Henley Modeled Institution Informed Transformative Potential of Nepal’s Administrative Staff College

Abstract

Administrative Staff College at Henley-on-Thames in the United Kingdom has left a distinctive mark in the development history of executive training. It was a pioneer in drawing managerial staff from both civil service and business sectors for collaborative learning. Henley modeled institutions sprang up in different parts of the world, either as locally contextualized versions of the prototype or modified ones to cater to civil service cohort only. Although not a direct offshoot, the administrative staff college in Nepal is documented as having learned from Henley at its founding in 1982, and much of whose training structure is still retained today. The objective of the study was to review the transformation that Henley modeled administrative staff colleges took in response to the needs of time, and to draw an analysis informative for Nepal’s administrative staff college to plan out its future course. This comparative public administration study treated Henley model as a benchmark and shed light on the transformation of some Henley modeled institutions, including the original Henley. The track record of training managerial staff from public and private sector together were well leveraged. In Nepal, executive training strategically tailored for a mix of public and private sector managers is a domain yet to grow. There seems a potential for an institution such as Nepal’s administrative staff college, who is centrally positioned in the government’s administration community, to offer such a program in the footsteps of predecessor Henley modeled institutions.