Over the past few years, PUBLIC has served as a forum for creation, dissemination, education and debate in the field of public governance and management at both the local and international levels. It is an initiative aimed at supporting innovative forms of leadership in the public sector. Today, PUBLIC is read by more than 10,000 professionals and academics in more than 100 countries around the world. It has received contributions from many renowned writers. We are grateful both to our readers and writers for their trust and involvement (!)  

In a society that is sometimes overwhelmed by difficult-to-process information, PUBLIC has tried to offer some of the most current, rigorous and relevant reflections on public management in a fresh, easy-to-read format. Our formula is simple: short articles based on long hours of work.   

To commemorate PUBLIC's fifth anniversary, we have put together a book that follows the same philosophy. The 50 articles in this collection represent a cross-section of the publication as a whole. The book is divided into six thematic areas, in keeping with the lines of research explored by the Research Group for Leadership and Innovation in Public Management at ESADE's Institute of Public Governance and Management (IGDP): management of public organisations, leadership and change management in a public setting, performance management models, models of public governance, collaborative management for the design and execution of public decisions, and public-private cooperation.

We would like to finish this introduction by thanking some of the people who have made PUBLIC possible over the past five years. To our colleagues at the Editorial Board: Pere Puig, who had the initial vision of creating a regular IGDP newsletter, as well as Eduard Gil, Pablo García, Angel Saz-Carranza, Albert Serra, Manuel Férez, Cristina Navarro and M. Jesús Binefa, all of whom helped a great deal along the way. We are also grateful for the assistance of Antònia Rigo, Gabriel Genescà, Frank G. Linn and Neus Ruiz, at the ESADE Language Advisory Service, whose linguistic skills have made the trilingual edition of PUBLIC possible. We also thank Xavier Solanellas, Lluís Hernández, Ricard Vilanova and José Juan Calvo, who have been responsible for the technological aspects of the newsletter.

Looking forward to working with you for another five years, please feel free to send your comments and articles to PUBLIC at www.esade.edu/public

Joat Henrich is the Editor of PUBLIC. Francisco Longo is the Director of the ESADE Institute of Public Governance and Management (IGDP). Tamyko Ysa is the Principal Researcher of the ESADE Research Group in Leadership and Innovation in Public Management.