Does the school as a learning organisation affect staff outcomes? This article examines the relationship between the school as a learning organisation and staff job satisfaction and the school's responsiveness to staff needs using a... more
Does the school as a learning organisation affect staff outcomes? This article examines the relationship between the school as a learning organisation and staff job satisfaction and the school's responsiveness to staff needs using a purposefully designed “Schools as Learning Organisations Survey” completed as part of an OECD study in Wales. A positive and significant relationship is found between the school as a learning organisation and both job satisfaction of staff—that is school leaders, teachers and teaching support staff—and the school's responsiveness to staff needs. The article proposes ways of realising these outcomes and identifies areas for further research. Policy makers, school staff and other stakeholders in education and other public sectors internationally can use these findings as supporting evidence in recommending people to develop their organisations into learning organisations, given the potential benefits for employees and the organisation at large.
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Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. They have autonomy or discretion in their work.... more
Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. They have autonomy or discretion in their work. This chapter shows how a psychological perspective can be beneficial when investigating discretion. This is firstly illustrated using the concept of policy alienation. Many street-level bureaucrats feel alienated from public policies. This attitude can furthermore lead to different types of behaviours. These behaviours can be classified using the notion of coping during public service delivery. Coping can be grouped in three types: moving towards clients, moving away from clients and moving against clients. We discuss policy alienation and coping and conclude with future research directions for scholars interested in studying discretion from a psychological perspective.
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Het doel van dit onderzoek luidt: - Het conceptualiseren van behoorlijk bestuur als een levende en lerende bestuurspraktijk die verder gaat dan alleen maar een set van principes die verwoord zijn in een governance code. - Het beschrijven... more
Het doel van dit onderzoek luidt: - Het conceptualiseren van behoorlijk bestuur als een levende en lerende bestuurspraktijk die verder gaat dan alleen maar een set van principes die verwoord zijn in een governance code. - Het beschrijven van praktijken van duurzaam behoorlijk bestuur op het niveau van gedrag en cultuur in onderwijsinstellingen waar corrigerende mechanismen aantoonbaar hebben gewerkt; - het analyseren van de condities waaronder deze mechanismen werken; en - het formuleren van uitgangspunten voor de versterking van het corrigerende vermogen
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Innovation is key to ensuring that public sectors are able to deliver services efficiently and effectively while also creating a system that can cope with the many societal challenges that exist in today's world. In this compelling... more
Innovation is key to ensuring that public sectors are able to deliver services efficiently and effectively while also creating a system that can cope with the many societal challenges that exist in today's world. In this compelling collection,contributors explore ways in which civil services are adapting to meet the many challenges they now face.
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Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated 600,000 Sina Weibo microblogs. This study reports on a study of Chinese citizens’ adoption of microblogs to interact with the government. Adoption... more
Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated 600,000 Sina Weibo microblogs. This study reports on a study of Chinese citizens’ adoption of microblogs to interact with the government. Adoption results from trust and peer pressure in smaller-network ties (densely knit, pervasive social networks surrounding individual citizens). Larger-network ties (trust in institutions at large, such as the Chinese Communist Party, executive organizations, the judicial system, the media, etc.) are not associated with the adoption of microblogging. Furthermore, higher levels of anxiety are correlated with lower levels of use intention, and this finding underlines the impact of the Chinese authority’s surveillance and control activities on the lives of individual Chinese citizens. Based on these findings, we outline a theory of why citizens use microblogs to interact with the government and suggest avenues for further research into microblogs, state–citizen...
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Translating medical evidence into practice is difficult. Key challenges in applying evidence-based medicine are information overload and that evidence needs to be used in context by healthcare professionals. Nudging (i.e. softly steering)... more
Translating medical evidence into practice is difficult. Key challenges in applying evidence-based medicine are information overload and that evidence needs to be used in context by healthcare professionals. Nudging (i.e. softly steering) healthcare professionals towards utilizing evidence-based medicine may be a feasible possibility. This systematic scoping review is the first overview of nudging healthcare professionals in relation to evidence-based medicine. We have investigated a) the distribution of studies on nudging healthcare professionals, b) the nudges tested and behaviors targeted, c) the methodological quality of studies and d) whether the success of nudges is related to context. In terms of distribution, we found a large but scattered field: 100 articles in over 60 different journals, including various types of nudges targeting different behaviors such as hand hygiene or prescribing drugs. Some nudges – especially reminders to deal with information overload – are often ...
