Search results

This article investigates the practical implementation of the ecosystem approach in different branches of public management within an urban context. It explores how ecosystem thinking is introduced, disseminated and applied in a local government organization.

We utilize a qualitative case study methodology, relying on official documents and expert interviews. Our study focuses on the city of Espoo, Finland, which has actively embraced ecosystem thinking as a fundamental framework for its organizational development for almost a decade.

The case of Espoo highlights elements that have not been commonly attributed to the ecosystem approach in the public sector. These elements include (1) the significance of complementary services, (2) the existence of both collaborative and competitive relationships among actors in public service ecosystems and (3) the utilization of digital platforms for resource orchestration. Our study also emphasizes the need for an incremental adoption of ecosystem thinking in organizational contexts to enable its successful implementation.

The study provides valuable insights into the introduction and dissemination of ecosystem thinking in public management. It also further develops previously developed hypotheses regarding public service ecosystems.

The paper aims to examine the state of electronic service delivery in Bangladesh. It reviews the structure and operation of the “e-service” centers at the district, sub-district (upazila), and union levels by taking an inventory and assessing their contributions.

The paper is based on a review of the functions and operations of the service delivery agencies with reference to the claims made by the government. It is based on secondary materials obtained from academic studies, government documents, relevant websites, and media reports.

Electronic delivery of public services in Bangladesh has not been effective as planned. There are issues regarding channels of communication, the competence of public officials, human and financial resources, and political will to support the agencies delivering public services.

The paper examines the arrangements, practices, and problems of delivery of public services in Bangladesh through e-service centers at the local levels to determine the progress and potentials of employing digital technology for addressing problems. It proposes the strategy for public service delivery by using digital technology in the country.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic on the public’s online information behaviour, offering insights critical for shaping effective informational responses in future public health emergencies.

This paper uses a structured online survey with 27 targeted questions using a five-point Likert scale to measure eight variables. Data analysis is conducted through structural equation modelling on 307 valid responses to rigorously test the research hypotheses.

This paper indicates that information quality significantly impacts the public’s capacity to select, share and use online information. Additionally, the comprehensibility of information plays a crucial role in shaping the public’s behaviours in terms of online information exchange and usage. The credibility of information sources emerges as a key determinant influencing the public’s online information selection, exchange and utilization behaviour. Moreover, social influence exerts a substantial effect on the public’s online information selection, acquisition, exchange and utilization behaviour. These findings highlight the presence of universality and sociality, mediation and guidance, as well as the purposefulness and selectivity performed by the public’s online information behaviour during an infodemic.

This paper introduces a novel research model for assessing the influence and identifies the patterns of the public’s online information behaviour during the COVID-19 infodemic. The findings have significant implications for developing strategies to tackle information dissemination challenges in future major public health emergencies.

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

Considering the significant increase in researchers’ interest in human resource management (HRM) in the public sector domain, this study aims to focus on producing a scale of HRM practices customized for the context of public organizations.

Experts and semantic analysis were performed for the scale development (qualitative stage), and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis through structural equation modeling was conducted for the scale validation (quantitative stage).

The public HRM practices scale (public HRMPS) is composed of 19 items, distributed along four factors/dimensions, named training, development and education; relationship; work conditions; and competency and performance appraisal. The scale showed evidence of internal and construct validity (convergent, divergent, criterion-related and discriminant), as well as reliability and content validity.

The public HRMPS can be applied in relational studies to test structural models of prediction, mediation and moderation to evaluate relationships with organizational behavior variables, such as leader-members exchange, engagement at work, life quality at work and well-being at work, among others.

The public HRMPS may also serve as a useful diagnostic tool for the decision-making process made by public managers so they can promote a strategic, evidence-based HRM. Furthermore, the transforming role of strategic HRM can be operationalized by adopting practices gathered in the public HRMPS, advancing toward new HRM strategies to promote healthier and more productive work environments.

Healthier and more productive environments translate into real impacts for society, the first beneficiary of public services with more quality, efficiency and accountability.

The public HRMPS is the first attempt to produce an operationally valid and reliable measure to evaluate strategic HRM practices, responding to calls in the literature concerning the need for an integrated, comprehensive and customized HRM practices scale for the public service context.

Although the Singapore model of ethnic integration through its public housing programme is well known, the formula for replicating its success elsewhere remains underexplored. This study aims to identify the criteria for successful transplantation, specifically by identifying the housing tenure types that are most amenable to the implementation of the Singapore model.

Through a comparative study of two common law jurisdictions – Singapore and England – this article highlights the differences in their housing landscapes and how such differences impact upon the adoption of ethnic integration policies through housing. The article also unpacks, through a cross-disciplinary lens, the concepts of public housing and housing tenures, drawing heavily on socio-legal and housing literature.

The authors observe that the implementation of ethnic integration policies is best justified and most easily achieved in leasehold estates that exhibit a strong tenurial relationship with the state retaining a more than notional role. Public housing in Singapore being an exemplar of this model, the implementation of its ethnic integration policy is relatively straightforward. By contrast, the shrinking public housing sector in England means that adoption of a similar policy would have limited reach. Even then, the political–legal environment in England that promotes home ownership is potentially hostile to the adoption of such policy as it may be seen as an infringement of private property right.

