Rate My Professor Lhawang Ugyel

Dr. Lhawang Ugyel is a Lecturer in the School of Business at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Australian National University, a Master of International Development Studies from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Economics (First Class) from Madras Christian College. Previously, he was a Lecturer at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University—with a joint appointment as Visiting Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Papua New Guinea—and a Research Fellow with the Policy and Governance Program at ANU. He spent nearly ten years with the Royal Government of Bhutan as a Senior Human Resource Officer and Policy Analyst. In Spring Term 2023, he served as the Ragnar Nurkse Visiting Professor at Tallinn University of Technology's School of Business and Governance in Estonia.

Ugyel's primary research interests lie in public administration, management, and public policy. His doctoral thesis, published as the book Paradigms and public sector reform: Public administration of Bhutan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), analyzed the implementation of a major public sector reform in Bhutan. He has researched governance issues in Papua New Guinea, notably governance networks in the Bougainville Health Communities Program, which led to contracts with the World Health Organization for policies on Village Health Volunteers in PNG and Village Health Workers in Vanuatu. Currently, funded by a $46,500 UNSW Rector's Grant, his projects examine the implementation of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Policy Screening Tool—using the 2016 Economic Development Policy as a case—and the international migration patterns of Bhutanese to Australia and the USA. Notable publications include: 'Punctuating “Happiness”: Punctuated equilibrium theory and the agenda-setting of the Gross National Happiness (GNH) policy in Bhutan' (The Review of Policy Research, 2023); 'Governance networks in the delivery of public healthcare services in the Pacific: Implementation of the Bougainville Healthy Communities Programme' (Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 2022); 'Relationship between public sector reforms and culture: The implementation of NPM-related performance management reforms in a collectivist and risk averse culture' (Public Administration and Development, 2021); 'Successful policy transfer and public sector reform in developing countries' (Policy and Politics, 2020); and 'Dynamics and tensions of implementing agencification reforms: Experiences of District Development Authorities in Papua New Guinea' (Australian Journal of Public Administration, 2020).