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Co-creation – where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues – is increasingly considered as a fertile solution for various public service delivery problems. During co-creation, citizens are not mere... more
Co-creation – where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues – is increasingly considered as a fertile solution for various public service delivery problems. During co-creation, citizens are not mere consumers, but are actively engaged in building resilient societies. In this study, we analyze if and how state and governance traditions influence learning and policy change within a context of co-creation. We combine insights from the co-creation and learning literature. The empirical strategy is a comparative case study of co-creation examples within the welfare domain in childcare (Estonia), education (Germany) and community work (the Netherlands). We show that state and governance traditions may form an explanation for whether co-creation, learning and policy change occurs. Our paper suggests that this seems to be related to whether there is a tradition of working together with citizens and a focus on rule following or not.
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Innovation in the Public Sector addresses issues relevant to an understanding of the innovation journeys on which public organizations have embarked. If public innovation is defined as a necessary condition for establishing meaningful... more
Innovation in the Public Sector addresses issues relevant to an understanding of the innovation journeys on which public organizations have embarked. If public innovation is defined as a necessary condition for establishing meaningful interactions between the government and society, what are the relevant issues that may explain successful processes and forms of public innovation?
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Op 1 januari 2013 trad de Politiewet 2012 in werking. Artikel 74 van de wet bepaalt dat de Minister van Justitie en Veiligheid binnen vijf jaar na inwerkingtreding een evaluatie van die wet aan de Staten-Generaal moet sturen over... more
Op 1 januari 2013 trad de Politiewet 2012 in werking. Artikel 74 van de wet bepaalt dat de Minister van Justitie en Veiligheid binnen vijf jaar na inwerkingtreding een evaluatie van die wet aan de Staten-Generaal moet sturen over doeltreffendheid en effecten van de wet in de praktijk.In dit rapport staat de vraag centraal hoe de Politiewet 2012 in de praktijk is geimplementeerd en welke consequenties zich voordoen voor de politieorganisatie en voor de verschillende externe partijen die bij het politiewerk betrokken zijn. De hoofdvraag die aan dit onderzoek ten grondslag ligt, luidt: Hoe kan de werking van de Politiewet 2012 inzake de thema’s (1) politiek bestuurlijke sturing en politiek-democratische verantwoording, (2) samenwerking en (3) maatschappelijke inbedding, worden geevalueerd?
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This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals face in service delivery. First, it theoretically analyses the influence of policy pressures (measured using the policy alienation framework)... more
This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals face in service delivery. First, it theoretically analyses the influence of policy pressures (measured using the policy alienation framework) and politicking pressures on job satisfaction, thereby combining the literature streams of policy implementation and organizational politics. Second, we use a large-scale survey of 1,317 Dutch healthcare professionals to examine the effects of these pressures on job satisfaction. A large-scale quantitative approach can provide new insights to the debate on pressured professionals. The results show that both politicking pressures and the policy alienation dimension powerlessness (perceived lack of influence and autonomy during policy implementation) affect the job satisfaction of public professionals. Further, they interact, the negative effect of powerlessness on job satisfaction is strongest among professionals working in a highly politicized environ...
The effects of work alienation and policy alienation on behavior of
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Parts of the research leading to these results have received funding from the European Community’s
This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are... more
This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are analysed based on the following themes: (1) the definitions of innovation, (2) innovation types, (3) goals of innovation, (4) antecedents of innovation and (5) outcomes of innovation. Based upon this analysis, we develop an empirically-based framework of potentially important antecedents and effects of public sector innovation. We propose three future research suggestions: (1) more variety in methods: moving from a qualitative dominance to using other methods, such as surveys, experiments and multi-method approaches; (2) emphasize theory development and testing as studies are often theory-poor; and (3) conduct more cross-national and cross-sectoral studies, linking for instance different governance and state traditions to the development and effect...