The cross-jurisdiction comparison is supplemented by an interdisciplinary analysis that seeks to bridge differences in the categorisation of tenure in housing and law literatures so as to promote cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Although governments have used social media platforms to interact with the public in an attempt to minimize anxiety and provide a forum for public discussion during the pandemic, governments require sufficient crisis communication skills to engage citizens in taking appropriate action effectively. This study aims to examine how the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) has used TikTok, the leading short video–based platform, to facilitate public engagement during COVID-19.

Building upon dual process theories, this study integrates the activation of information exposure, prosocial interaction theory and social sharing of emotion theory to explore how public engagement is related to message sensation value (MSV), media character, content theme and emotional valence. A total of 354 TikTok videos posted by NHCC were collected during the pandemic to explore the determinants of public engagement in crises.

The findings demonstrate that MSV negatively predicts public engagement with government TikTok, but that instructional information increases engagement. The presence of celebrities and health-care professionals negatively affects public engagement with government TikTok accounts. In addition, emotional valence serves a moderating role between MSV, media characters and public engagement.

Government agencies must be fully aware of the different combinations of MSV and emotion use in the video title when releasing crisis-related videos. Government agencies can also leverage media characters – health professionals in particular – to enhance public engagement. Government agencies are encouraged to solicit public demand for the specific content of instructing information through data mining techniques.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides researchers and practitioners with an opportunity to examine the effect of emergency policing on public trust in the police and augment our understanding. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana.

A multivariate binary logistic regression was utilized to assess the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana using national representative data.

Our analysis suggests that emergency policing positively influences public trust in the police in Ghana. Additionally, we observed that police-related issues such as corruption and professionalism, as well as demographic factors of the public, influence trust in the police. These observations are helpful for emergency policing and policy development in Ghana.

This study is unique because it uses national representative data to assess the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana. Furthermore, this study is among the first or among the few from Ghana and the sub-region to examine the nexus between health emergencies and policing.

This paper aims to fill gap in the literature and explore policy options for resolving the problems of accountability by framing three research questions. The research questions are (i) whether certain elements of Scott’s (2014) institutional pillars attenuate (accentuate) corporate and public accountability; (ii) whether the presence of ruling party-affiliated enterprises (RPAEs) create an increase (decrease) in the degree of corporate (public) accountability; and (iii) whether there is a particular form of ownership change that transforms RPAEs into public investment companies.

Using a qualitative research methodology that involves term frequency and thematic analysis of publicly available textual information, the paper examines Mechkova et al.’s (2019 forms of government accountability. The paper analyzes the gaps between the de jure and de facto accountability using the institutional pillars framework.

The findings of the paper are three. First, there are gaps between de jure and de facto in all three (vertical, horizontal and diagonal) forms of government (public) accountability. Second, the study finds that more than three fourth of the parties that contested the June 2021 election did have regional focus. They did not advocate for accountability. Third, Ethiopia’s RPAEs are unique. They have regional focus and are characterized by severe forms of agency and information asymmetry problems.

The main limitation of the paper is its exploratory nature. Extending this research by using cross-country data could provide a more complete picture of the link between corporate (public) accountability and a country’s institutional pillars.

Academic research documents that instilling modern corporate (public) governance standards in the Sub Sahara Africa (SSA) region has shown mixed results. The analysis made in this paper is likely to inform researchers and policymakers about the type of change that leads to better corporate (and public) accountability outcomes.

The institutional change proposed in the paper is likely to advance the public interest by mitigating agency and information asymmetry problems and enhancing government accountability. The changes make the enterprises investable, save scarce jobs, enhance diversity and put the assets in RPAEs to better use.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that uses the institutional pillars analytical framework to examine an SSA country's corporate (public) accountability problem. It demonstrates that accountability is a domestic and a (novel) traveling theory. The paper identifies the complexity of resolving the interlock between political institutions and business enterprises. It theorizes that it is impossible to instill modern corporate (public) accountability standards without changing regulatory, normative and cultural cognitive pillars of institutions. The paper contributes to the change management and public interest literature.

This paper aims to investigate the literacy corpus regarding the potential of big data to improve public decision-making processes and direct these processes toward the creation of public value. This paper presents a map of current knowledge in a sample of selected articles and explores the intersecting points between data from the private sector and the public dimension in relation to benefits for society.

A bibliometric analysis was performed to provide a retrospective review of published content in the past decade in the field of big data for the public interest. This paper describes citation patterns, key topics and publication trends.

The findings indicate a propensity in the current literature to deal with the issue of data value creation in the private dimension (data as input to improve business performance or customer relations). Research on data for the public good has so far been underestimated. Evidence shows that big data value creation is closely associated with a collective process in which multiple levels of interaction and data sharing develop between both private and public actors in data ecosystems that pose new challenges for accountability and legitimation processes.

The bibliometric method focuses on academic papers. This paper does not include conference proceedings, books or book chapters. Consequently, a part of the existing literature was excluded from the investigation and further empirical research is required to validate some of the proposed theoretical assumptions.

Although this paper presents the main contents of previous studies, it highlights the need to systematize data-driven private practices for public purposes. This paper offers insights to better understand these processes from a public management perspective.