Wolfgang Drechsler (born June 6, 1963 in Marburg, West Germany) is a Public Administration and Management, Innovation Policy and Political Philosophy scholar.
In 2012-2014, he served as the André Molitor Chair of Political, Administrative and International Reforms (as professeur invité) at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
In Public Administration, Drechsler emphasizes the non-technocratic, non-managerial, "state sciences" approach that focuses on effectiveness rather than efficiency.
In 2000, Drechsler co-founded The Other Canon, a center and network for heterodox economics research, with - amongst others - main founder and executive chairman Erik Reinert.
The Academy of Management’s (AOM) 2023 George R. Terry Award for “the book judged to have made the most outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge during the last two years” went to his book, with Rainer Kattel and Erkki Karo, How to Make an Entrepreneurial State: Why Innovation needs Bureaucracy (Yale University Press).