Many public organizations implement teleworking: an organizational innovation expected to improve the working conditions of public servants. However, it is unclear to what extent teleworking is beneficial for public servants. This study... more
Many public organizations implement teleworking: an organizational innovation expected to improve the working conditions of public servants. However, it is unclear to what extent teleworking is beneficial for public servants. This study adds to the literature by studying the effects of teleworking on a day-to-day basis. We used a daily diary methodology and followed public servants across five consecutive working days. Studies that apply a daily survey method are more accurate than cross-sectional measures because they reduce recall bias. The results highlight that public servants experience quite negative effects from teleworking, including greater professional isolation and less organizational commitment on the days that they worked entirely from home. Contrary to predictions, working from home did not affect work engagement. We also found that higher leader–member exchange (LMX) reduced the impact of teleworking on professional isolation. These findings not only contribute to the...
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Research Interests: Information Systems, Management, Information Technology, Public Administration, Political Economy, and 11 moreProject Management, Government, Property Rights, Project manager, Process management, Information Exchange, Hicss, Management of Change, Electronic Data Interchange, Internet, and Information System
Public employees are confronted with various pressures, such as increased work demands and the need to implement controversial policies. This study uses work alienation and policy alienation models to analyze work and policy pressures.... more
Public employees are confronted with various pressures, such as increased work demands and the need to implement controversial policies. This study uses work alienation and policy alienation models to analyze work and policy pressures. Based on a survey of 790 respondents, it was first found that work alienation results in less work effort and more intention to leave. Second, policy alienation negatively affects behavioral support for a policy and the intention to implement it. These results suggest that work alienation and policy alienation have different—but both important—effects on (intended) behavior on the job.
Research Interests: Organizational Behavior, Management, Health Sciences, Public Administration, Public Management, and 15 moreOrganizational Change, Behavior, Health Care, Political Science, Quantitative Research, Quantitative Methods, Survey Research, Work and Organizational Psychology, HRM & Organisational Behaviour, Alienation, Resistance to Organizational Change, Healthcare Management, WORK ALIENATION, Public Administration and Policy, and Public Policy
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This article focuses the nodal orientation of the police, which is an innovative and controversial target of Dutch policing. This target states that the police should focus on flows, and on places where the various flows coincide. The... more
This article focuses the nodal orientation of the police, which is an innovative and controversial target of Dutch policing. This target states that the police should focus on flows, and on places where the various flows coincide. The success factors for implementation nodal policing are discussed as well as its (strategic) implications for Dutch policing. We focus on the key features of Dutch nodal policing; the strategies that have been followed to implement nodal policing, the current state of affairs of nodal policing in The Netherlands, and what the future prospects for nodal policing in The Netherlands are.
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Research Interests: Business, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Applied Psychology, Health Psychology, and 15 moreHealth Sciences, Economics, Educational Research, Accounting, Human Resource Management, Gender, Health, Health Services Research, Health Policy, Administration, Development, Healthcare, Good Governance, Business and Management, and Economic Value
Abstract. This article focuses on the nodal orientation of the Dutch police, which is an innovative and controversial target of Dutch policing. This target states that the police should focus on flows and on places where the various flows... more
Abstract. This article focuses on the nodal orientation of the Dutch police, which is an innovative and controversial target of Dutch policing. This target states that the police should focus on flows and on places where the various flows coincide. The Dutch interpretation of the nodal orientation combines a perspective on policing in infrastructural networks with one that considers the police as a player in (social) security networks. Nodal policing in the Netherlands has been introduced as a ‘sensitizing’ and evolving concept. This article describes a selection of evolving nodal policing practices and discusses the strategic and normative implications for Dutch policing that arise from these practices.
Research Interests: Criminology and Policing
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Innovations are taking place in and with public sector organizations, reforming the public sector and beyond. It is therefore important to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon. In this chapter, we will firstly analyse the... more
Innovations are taking place in and with public sector organizations, reforming the public sector and beyond. It is therefore important to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon. In this chapter, we will firstly analyse the background of innovation as relevant concept to study public sector reform (section 2). In section 3 we will especially look at the notion of ‘social innovation’, given its increasing importance for contemporary reform. In section 4 we will address a number of relevant drivers and barriers for innovation processes in the public sector. In the final section, we will draw conclusions and discuss future research opportunities when studying innovation in the public sector.
