V. J. J. M. Bekkers

Erasmus University Rotterdam | EUR · Faculty of Social Sciences

The attention for applying design-oriented approaches in public administration has increased significantly. Applying design is seen as a promising way to deal with wicked problems and create more responsive policies and services. We aim to contribute to the debate on the value of design for public administration and the development of the latter in...

Introduction Public sector organisations face many intractable issues, such as climate change, migration and integration, chronic diseases, aging and inequality. These issues touch upon different interests and values and are surrounded with uncertainty and controversy. Furthermore, governments also face financial pressures, urging them to come up w...

In this chapter we will conceptualize the public policymaking process so it can be understood in relation to big data. First, we will discuss what politics and policy means within western representative democracies. Second, we will move towards the different approaches within public policymaking, allowing the reader to understand the policymaking p...

Before moving towards the policy process or even assessing what big data actually might impact within the policymaking process, we need to account for the background of big data. But there is a step before this as well. Before we can even look at big data and the way data is processed, stored and used, we need to look at the conceptualization of th...

In this chapter we will look at existing literature on big data and public policymaking and see which assumptions and conclusions are reached on the impact big data has on the public policymaking process. We will follow the lines of reasoning we have made within the previous chapter and therefore we will structure the effects of big data on public...

In this chapter we will deal with the DARE cases along the lines of the conceptual framework as demonstrated in Chap. 5 for the purpose of clarity. Before doing so we will sketch the background of the cases so the reader has some context.

In this chapter we will present our conceptual framework by which we will analyse our cases later. We will also present our analytical framework. Furthermore, we will explain and justify our methodology and introduce our cases.

In this chapter we will analyse the findings of the case studies in order to come to a conclusion about the impact of big data on public policy. In order to do so we will follow the lines of the conceptual framework as we did in the separate case chapters.

In this chapter we will explore the case of food security in Denmark. Like the previous chapter we will follow the lines of the conceptual framework in order to give an overview of all the involved variables. We will again start off with the background of the matter.

In this chapter we will look at the case of noise pollution in the larger Dublin area. We will follow the lines of the conceptual framework as we have done in previous chapters, starting with the background of the case.

Public managers often employ valuation tools to support policymakers. These tools are expected to rationalize decision-making. Using a vignette-based, randomized survey experiment with Flemish politicians, the authors study the effect of the type of valuation tool, valuation outcome, and asset salience on politicians’ willingness to sell public rea...

Policymakers and public managers need to identify, reflect and decide on public values for given policy issues. This process is defined as public values assessment (PVA). We conduct a systematic literature review (n=114 studies) on PVA, and employ a Strategy-as-Practice lens to analyze how the activity of PVA takes place in practice. Based on our i...

Public managers' decisions are affected by cognitive biases. For instance, employees' previous year's performance ratings influence new ratings irrespective of actual performance. Nevertheless, experimental knowledge of public managers' cognitive biases is limited, and debiasing techniques have rarely been studied. Using a survey experiment on 1,22...

Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated 600,000 Sina Weibo microblogs. This study reports on a study of Chinese citizens’ adoption of microblogs to interact with the government. Adoption results from trust and peer pressure in smaller-network ties (densely knit, pervasive social networks surroundin...

A growing body of scholars, educators and policy makers has argued for reconceptualising schools as “learning organisations” in the last 25 years as. However, a lack of clarity on the concept has hindered its advance in theory and practice. This study responds to this problem by developing a schools as learning organisations scale that expands and...

Translating medical evidence into practice is difficult. Key challenges in applying evidence-based medicine are information overload and that evidence needs to be used in context by healthcare professionals. Nudging (i.e. softly steering) healthcare professionals towards utilizing evidence-based medicine may be a feasible possibility. This systemat...

In this article we confront existing literature on barriers in big data implementation for policy making in municipal governments. We have conducted four cases in a Dutch municipality in which big data is implemented for policy solutions. This has led us to develop a new, comprehensive model which explains which barriers exist while making implemen...

Street-level bureaucrats – such as teachers, social workers and police officers – have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. In other words, they have autonomy, or discretion in their work. This chapter shows how a psychological perspective can be...

The attention for applying design-oriented approaches in public administration has increased significantly. Applying design is seen as a promising way to deal with wicked problems and create more responsive policies and services. We aim to contribute to the debate on the value of design for public administration and the development of the latter in...

In this paper we explore the influence of visualizations and the technologies used to create and distribute them on the process and outcome of public policymaking. We will analyze nine qualitative case studies, three on agenda setting, three on policy design and decision making and three on policy evaluation. We find that the choice of the technolo...

A stakeholder perspective on public sector innovation: Why position matters Studies on the adoption of innovations often treat an organization as a uniform entity. Such studies implicitly assume that perceptions regarding the adoption of an innovation are identical across the organization. However, organizational theory and change management litera...

Innovation in the public sector: Towards an open and collaborative approach Innovation in the public sector is high on the agenda of politicians, civil servants and societal organizations. This attention in practice is mirrored in an increasing number of scholarly articles. In this introduction to the special issue on public sector innovation, we d...

