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As demands on global water resources intensify, battles are emerging over water ownership and governance. Evidence to support opposing views is scarce, however, especially with respect to the impact of ownership on water quality. Using a data set of 168,823 municipal water systems in the United States from 2010 to 2014, we find evidence that stakeholder attention moderates the effect of ownership on compliance with drinking water quality standards. Private systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with system size, consistent with greater social movement pressure, while public systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with local educational attainment, consistent with greater responsiveness to stakeholder attention and concern.

Organizations are increasingly confronted with legitimacy threats related to the perceived social costs of their business activities. Despite a significant amount of research on the responses of individual organizations, surprisingly limited attention has been paid to the collective activities firms may engage to address such issues. In this paper, we use institutional theory as a lens for an exploratory case study of Issue-Based Industry Collective (IBIC) action in the alcohol industry. Our findings identify a new organizational form, the IBIC and inspire new research avenues at the intersection of business collective action, social issues, and institutional theory.

Public administration as an aspect of governmental activity has existed as long as political systems have been functioning and trying to achieve program objectives set by the political decision-makers. Public administration as a field of systematic study is much more recent. Advisers to rulers and commentators on the workings of government have recorded their observations from time to time in sources as varied as Kautilya's Arthasastra in ancient India, the Bible, Aristotle's Politics, and Machiavelli's The Prince, but it was not until the eighteenth century that cameralism, concerned with the systematic management of governmental affairs, became a specialty of German scholars in Western Europe. In the United States, such a development did not take place until the latter part of the nineteenth century, with the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” generally considered the starting point. Since that time, public administration has become a well-recognized area of specialized interest, either as a subfield of political science or as an academic discipline in its own right.

How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of many new technologies. In this chapter, we study the emergence of the US nanotechnology field, focusing on uncovering the mechanisms by which leaders of the National Nanotechnology Initiative managed hype and its concomitant legitimacy challenges which threatened the commercial viability of nanotechnology. Drawing on the cultural entrepreneurship literature at the interface of strategy and organization theory, we argue that the construction of a naturalizing frame – a frame that focuses attention and practice on mundane, “rationalized” activity – is key to legitimating a novel and uncertain technological field. Leveraging the insights from our case study, we further develop a staged process model of how a naturalizing frame may be constructed, thereby paving the way for a decrease in hype and the institutionalization of new technologies.

Employees are increasingly speaking out against their employer on relevant social issues, which raises the human factor to a next level in organisational affairs. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the concept of employee activism and locate it in the academic and professional discussion about employees' active role as organisational communicators. After scrutinising some of the most popular cases from recent years, the relevant literature in the fields of social activism and employee communication as well as strategic organisational communication and public relations is critically reviewed with the idea to (1) provide a terminological clarification regarding employee activism, (2) outline the unique characteristics of its current forms, (3) discuss several factors that may trigger externally directed employee activism and (4) elaborate on the communicative nature of this phenomenon as well as its implications for organisational development and reputation. As a result, five propositions are suggested to explain what constitutes employee activism as a specific form of employee communication behaviour. The chapter also calls particular attention to related risks and opportunities for organisations and opens up questions for further research.

The time is right for renewed and updated attention to the relationship between public relations (PR) and human resources (HR) departments in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. For too long, conflict between the two practice areas has obscured opportunities for collaboration which benefits organizations and stakeholders. This chapter offers theoretical underpinnings for examining an interdepartmental, cross-unit working relationship between HR and PR – and advances a vision for why it is needed now.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider a public value(s) approach as a response to the challenges besetting public management and to investigate the implications of such an approach for management education.

The chapter investigates the concepts of public value and public values and their influence on the norms and practices of public management. It then focuses on the way in which management education has responded to a changing context resulting in innovation and realignment in order to enable public managers to espouse public values and achieve public value. The chapter concludes by exploring the philosophical and practical impact of a public value(s) approach in mid-career public management education.

A public value(s) approach provides not only a relevant discursive framework for public managers but also an appropriate mode of management for the changeable context in which they work. This changes their expectations of mid-career education and influences programme content and pedagogy, enabling innovation and experimentation.

The chapter identifies and analyses the benefits, outcomes and challenges of the public values(s) approach in the mid-career classroom.