Oxford Policy Institute

The Oxford Policy Institute (OPI) is an independent, not-for-profit research organisation. Its objective is to provide a service for policy managers by compiling evidence for the best ways to organise and deliver public services in different settings. It is developing a portfolio of international comparative research projects to study the incentives that motivate good public sector performance and the delivery of quality public services. Oxford Policy Institute is a virtual organisation, meaning it has little reality other than its website.

This does say that OPI has close links to the Oxford Policy Management (OPM), a consultancy company, although each is separately governed, managed and financed.

Their adress is the same as the Foreign Service Programme, Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB. This degree course seeks to prepare students for careers in diplomacy: once vetted by the Diplomacy Admissions Committee. This is also the address of Queen Elizabeth House.

It is responsible for organising events such as Adding public value: the limits of corporate responsibility, A series of five workshops at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. this tried to explore:

Recent developments suggest that corporations may be seeking to be increasingly influential in promoting host countries’ governance and public sector competencies. If so, this represents a development in corporate social responsibility. The theme running through the series is that corporate investments in public capabilities are best understood in terms of the institutions and incentives that that govern the behaviour of both companies and host governments.

The workshops aimed to bring together academics, corporate managers, resource-rich country policy managers and other interest groups to review the nature and extent of this change, Speakers planned include: Mark Henstridge, BP; Chandrashekhar Krishnan, Transparency International UK; Rob Lake, Henderson Global Investment and Edward Bickham, Anglo American, John Bray, Control Risks; Steven Van de Walle, Public Management Institute, Leuven and Alex Matheson, Institute of Policy Studies, Anne Roemer-Mahler, St Antony’s College, Willi Olson, Chatham House.

The event was organised by the OPI with assistance from the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law.