CALL FOR PAPER: Lien Development Conference 2022: The Dynamics of Governance in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous World

In recent decades, numerous terms have increasingly been used in academic literature, policymaking, businesses, and news outlets to highlight the growing difficulty in making sense of the developments happening around the world. They include change, turbulence, rapid change, disruption, chaos, and flux etc. These terms are encapsulated by the popular acronym VUCA, which refers to Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. In today’s VUCA world, states, as well as non-state actors, are facing not only unprecedented challenges, but also new opportunities in governance amidst a combination of several ongoing trends including accelerating climate change, heightening geopolitical tensions, deglobalisation, rapid digitization, prolonged economic and supply chain volatilities, worsening inequality, as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Against this backdrop, the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration (NCPA) of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) will be organizing the 2022 Lien Development Conference on 25-26 November 2022 in hybrid form. This conference is co-organised with the Lien Ying Chow Legacy Fellowship, International Institute of Administrative Sciences, and the Stratagem Group. The theme this year, “Governance in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous World”, invites academics, researchers, and practitioners from various fields and around the world to come together and deliberate how governance has developed in the VUCA world that we currently live in. 

On behalf of the organising committee of the 2022 Lien Development Conference, we cordially invite you to submit an abstract (not more than 300 words) and full paper (not more than 8000 words including references) in conjunction with this year’s theme, “Governance in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous World”. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and comparative studies on all important aspects of governance in different countries and regions for the following broad themes, but not limited to them:

• Global/regional economic cooperation, competition, and recovery
• The role of international and regional organizations in times of crisis
• Sustainable and inclusive development
• Global supply chains in developing world
• Poverty, inequality, and food crisis
• Migrant and transnational knowledge transfer
• Public budgeting and finances in times of crisis
• New challenges for public administration and public service delivery
• Policymaking and implementation in a VUCA world
• Crisis management
• Public values and public service ethics 
• Asian perspective of public governance in the new era
• Smart cities, smart nations, and smart governance
• Industry 4.0 and e-government
• Media, public communication, and public health
• Public health and policies 
• Aging, health, family, and social policy
• Current and emerging policy directions of higher education
• Building resiliency in world place and society
• Science in public policy

We also invite full paper contributions, which are optional but required to qualify for best paper awards and possible inclusion for journal publication in a special issue of either Global Policy or Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, or the symposium of either of the two Chinese journals: Journal of Public Administration (公共行政评论) and Public Administration and Policy Review (公共管理与政策评论).

Best paper awardees will be announced at the gala dinner on 25 November 2022. Awardees will be able to publish their article in the either of the journals mentioned above. 

Key deadlines 

Submission of abstract: 31th July 2022
Notification of acceptance: 15th August 2022
Submission of full paper: 31th October 2022 

Submission links

Please submit your abstracts via https://www.conftool.org/lienconference2022/index.php?page=login

Please submit your full papers via  https://www.conftool.org/lienconference2022/index.php?page=login 

For authors who wish to propose a panel session relating to any of the above broad themes, please contact Dr Celia Lee @ [email protected]

For more information on the conference, please visit https://lienconference.sg/2022/