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 Hong Kong to receive this honour, bringing distinction to Hong Kong's academic community and emphasising Lingnan University's international leadership in the discipline.
Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science at Lingnan University expressed his sincere congratulations to Prof Walker on this accolade, and said, "In recent years, Prof Walker has actively integrated Computational Social Science with public management research, and established the Governance and Bureaucracy Lab (GOVBUR Lab) at Lingnan University. The Lab examines new challenges, including the effectiveness and governance of artificial intelligence applications in the digital age, embodying the University's special vision of combining a liberal arts education with cutting-edge science. These international partners include several of the world's top 100 universities, such as Duke University, University of Michigan, and New York University in the US, Yonsei University in South Korea, and Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which further consolidates our position as a leading research-oriented liberal arts university, comprehensive in arts and sciences, in the digital era."
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."
Beyond refining traditional academic theories, Prof Walker has also used big data to examine very large volumes of literature, which show that the research theme of Management Innovation (MI) in public service has itself developed into an independent field of study. He is currently co-authoring a book on Management Innovation in Public Services with Prof Fariborz Damanpour of Rutgers University, to be published by the Oxford University Press. This will be the first academic work to systematically explore the topic, and study how rational and institutional factors shape the development and implementation of management innovation in public service organisations.
To increase Lingnan University's international influence, Prof Walker has founded the GOVBUR Lab, which incorporates perspectives from public administration and political science to focus on dynamic issues such as citizen-government relationships, artificial intelligence, and governance efficacy. The Lab will form partnerships and arrange academic exchanges with the world's top universities, bringing together distinguished visiting scholars such as Prof Wang Yuhua from Harvard University, Prof Meng Tianguang from Tsinghua University, Prof Lü Xiaobo from the University of California, Berkeley, Prof Oliver James from the University of Exeter, and Prof M. Jae Moon from Yonsei University, and further extend Lingnan University's academic influence in international public management research and contribute to consolidating Hong Kong's position as an international higher education hub.
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.
Prof Richard M. Walker (right) delivers a keynote speech on his latest research, and receives the Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 annual conference of the International Research Society for Public Management.
