Erik Hans Klijn

Erasmus University Rotterdam | EUR · Department of Public Administration and Sociology

This article studies in how far participation of stakeholders enhances their active support for place brands, conceptualized in this study as Brand Citizenship Behavior (BCB). Combining insights from governance and branding theory this article uses survey data (N = 162) among stakeholders involved in branding processes of two Dutch regions. The ana...

As worldwide institutions acknowledge the necessity of digital, open, and collaborative governments, this timely book offers a comprehensive exploration of digital transformation, intergovernmental collaboration, collaborative governance, and public sector innovation. "Collaborating for Digital Transformation" highlights how collaborations between...

Collaborative and network governance assume that network management and trust matter for network outcomes. We test this assumption by conducting a meta-analysis of public administration studies investigating the correlation between network management and network outcomes (50 effect sizes), and trust and network outcomes (28 effect sizes). While bot...

This article reports findings of a Q Methodology study in which we explored the opinions of employees from eight Dutch regulatory agencies on how agencies gain their reputation. This is the largest study to date examining employee's views on the relative importance of different factors in reputation acquisition by public organizations, and the firs...

Regulatory agencies work in a rapidly changing context: their activities are under increasing scrutiny, in which they intensively interact with societal stakeholders, such as media, labor associations, and grassroots organizations. In this article, we argue these (societal) stakeholders have the potential to take on the role of a surrogate inspecto...

The importance of stakeholder involvement in place branding is emphasized in recent literature. However, ideas about how this should be managed are underdeveloped. To address this gap, we draw from network management theory and compare the management of two region branding processes (top-down vs bottom-up). We find that the choice of network manage...

This article examines the impact of partnership design on technological innovation in public‐private innovation partnerships. It develops two competing hypotheses on how specific partnership characteristics lead to innovation in health care services. The study compares 19 eHealth partnerships across five European countries and uses fuzzy‐set qualit...

In this article we raise the question whether servant leadership became more important for performance and work-life balance satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two alternative hypotheses are formulated stating that on the one hand the impact of servant leadership may have increased during COVID-19 as servant leadership can help in dealing w...

While the literature on public-private collaboration in large infrastructure projects stresses both contractual and relational governance mechanisms for good outcomes, less attention has been paid to the role of boundary spanners and the way the contract is enforced in practice. This study contributes by bringing in the concept of contractual fairn...

IMPACT How should complex infrastructure projects be managed? A survey of practitioners in public–private partnership (PPP) projects and 35 interviews with these practitioners provided a detailed picture of the management of these projects. The survey research revealed that strict contract management (monitoring performance criteria and sticking to...

Involving users in innovating public services is an increasingly common, but challenging practice, as users often have different viewpoints on their own role in the process. Particularly in complex innovation arrangements such as public-private collaborations, governments and service innovators need to be aware of users’ perceptions of their involv...

The book and chapter can be found here: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/assessing-the-performance-advantage-of-public-private-partnerships-9781800889194.html.

This article presents an ex-post evaluation of the performance of Dutch Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) infrastructure projects compared to Design and Construct (D&C) contracts, which uses quantitative (financial project data and survey) and qualitative (interviews) data. Drawing on institutional theory, notably the economic institutionalism i...

Across Europe, public employment services are experimenting with more holistic and cross‐sector collaborations to tackle the wicked problem of long‐term unemployment. These collaborations operate in a context characterised by tensions produced by multiple demands for accountability. Based on case studies of the accountability relations and challeng...

Existe-t-il une relation entre le style d’inspection et la perception du risque de mise en cause chez les fonctionnaires de terrain ? Dans cet article, nous répondons à cette question en nous appuyant sur une enquête ( n = 507) réalisée auprès d’inspecteurs de l’autorité néerlandaise de la sécurité des aliments et des produits. Nous avons inclus le...

This article analyses whether emotional intelligence (EI) of street level bureaucrats, in this case inspectors, predicts their individual performance. It also explores whether emotional intelligence predicts the aggression inspectors face, and if this explains the relation between EI and performance. Our survey among 547 inspectors that measures th...

In the private sector branding has evolved as a crucial strategy to present and sell products. Brands are used to create consumer loyalty by adding associations, and attaching feelings and emotions to products (Arvidsson 2006). Also, in the public sphere brands are being used more frequently (Eshuis and Klijn 2012). They are used to change percepti...

