1,721,064 research outputs found
Internal and external exploration for public service innovation-Measuring the impact of a climate for creativity and collaborative diversity on innovation
No full textPublic service innovation involves a process of creative exploration of new ideas, knowledge and perspectives. The article poses that creative exploration emerges from the combination of a climate for creativity that is active inside the organization, and collaborations with diverse actors that are present outside the organization. We test the effect of these conditions on innovation using data from the Australian Public Service. Our findings demonstrate that both a climate for creativity and collaborative diversity are positively related to innovation, yet a tipping point exists at which the positive effects of collaborative diversity on innovation turn negative.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (1244720N) This article has benefited from the interaction within the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Information-sharing in a turbulent Public sector: is more always better? Exploring information overload among civil servants during complex workplace changes
No full textIn today's turbulent public sector landscape, workplace changes have become the norm, often introducing uncertainty and a feeling of diminished control among civil servants. Information plays a pivotal role in helping employees navigate these changes successfully. However, as changes become more intricate, the information that civil servants encounter grows increasingly complex. Paradoxically, the well-intentioned influx of information can cause information overload, a state of stress arising when the volume of information available surpasses an individual's capacity to process it. Our analysis finds evidence of such a paradox, showing that information can become a hindrance during workplace changes, heightening stress levels
A reputational perspective on structural reforms: how media reputations are related to the structural reform likelihood of public agencies
No full textDespite recurrent observations that media reputations of agencies matter to understand their reform experiences, no studies have theorized and tested the role of sentiment. This study uses novel and advanced BERT language models to detect attributions of responsibility for positive/negative outcomes in media coverage towards 14 Flemish (Belgian) agencies between 2000 and 2015 through supervised machine learning, and connects these data to the Belgian State Administration Database on the structural reforms these agencies experienced. Our results reflect an inverted U-shaped relationship: more negative reputations increase the reform likelihood of agencies, yet up to a certain point at which the reform likelihood drops again. Variations in positive and neutral reputational signals do not impact the reform likelihood of agencies. Our study contributes to understanding the role of reputation as an antecedent of structural reforms. Complementing and enriching existing perspectives, the paper shows how the sentiment in reputational signals accumulates and informs political-administrative decision-makers to engage in structural reforms.Flemish Research Fund (FWO) [G042523N]; HORIZON ERC 2022 Advanced Gran
agencies? A dynamic panel data approach
No full textWhat happens to organizational rigidity when public organizations faced reputational threats over time? Do they take external criticism as incentives to become less rigid and more innovative and flexible through employee involvement and empowerment? Or do reputational threats paradoxically contribute to the very rigidity that is often stereotyped as inherent parts of government? Building on threat-rigidity theory, we test the temporal relation between reputational threats (both in terms of the direction of reputation and its turbulence) and organizational rigidity. We apply a dynamic panel data approach combining different data sources on 34 US agencies over a period of 13 years. The results show that organizational rigidity increased, both when reputations evolved negatively over time and when reputations evolved more turbulently. No combined effect of negative reputations and reputational turbulence was observed. Both sources of reputational threats independently precluded organizations from creating a climate of employee empowerment, involvement, flexibility, and innovation. Evidence for practice center dot Public organizations demonstrate higher degrees of organizational rigidity when their reputations were evolving negatively or more turbulently. center dot Negatively evolving reputations generate more organizational rigidity, even under conditions of rather stable (nonturbulent) evolution. center dot Turbulently evolving reputations generate more organizational rigidity, even when these reputations evolved in a neutral or positive direction. center dot The climate of reputational negativity that many public organizations face leads to an organizational climate that is more rigid. Managers have a clear role to play in these tendencies, by avoiding the urge in situations of uncertainty to centralize control, formalize procedures, and apply pressure on employees to conform to their directions.This paper would not have been possible without the previous data collection efforts of Luca Belllodi (see Bellodi, 2022) and Anthony Bertelli, Dyana Mason, Jennifer Connolly, and David Gastwirth (see Bertelli et al., 2015). We thank them for their efforts and willingness to make their data publicly available. This paper has benefited from discussion within the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence at the University of Antwerp
Agencies on the parliamentary radar: Exploring the relations between media attention and parliamentary attention for public agencies using machine learning methods
No full textThe news media frame political debate about public agencies, and enable legislators with incomplete information to monitor and act upon agency (mal)performance. While studies show that the news media matters for parliamentary attention, the contingent nature of this relation has been understudied. Building on agenda-setting theory, this study theorizes that the effect of newspaper coverage is contingent on the sentiment of coverage, the majority vs. opposition role of legislators, and the locus (committee vs. plenaries) of parliamentary questions. Supervised machine learning methods allow to code sentiment towards agencies in newspapers and parliament, after which a balanced panel relates these data to the questioning behavior of legislators in parliament over time. Results show that media attention for public agencies precedes parliamentary attention. Sentiment matters, as positive media attention, was related to (positive) parliamentary attention in the same month. Negative media attention had broader and more enduring influences on parliamentary questioning behavior.The research is funded by the Flemish Research Council, Grant 1244720N
The paper benefited from the flempar, an open source an R-package that provides an interface with the API of the Flemish parliament to retrieve its data (see https://www.flempar.be/). This paper also benefited from discussions within the GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Spiraling Out of Control? The Impact of Chronic Stress on Civil Servant Perceptions of the Frequency of Workplace Changes
No full textGlobal political and economic instability have highlighted the importance of resilient governments capable of managing rapid change. However, continuous changes can overwhelm civil servants, leading to change fatigue. While prior studies have explored the impact of perceived frequent change on civil servants' stress levels, little attention has been given to reverse causality in public management research. Psychological and neuroscience studies suggest that stress can influence individuals' perceptions of workplace changes. To address this gap, we examine the relationship between chronic stress and civil servants' perceptions of organizational change frequency. We analyze hair cortisol as a measure of chronic stress and survey data on change perceptions. Data were collected from 43 municipal civil servants at three points in time, offering a total of 129 observations. We find a significant effect of stress on perceptions of change frequency, shedding light on how stress shapes civil servants' perception of organizational change.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (BOF) under Grants 41466 (“Do structural reforms undermine organizational adaptability? A study of the impact of continuous reforms on decision-making within public organizations”) and 42338 (“Avoiding repetitive change injury: Can leadership behaviors mitigate the damaging side-effects of repetitive reforms?”)
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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