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While there is an urgent need for clean water in Ghana and Nigeria, governments lack the financial means to do much to address this need. This does not mean that improving access to clean water is impossible. On the contrary, this paper argued that engaging citizens through co-production, as is already being done in developed countries in the fields of care-giving, waste management, healthcare and community policing, could provide a successful strategy. The purpose of this paper is to examine how public water facilities are being managed to improve and sustain access to clean water for domestic use in rural areas in Ghana and Nigeria.

A survey interview with households and in-depth interviews with water professionals were conducted in Ghana and Nigeria to help the authors understand the practicalities of the co-production of clean water and how this is improving and maintaining access to clean water sources. The paper draws on a philosophical framework of “deep” citizen engagement to describe the merits of co-production and how it works in practice in developing countries.

Based on the interviews with officials and surveys among the population of rural areas in the two countries studied, the authors found that the two countries vary significantly in their approach to water management decisions and the extent to which citizens are involved. Ghana’s approach seems much more successful than Nigeria when it comes to maintaining boreholes for water supply with the help of the population. In Nigeria, three-quarters of the public water facilities are non-functional, while in Ghana, community involvement in maintaining public water facilities has resulted in the sustained use of boreholes and eliminated the lack of access to clean water in many communities.

This paper contributes to the practical understanding of co-production in developing countries and the potential of such co-production in improving clean water access. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous scientific research has studied how co-production can improve and sustain access specifically to clean water sources in developing countries, and this paper aimed to fill this gap.

This paper uses a social network approach to explore converging world‐systems hypotheses regarding the effects of increasing integration of socialist countries into the capitalist world economy since the height of the Cold War. Research on interdependence and other power relations among states in the world order cite the development of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and their expanding numbers as evidence of an evermore sophisticated network in which countries have unique positions related to their functioning in the world order. Theories of International Development and International Relations suggest that at the beginning of the Cold War, capitalist states and socialist states functioned in effectively mutually exclusive realms. The balance of power between the US and the USSR perpetuated a world order in which, for the most pan, capitalist states did not engage in political or economic relations with socialist states and vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework integrating theoretical insights, empirical research and practical advice emerging from public service motivation (PSM) and self-determination theory (SDT). It aims at demonstrating that, while PSM shows the relevance of public values for motivation, SDT explains how context affects it. Taking the two theoretical approaches as complementary to one another and by pointing out their “static” and “dynamic” features, the framework provides a theoretical foundation for organizational practices aimed at enhancing motivation in the public services.

The framework is based on a review of PSM and SDT theoretical concepts and empirical studies; the analysis examines the implications and contributions of each approach to the understanding of motivation in the public services.

The paper demonstrates that PSM and SDT are complementary theoretical approaches and that this complementarity can provide clearer guidance to practitioners and widen the understanding of motivation in the public services.

The framework considers only a few features pertaining motivation in the public services, such as public values, basic needs satisfaction, prosocial behaviour and socialization. Further research should explore additional factors.

The framework provides an explanation of why some practices are likely to enhance motivation in the public services, while others are likely to deplete it.

The framework does not limit itself to proposing the theoretical integration of PSM and SDT, but connects this integration to organizational practices.

Inpatient violence can have a major impact in terms of traumatic experiences for victims and witnesses, an unsafe treatment climate, and high-financial costs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into patterns of violent behavior, so that adequate preventive measures can be taken.

Data on inpatient violence in a Dutch forensic psychiatric hospital between 2008 and 2014 were extracted from hospital files on 503 patients.

More than half of all the patients (n=276, 54.9 percent) displayed verbal aggression on at least one occasion, whereas 27.2 percent of all patients (n=137) exhibited one or more incidents of physical violence. Female patients were responsible for more physically violent episodes than male patients. Patients admitted with a civil court order exhibited more violent behavior than patients with a criminal court order. Violent patients with a civil commitment had a significantly longer length of stay than non-violent patients with a civil commitment. More violence was found to take place on the earlier days of the week.

This study points at important differences between groups of forensic inpatients in frequency and type of inpatient violent behavior and in temporal factors. Interventions aimed at reducing the number of violent incidents should take these differences into account. Further research is necessary to gain more insight into the background of inpatient violence.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the analysis of corruption must distinguish between corruption in organizations where this kind of behaviour is widespread and corruption in organizations where it is rare, and must also distinguish between corruption as the outcome of an economic cost-benefit analysis and corruption induced by social-psychological factors.

This is a conceptual paper.

In order to be effective in combating corruption, a fit is needed with the main determinants of corrupt behaviour: first, at the individual level in which either personal morality, social or economic considerations are at stake; second, at the organizational level in which social-psychological factors might be determinative; and third, at the contextual level in which economic prosperity, the nature of the political system and cultural features are important.

Especially in systems where corruption is widespread, policymakers could benefit from theories in social psychology to combat corruption.

To see corruption as the result of an individual cost-benefit analysis or as a lack of morality often misses the point in cases of widespread corruption.

The paper points at the added value of social psychology approach to corruption as compared to the approaches at present dominant in public administration.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the idea that new public management (NPM) would be passé.

The article is based on a review of existing theories.

