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The year 2020 is an epochal moment for governance and public administration. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has upset social and economic life, including the delivery of public services, and eroded domestic and international politics. It comes in an era of uncertainty resulting from the end of the New Public Management boom and a looming breakdown of the contemporary US-defined international order. Against such a sea change, we can hardly take business as usual. Change breeds indeterminacy but also induces reimagining. Any renewal and renaissance of public management has to address the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions of governance in a low-trust and high-risk society. Both the capacity and legitimacy of the state need to be re-empowered, but no longer through the market. The dual failure of democratic politics and bureaucratic excellence in many countries has rendered the Wilsonian politics-administration dichotomy redundant. Amid the rise of East Asia, there are growing contentions over the conceptualization of meritocracy as alternative systems of governance and public service models seem to be delivering effective rivals. Governance performance may not be predetermined by regime types within a poly-polar world. We need to search for new reconnections, new leadership, a new basis for trust and consensus, and a new public service bargain to avoid getting bogged down in old wine in re-labelled bottle, or another singular universalist paradigm.

Is there a specific way of thinking about organisational learning in Nordic countries? Are concepts such as organisational learning and learning organisations imported, or do they emerge with specific meanings from more local discourses? Beyond that, are they supported by specific learning theories? The purpose of this paper is to trace the way that the concepts of organisational learning and learning organisations appear in research and policy documents in Norway and to identify what sort of learning theories pertain to those concepts. The authors discuss whether Norway’s case exemplifies a Nordic way of thinking about learning in organisations.

Through an archaeological investigation into the concepts of organisational learning and learning organisations, the authors explore the theoretical and cultural framing of the concepts in research and policy. The authors limit our work to large industrial field experiments conducted in the 1960s and to large education reform in the 2000s.

During the industrial field experiments in the 1960s, the concept of organisational learning evolved to form participatory learning processes in non-hierarchical organisations able to contribute to democracy at work. Education policy in the 2000s, by contrast, imported the concept of the learning organisation that primarily viewed learning as an instrumental process of knowledge production. That strategy is incommensurable to what we define as a Nordic way, one in which learning is also understood as a cultural and social process advanced by democratic participation.

The authors add to organisational learning theories by demonstrating the importance of cultural context for theories and showing that the understanding of learning is historically and culturally embedded.

The purpose of this paper is to address the process of organizational governance of IT resources, called IT governance (ITG), especially its behavioral approach. The organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) concept was used to understand the relationship between the behavioral dimensions and the perception of ITG effectiveness. The objective of this research is to identify if individuals’ behavior contributes to a greater perception of ITG effectiveness in public organizations. This is an exploratory and descriptive research with a quantitative approach.

This was an exploratory and descriptive research with a quantitative approach. A survey with IT teams of public organizations in a Brazilian state was performed, and data were analyzed through partial least squares. A positive and significant relationship between the variables Spirit of Initiative (R²=0.2926) and Identification with the Organization (R²=0.1276), and the perception of ITG effectiveness was found.

Results showed that when OCB levels are higher, ITG is more easily perceived as effective. This occurs because the predisposition to adopt ITG mechanisms increases the changes in the governance process, which are understood as significant by the organization. In addition, it is important to consider the impact of change on individuals, due to ITG adoption. This reinforces that ITG is not just about the IT department, but also refers to its adoption and use throughout the organization as a key resource for the implementation of public policies and for following governmental strategies.

The predictive capacity of the proposed relationship model requires a larger number of confirmatory studies. Its application is suggested in other federative units or in private organizations.

OCB increases the predisposition to adopt ITG mechanisms, provided they understand that changes in the governance process are important to the organization. The change impact on individuals due to ITG adoption is also relevant, which shows that ITG is not only about the IT department, but also about IT adoption and its use throughout the organization.

The paper helps understanding the behavioral effects on the effectiveness of the GTI, since the simple adoption of GTI mechanisms does not guarantee that they are effective in achieving its objective of responding to governmental demands.