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This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are... more
This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are analysed based on the following themes: (1) the definitions of innovation, (2) innovation types, (3) goals of innovation, (4) antecedents of innovation and (5) outcomes of innovation. Based upon this analysis, we develop an empirically-based framework of potentially important antecedents and effects of public sector innovation. We propose three future research suggestions: (1) more variety in methods: moving from a qualitative dominance to using other methods, such as surveys, experiments and multi-method approaches; (2) emphasize theory development and testing as studies are often theory-poor; and (3) conduct more cross-national and cross-sectoral studies, linking for instance different governance and state traditions to the development and effect...
IntroductionDue to political and societal demands public sector organizations are in a constant process of adapt to changing circumstances in order to remain effective, efficient and legitimate in dealing with societal problems and... more
IntroductionDue to political and societal demands public sector organizations are in a constant process of adapt to changing circumstances in order to remain effective, efficient and legitimate in dealing with societal problems and delivering public services. Accompanying changes may be incremental, when improvements can be achieved by relatively small adjustments within a dominant policy paradigm, or new technologies fit with existing regulations, but may also be larger, when fundamental change is needed to maintain, improve or alter the service level of the public sector organization. The call to foster and fasten innovations in the public domain is expressed by many think tanks and governmental organizations like the World Bank and the OECD. This raises the question what capacities public sector organizations need to be able to deal with the different challenges of realizing incremental change as well as radical innovationIn this article, we consider innovation in the public sect...
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textabstractand especially social innovation is a ‘magic concept’ that during the last years has been embraced as a promising reform strategy for the public sector. It is argued that it is important for social innovation that it is being... more
textabstractand especially social innovation is a ‘magic concept’ that during the last years has been embraced as a promising reform strategy for the public sector. It is argued that it is important for social innovation that it is being co-created with citizens. However, to date there are no overviews on co-creation during innovation, which systematically analyze the literature concerning the forms, antecedents and effects of co-creation. This paper therefore conducted a systematic review to retrieve studies on co-creation. It also included related literature on co-production. 49 peer-reviewed articles in the period from 1987-2013 were included. In general, most studies employ a qualitative case study approach. Quantitative studies are scare. Most studies have been conducted in the healthcare or education sector. The review further reveals that in the level of citizen involvement is often rather low; citizens are only acting as co-implementer, not designers or initiators. Consideri...
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In 2006 Al Gore presented his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, here he tried to convince the world global warming will have a significant impact on our daily lives. The flow of water covering large parts of the world was pictured and figures... more
In 2006 Al Gore presented his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, here he tried to convince the world global warming will have a significant impact on our daily lives. The flow of water covering large parts of the world was pictured and figures from different kinds of scientific reports were shown. Our imagination was stimulated and the movie made sure a radical change was necessary. This is one of the many possible examples which show images play an increasingly important role in the world of public policy-making. This increasing importance of images can have consequences for public policy-making and politics. The question we need to ask ourselves is what this influence of images and the increasing importance of these images actually is on public policy-making. How do these images influence the course, the content and the outcome of processes of public policymaking? In order to research this we have formulated the following research question:
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textabstractAbstract: This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals face in service delivery. First, it theoretically analyses the influence of policy pressures (measured using the policy... more
textabstractAbstract: This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals face in service delivery. First, it theoretically analyses the influence of policy pressures (measured using the policy alienation framework) and politicking pressures on job satisfaction, thereby combining the literature streams of policy implementation and organizational politics. Second, we use a large-scale survey of 1,317 Dutch healthcare professionals to examine the effects of these pressures on job satisfaction. A large-scale quantitative approach can provide new insights to the debate on pressured professionals. The results show that both politicking pressures and the policy alienation dimension powerlessness (perceived lack of influence and autonomy during policy implementation) affect the job satisfaction of public professionals. Further, they interact, the negative effect of powerlessness on job satisfaction is strongest among professionals working in a high...
