Dr Willy McCourt

Originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland, I started my career as an assistant lecturer in the national university of Nepal. In the UK I worked for a British development NGO, and in adult education and local government, before joining IDPM in 1994, where I am a Reader in Development Policy and Management.

I have an undergraduate degree from Cambridge, and Master's degrees from the Universities of Lancaster and London. I trained as a teacher and completed my Ph.D. at the University of Manchester. I have carried out recent consultancy and research assignments in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Vietnam. I have acted as an adviser to the British Council and the Department for International Development in the UK, to DANIDA and USAID, and to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, the European Union, UNDP and the World Bank. I have written on public policy and management in developing countries, and on the HRM topics of recruitment and selection, training and development and employment reform in developing and transitional countries. I am married and have two daughters.

I supervise PhD students in the areas of governance, public management and human resource management in developing countries, and am always pleased to hear from anyone who is thinking about doing research in one of my areas of interest.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 130KB).

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Governance and public policy, management and reform; human resource management; training and development; organisational behaviour.

Country Experience

Bangladesh, Cambodia, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam.

2007 'Development success: statecraft in the South.'  A Bebbington and W. McCourt (eds.).  London.  Palgrave Macmillan.

2006 'The Human Factor in Governance: Managing Public Employees in Africa and Asia', London: Palgrave.

2003 'Global Human Resource Management: Managing People in Developing and Transitional Countries', Cheltenham: Edward Elgar (with Derek Eldridge).

(forthcoming) 'The Politics of HRM: Waiting for Godot in the Moroccan civil service', International Journal of Human Resource Management (with Khadija Al-Arkoubi).

2003 'Political Commitment to Reform: Civil service reform in Swaziland', World Development, 31: 1015-31.

2003 'Limits to Strategic Human Resource Management: The Case of the Mauritian Civil Service'. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 14: 600-618 (with Anita Ramgutty-Wong).

2001 'The Internationalisation of Public Management: Reinventing the Third World State', Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (with Martin Minogue, eds).

The Aceh assessment centre presentation "From strategic objectives to managing performance" (PDF, 1MB).