social science research on (un)sustainable development as well as on governance of sustainable development have generated a vast body of knowledge, the focus has rarely been on sustainable public administration. With this background, this Special Issue explicitly invites papers which address all kinds of questions concerning a sustainable public administration. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Politics, public administration, and sustainable development;
• Multilevel public administration and sustainable development;
• Administrative reform and sustainable development;
• Organizational learning and sustainable development;
• Leadership in public administration and sustainable development;
• Human resource development in public administration and sustainable development;
• Digitalization, public administration, and sustainable development;
• Public administration, (citizen) participation, and sustainable development;
• Public administration, lobbying, and sustainable development;
• Public administration as an influencer: effects on sustainable development;
• How to overcome sustainability hindrances: the role of administrations;
• Sustainable development, capitalism, and public administration;
• New public management and sustainable development;
• New public governance and sustainable development;
• Open government and sustainable development;
• E-government and sustainable development;
• Public accounting, controlling, and sustainable development;
• Public administration and sustainable procurement;
• Sustainability management in public administration.

We invite authors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, such as social sustainability science, administrative science, political science, sociology, management, and organizational studies.

Prof. Dr. Harald Heinrichs
Dr. Norman Laws
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the collection website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.