Public-private partnerships are a vehicle used a lot by governments all around the world. When it was introduced the idea relied a lot on economic reasoning in which contracts, monitoring and performance criteria were important to achieve results. But from the beginning PPP’s were a hybrid idea because there were also assumptions about collaboratio...

This article examines the conditions for achieving output legitimacy in branding processes. Branding is a governance strategy that, according to branding and governance theory, relies heavily on involving, and collaborating with, actors. This research, based on a qualitative comparative analysis of 30 companies involved in a place branding campaign...

Karens et. al (2016) conducted an experiment to measure the effect of the European Union (EU) brand on citizens’ trust in policies. Experiments conducted with economics students in Belgium, Poland, and The Netherlands showed a consistently positive and significant effect of applying the EU brand, on trust in the policies. This study presents seven...

Het evaluatierapport over vijftien jaar DBFM-contracten in de infrasector geeft wel degelijk waardevolle inzichten voor de toekomstige samenwerking. Dat schrijven de onderzoekers in hun blog voor Infrasite, waarmee ze reageren op een eerdere kritische bijdrage van Jan de Bont. 'DBFM-evaluatie rapport EUR is visieloos en trekt aanvechtbare conclusie...

This article analyzes the relation between leadership style of managers and the enforcement style of street level bureaucrats. We also studied the influence of organizational culture. The analysis is based on a survey among 549 inspectors of the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) in The Netherlands. Studying transactional leadership...

Public branding is a new governance strategy in the public sector. Local governments, for instance, use brands to attract specific target groups to the city, like companies, tourists, or citizens. But how do target groups actually value this governance strategy? This article, specifically, zooms in on the purpose of branding, as perceived by compan...

Is there a relation between street-level bureaucrats’ enforcement style and their perception of the risk of getting blamed? This article answers this question on the basis of a survey ( n = 507) among inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Product Safety Authority. We included perceived media attention on their work as a factor that might influence...

In public‐private partnerships (PPPs), the collaboration between public and private actors can be complicated. With partners stemming from different institutional backgrounds and with different interests, governing these partnerships is important to ensure the projects' progress. There is, however, little knowledge about the perceptions of professi...

As indicated in the research on networks over the past 10 years, network management strategies are very important for achieving results in governance networks. But what characteristics influence the deployment of network management strategies? Using quantitative data on network managers in environmental projects at the local level, this paper looks...

This article compares views of policy officials and members of community-based collectives on the ideal role of government in processes of community self-organization. By using Q methodology, we presented statements on four different governance perspectives: traditional public administration, New Public Management, network governance, and self-gove...

Improving public health requires multiple intervention strategies. Implementing such an intervention mix is supposed to require a multisectoral policy network. As evidence to support this assumption is scarce, we examined under which conditions public health-related policy networks were able to implement an intervention mix. Data were collected (20...

In explaining public–private partnership (PPP) performance, both contractual and relational conditions play a role. Research has shown that these conditions may complement each other in successful PPPs. However, which specific combinations of conditions and how these combinations may influence PPP performance remains unclear. Building on the ideas...

Introduction: public managers coping with commercialised media Society and governance processes have become very complex, and many authors argue that most service delivery and public decision-making takes place within networks of interdependent actors, characterised by complex decision and interaction processes and requiring collaborative leadershi...

This article shows how an emerging risk is covered by the media and how this interacts with political attention and policy implementation. Gas drilling has resulted in earthquakes in the Netherlands over the past 25 years. We show that an increase in the frequency and magnitude has not stimulated greater media attention. Media and political attenti...

Le besoin de comprendre l’innovation dans le cadre du secteur public se fait de plus en plus sentir. Il y a aussi la nécessité de développer la théorie, de la tester de manière empirique et de comparer les choses d’un pays à l’autre. Avec le présent article, notre intention est de comprendre les facteurs qui ont une influence sur la capacité d’inno...

Governments use different regulatory instruments to ensure that businesses owners or “inspectees” comply with rules and regulations. One tool that is increasingly applied is disclosing inspectees’ performance information to other stakeholders. Disclosing performance information has consequences for street-level bureaucrats because it increases the...

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are often regarded as the solution for time and budget overruns in large infrastructural projects, but not all are successful. This raises the question of what really makes PPPs work. Focusing on the role of relational aspects, this article examines the degree to which trust and managerial activities correlate to...

Using a new analytical tool, supervised machine learning (SML), a large number of newspaper articles is analysed to answer the question how newspapers frame the news of public risks, in this case of earthquakes caused by gas drilling in The Netherlands. SML enabled the study of 2265 news articles published over a period of 25 years. Our study shows...