The article argues that NPM has two dimensions, namely the minimization of the role of government vis-à-vis society and the improvement of the internal performance of the public sector. Whereas the first dimension is indeed more and more disputed nowadays this does not imply this also goes for the second dimension. The conclusion of this article calls for explanatory empirical research in order to explain the increasing variance in reforms among countries, by investigating which factors are determinative for decisions by governments to turn one way or the other.

It is far from certain which way the public sector is heading in the so-called post-NPM era. Some countries are still implementing NPM-kind of reforms, either by downsizing or by introducing performance management. Other countries have chosen alternative paths. All this implies an increased variance between countries in the direction public sector reforms take. It requires quite different support from administrative sciences compared to the one-size-fits-all recommendations for public sector reforms – in conformity with the maxims of NPM – as witnessed in the past decades.

The article contributes to the discussion about the role of NPM today. It presents original conclusions about diverging developments based on the unique comprehensive literature review on the topic.

This study conducted among 751 employees of the Dutch Postal Service examined (1) the prevalence of various types of work‐home interaction, (2) the relationships of (these various types of) work‐home interaction with selected work and home characteristics, and (3) the relationships of (these various types of) work‐home interaction with two health indicators (i.e., fatigue and health complaints). Results supported our assumption that workhome interaction is best characterized by a four‐dimensional structure crossing the distinction between the direction of influence (work → home influence (WHI) vs. Home → work influence (HWI)) and the quality of influence (negative vs. positive). The results further supported our hypotheses, derived from the Demand‐Control‐Support Model and the Effort‐Recovery Model: job demands were most strongly related to negative influence from work (negative WHI), and home demands were primarily (albeit weakly) related to negative influence from home (negative HWI). In accordance with our expectation, job control and particularly job support were associated with positive WHI. There was no support, however, for a similar facilitating process originating in the home situation: home control and home support were not related to any type of interaction. Furthermore, particularly negative WHI was associated with fatigue and health complaints. These findings add to the existing knowledge about possible antecedents and consequences of the interaction between work and private life.

Family governance mechanisms serve to govern and strengthen relations between the family and the business, as well as the relationships between the members of the business family itself. However, despite agreement on the importance of adopting family governance structures, explicit research on the determinants of family governance mechanisms is currently missing. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to uncover the determinants of family meetings. In order to do so, the social systems theory is used to unravel several determining factors of this crucial form of family governance mechanisms in private family firms.

The authors perform a qualitative study by conducting semi-structured interviews in eight Belgian private family firms in order to discover the antecedents of the implementation of family meetings. The authors use a pattern-matching technique as an analytical strategy.

The findings of the study highlight the importance of “soft,” relational, qualitative issues as antecedents of family meetings as opposed to previous research on family governance, which predominantly focused on “hard,” quantitative measures (e.g. family ownership). The findings of the study also provide novel insights into the origins of the family component (i.e. family meetings) of family business governance.

While the current literature has only focused on describing the different types of family governance and their positive consequences for the family firm, the authors take a step back to explain why family meetings, as a form of family governance, are adopted in the first place. Second, the authors demonstrate the instrumentality of the social systems theory in understanding the family's needs that necessitate the implementation of family governance mechanisms.

Drawing on the stakeholder theory, the purpose of this study is to examine relationships between family identity, emotional attachment and binding social ties, and commitment of family firm owners to the family enterprise in the context of an emerging economy. Furthermore, this study examines whether the strength of the above relationships significantly vary between the founder generation and the subsequent generation of owners.

A set of hypotheses is tested by applying partial least squares structural equation modeling on a sample of 357 family-owned manufacturing companies in Bangladesh. Deploying SmartPLS (v. 3.2), the path model is analyzed through bootstrapping procedure. The moderating effect is tested through multigroup analysis.

The findings suggest that the relationships between emotional attachment and family identity and commitment are positive and significant, whereas the association between binding social ties and commitment was not significant. Furthermore, a multigroup analysis revealed that there is a significant difference between the founder generation and their next generation in terms of influence of binding social ties and family identity on commitment, whereas there appears to be no difference in terms of emotional attachment and commitment between the two generations.

This study shows that compared to the founder generation, the next generation prioritizes family identity and social bonds, which leads to greater levels of collective commitment to the organization. Such knowledge may provide clues to incumbent family-firm leaders by identifying the areas where they need to emphasize in generating greater levels of commitment among their successors.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this appears to be the first such study that provides a nuanced understanding of how family generation in control of the family firm influences the relationships between psychosocial components of socioemotional wealth and collective commitment of the owners of family firms in the context of an emerging economy.

This paper aims to explore the meaning of smart office environments from a user perspective by investigating user preferences and expectations.

Eleven semi-structured interviews with the users after moving into a smart office building of a Dutch Municipality and an observation as complementary data were conducted. The data were analysed based on the grounded theory and thematic analysis, combining a reflexive approach to the literature review.

Two main themes were revealed addressing user expectations and preferences for smart office environments: “enhanced interaction” with the social and physical office environment and “sense-making” of the smart concept (or smartness). Within these themes, basic and smart office aspects were identified and classified based on their association with smart office concepts or technology.

The findings reveal the meaning of the smart office concepts from a user perspective by highlighting the importance of user experience on enhanced interaction and sense-making of the smart office concept, equipped with basic and smart aspects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to qualitatively examine drivers underlying the meaning of smart office concepts from a user point of view. Organisations, environmental psychologists, designers and managers can use the findings of this study to develop guidelines for a successful smart office design.