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textabstractAt the moment, there is an intense debate going on concerning professionals and professionalism in the public sector. Research shows that public professionals are experiencing increasing pressures as they have to take into... more
textabstractAt the moment, there is an intense debate going on concerning professionals and professionalism in the public sector. Research shows that public professionals are experiencing increasing pressures as they have to take into account several output performance norms, and these often conflict with their own professional standards or with the demands of increasingly empowered clients. Several studies show an increasing discontent among public professionals, both in the Netherlands (Honingh and Karstanje 2007; Van den Brink et al. 2006), and abroad (De Ruyter et al. 2008; Hebson et al. 2003; Pratchett and Wingfield 1996). In this chapter we will analyze such problems that public professionals have with the policy they have to implement in terms of ‘policy alienation’, thereby elaborating on the concept of work alienation as developed in the field of sociology of work and labor (for example Blauner 1964) . We define policy alienation as a general cognitive state of psychologica...
textabstractIn dit artikel worden verschillende toezichtsstijlen of rollen van toezichthouders geanalyseerd. Het blijkt dat achter verschillende rollen van toezichthouders - als politieagent, coach of netwerker - verschillende typen... more
textabstractIn dit artikel worden verschillende toezichtsstijlen of rollen van toezichthouders geanalyseerd. Het blijkt dat achter verschillende rollen van toezichthouders - als politieagent, coach of netwerker - verschillende typen informatierelaties schuilgaan. In het artikel worden kritieke succesfactoren van verschillende toezichtsstijlen ge?dentificeerd en wordt de betekenis van informatierelaties in toezichtsarrangementen geduid.
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textabstractThe notion of work alienation has been fascinating scholars and practitioners for a long time. In recent years, a related concept has been developed in the public administration discipline: policy alienation, which examines... more
textabstractThe notion of work alienation has been fascinating scholars and practitioners for a long time. In recent years, a related concept has been developed in the public administration discipline: policy alienation, which examines the alienation of public professionals from the policy they have to implement. In this paper, our goal is to study the distinctiveness (or similarity) of work alienation and policy alienation. Furthermore, we examine a number of effects of work and policy alienation. Based on a theoretical framework and a survey of 790 Dutch midwives, we show that work and policy alienation are clearly distinct concepts. Furthermore, we show that work alienation has a strong impact on work level outcomes, such as work effort and intention to leave the organization. Policy alienation strongly influences the intention of a worker to resist a new policy, and the related behavior. Hence, work and policy alienation have important but separate effects. This study underscore...
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100-150 WORDS) In Western European welfare states, one of the uses to which ICT has been put is the delivery of integrated public services in social security. In order to do this, the deployment of ICT (especially in the back office)... more
100-150 WORDS) In Western European welfare states, one of the uses to which ICT has been put is the delivery of integrated public services in social security. In order to do this, the deployment of ICT (especially in the back office) requires coordination among various central and local levels of government, and among social insurance executive institutions, welfare authorities, and job centers. Viewing ICT-enabled integration as a technological and managerial ‘practice’, we analyze ICT coordination in various institutional regimes (in a decentralized regime like Denmark, a decentralized unity state like the Netherlands, and in a federal state like Austria). By comparative case study, we investigate whether ICT coordination adapts to the institutional context in which it is shaped (contingency-approach), or whether in various institutional contexts coordination practices more or less resemble each other (convergence-approach). Two methods were used to gather data. First, for each co...
textabstractStress is endemic to street-level work. How frontline workers handle conflicting pressures and changes in their environment bears substantially on policy performance and the delivery of human services. ‘Coping’ is the current... more
textabstractStress is endemic to street-level work. How frontline workers handle conflicting pressures and changes in their environment bears substantially on policy performance and the delivery of human services. ‘Coping’ is the current term for understanding frontline workers responses to stress. Coping in the field of policy implementation is a sensitizing concept, not yet harmonized with extensive coping literature in clinical psychology nor operationalized to enable its measurement of its prevalence in the context of policy implementation. This paper takes steps to close that gap. Our main objective is to define coping and build a classification model. To this end, we conduct a systematic review of the literature on coping during policy implementation. After discussing ways that technology and new forms of public administration may bear on coping, we build a classification model of coping during policy implementation, comprised of three main families of coping (negotiation, pro...
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This document is a report produced by the PUBLIN research project. PUBLIN is part of the Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on "Improving the human research potential and the socio-economic... more
This document is a report produced by the PUBLIN research project. PUBLIN is part of the Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on "Improving the human research potential and the socio-economic knowledge base,1998-2002" under the EU 5th ...