This article looks at the influence of media attention on governance processes and explores some new thoughts to incorporate in our theory building on governance. It systematically discusses recent theories about mediatization and connects them to what we know about governance in the field of Public Administration. The article identifies a tension...

This article analyses whether involving various stakeholder groups in place marketing has effects on the content of place brands, and on how place marketing influences other policy fields, i.e. spatial planning and tourism/leisure policies. The research applies structural equation modelling to nationwide surveys in the Netherlands and Germany among...

This article explores how place reputation is affected by two strategies that are frequently incorporated in a strategic place branding framework. The first strategy is stimulating an open place brand process in which there are more than enough opportunities for an open debate and discussion in the process of developing and implementing a place bra...

The need to understand innovation in public sector environments is growing. There is also a need to build theory, test it empirically and compare across jurisdictions. This article aims to understand the factors that have an impact on innovation capacity. It examines the self-rated innovation capacity of three European city governments – Barcelona,...

Policy coordination and integration, trust, management and performance in public health-related policy networks: a survey Intersectoral policy networks may be effective in dealing with complex public health problems. Their performance is assumed to depend on network management and trust, as well as on integrated public health policy (i.e. policy co...

Publiek-private samenwerkingen (PPS) kunnen synergie opleveren ten opzichte van traditionele samenwerkingen. Ze bieden bijvoorbeeld ruimte voor het creëren van efficiëntere oplossingen en een integrale aanpak van verschillende ruimtelijke functies. Het lukt echter niet in elk PPS-project om synergie te bewerkstelligen. Dit artikel analyseert, op ba...

This article examines to what degree citizens and societal stakeholders are involved in Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects, what factors account for their involvement, and what the effects are on the performance and innovativeness of the projects. This research, based on a survey in 2014 consisting of 144 respondents involved in Dutch PPP pr...

Branding has become common in the public sector as brands are increasingly used to influence citizens’ associations with public organizations and public services. Using experimental research replicated in three European countries, this article investigates the effect of using the European Union (EU) brand on trust in polices. Experiments were condu...

Four significant features of public–private partnership (PPP) contracts are analysed to understand their impact on performance. These are whether the contract allows sanctions to be imposed; its complexity; its flexibility; and whether renegotiation is possible. The effects of these characteristics were investigated by surveying participants in all...

A public-private partnership (PPP) is an organizational arrangement in which knowledge and resources are pooled in order to realize outcomes. Although PPPs have become common practice in spatial planning and development, there is a continuous search for their ideal organizational form and management. This is fueled by the often poor performance in...

This article explores which leadership qualities public managers regard as important for public innovation. It is based on a survey of 365 senior public managers in Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Barcelona. Five perspectives on leadership were identified and tested using a number of items. Some of these proved to be more robust than others. Analysis of...

Governance networks are generally seen as a vehicle for dealing with complex societal issues, and in such networks trust is seen as an important condition that enhances information exchange and learning among actors, thereby improving network performance. In this article, we use survey material collected in three countries—Taiwan, Spain, and the Ne...

Governance Networks in the Public Sector presents a comprehensive study of governance networks and the management of complexities in network settings. Public, private and non-profit organizations are increasingly faced with complex, wicked problems when making decisions, developing policies or delivering services in the public sector. These activit...

Despite the importance of the media and the considerable literature on media logic and the mediatisation of politicians, there is very little research on effects of – as conceptualised here – commercialised media attention on network performance. To address this lacuna, the article draws on a survey of project managers involved in complex spatial p...

Intersectoral policy networks may be effective in dealing with complex public health problems. Their performance is assumed to depend on network management and trust, as well as on integrated public health policy (i.e. policy coordination and integration). We studied the role of network management and trust in the realization of integrated public h...

In this article, we empirically examine the relationship between connective management, democratic legitimacy, and network performance in governance networks around complex water projects in The Netherlands. Realizing effective and legitimate solutions in such a context is highly challenging, as a variety of interests are at stake, and actors often...

Social innovation in the public sector has become an important focus for governments around the world over the last decade, as they try to solve intractable policy problems. The pressure on governments to do more with less in response to shrinking budgets and expanding community expectations and obligations has increased attention on how the public...

This policy brief presents the findings of the first work package (WP1) of the "Learning from Innovation in Public Sector Environments" (LIPSE) project. LIPSE is a research program under the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme as a Small or Medium-Scale Focused Research Project (2013-2016). LIPSE focusses on studying social innovations in...