Innovation in the public sector is high on the agenda of politicians, civil servants and societal organizations. This attention in practice is mirrored in an increasing number of scholarly articles. In this introduction to the special issue on public sector innovation, we discuss how the scholarly perspectives on innovation have changed. Previously...

Although studies on policy transfer have expanded, a general and comprehensive understanding of policy transfer is lacking. This study offers an evidence-based explanation of policy transfer processes. We extracted constraining and facilitating factors from 180 empirical studies using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Met...

Western governments are increasingly trying to stimulate citizens to coproduce public services by, among other strategies, offering them financial incentives. However, there are competing views on whether financial incentives stimulate coproduction. While some argue that financial incentives increase citizens' willingness to coproduce, others sugge...

This article synthesizes the extensive literature on the diffusion and adoption of public sector innovations. Although various subfields within public administration have studied diffusion and adoption, these have tended to develop relatively independently. Hence, the lessons learnt in one area might not be evident elsewhere. We have therefore cond...

Many public organizations implement teleworking: an organizational innovation expected to improve the working conditions of public servants. However, it is unclear to what extent teleworking is beneficial for public servants. This study adds to the literature by studying the effects of teleworking on a day-to-day basis. We used a daily diary method...

Until now, explanations of citizens' online behaviors in the Western world have been scarce, with accounts of analyses of citizens' behaviors in authoritarian governance regimes in the East being even scarcer. This study contributes to the understanding of which factors contribute to citizens' use of social media in state-citizen communication patt...

Social innovation is increasingly considered as a valid strategy to change public service delivery, due to all kinds of social challenges. Examples are aging, unemployment, and globalization. It presupposes a ‘game change,’ in that it assumes equal partnerships between actors. We argue that whether the game is actually changing varies per country,...

Western governments are increasingly trying to stimulate citizens to ‘co-produce’ public services, among others, by offering them financial incentives. However, there are competing views on whether financial incentives stimulate co-production. While some argue it increases citizens’ willingness to co-produce, others suggest that it would decrease t...

Deelonderzoek Evaluatie Nationale Politie

Co-creation in public service delivery requires partnerships between citizens and civil servants. The authors argue that whether or not these partnerships will be successful depends on state and governance traditions (for example a tradition of authority sharing or consultation). These traditions determine the extent to which co-creation can become...

Co-creation – where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues – is increasingly considered as a fertile solution for various public service delivery problems. During co-creation, citizens are not mere consumers, but are actively engaged in building resilient societies. In this study, we analyze if and how state an...

Studies on the adoption of innovations often treat an organization as a uniform entity. Such studies implicitly assume that perceptions regarding the adoption of an innovation are identical across the organization. However, organizational theory and change management literature argue that organizations are composed of distinct groups that have diff...

When dealing with wicked problems, policymakers increasingly are confronted with three competing ‘knowledge claims’: the notion of evidence-based policy, alternative ‘commons knowledge’ created by citizens, and ‘fact-free’ politics. Consequently, the knowledge base for dealing with wicked problems is becoming increasingly contested. This paper anal...

Different bodies of literature deal with the question what constitutes innovation capacity of organizations and of inter-organizational collaborative arrangements or networks. These different streams highlight different aspects of innovation capacity. Within the literature on business administration, the issue of ambidexterity is emphasized: the ca...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceived value-relevance of open data published by the Dutch Inspectorate of Education in the parents’ choice of Dutch primary schools. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical data were collected through a mixed method strategy including quantitative and qualitative methods: quantitative s...

Western governments are retreating from the public domain and are actively seeking alternative forms of public service delivery. These forms are increasingly interactive and relying on the competences and expertise of citizens. Citizens are no longer considered as (just) end-users of public services, but are expected to be co-creators. Using the co...

Open government has become a prominent issue for governments in recent years. Many studies focus on the data published by governments (supply) instead of on the needs of potential users (demand). In this study, we investigated the perceived impact of open data provided by the Dutch Inspectorate of Education. The research question is what is the per...

The influence of the virtual public sphere in the policy process is not only dependent on the power of online media and the stakeholders who are using them. The responsiveness of governments to online policy debate is important as well. While some studies show examples of governments' responsiveness to the virtual public sphere, others find that on...

Research mainly looked at problems public professionals have with specific policy programmes. However, policies are not developed in a vacuum. Public professionals are often confronted with (a series of) policy changes, intended to refine, replace or complement other policies. This policy accumulation results in professionals having a certain predi...

This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are analysed based on the following themes: (1) the definitions of innovation, (2) innovation types, (3) goals of i...

Self-organization is a concept that is often used to legitimize a government’s retreat from sectors in which it has traditionally played a vital role. In this article, we analyse how the emergence of new welfare services is mutually shaped by factors that stimulate self-organization among citizens and by meta-governing interventions by local govern...

this research focuses on two innovative practices in the public sector. The first is eprocurement, which refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to carry out a number of stages of the procurement process, including search, sourcing, negotiation, ordering, receipt, and post-purchase review. This technology is relevant...

Policy makers are being charmed by the insights that behavioural sciences provide. In particular, they seem to embrace the concept of ‘nudge’, coined by Thaler and Sunstein. However, nudges are controversial. Some scholars and policy makers are much in favour, while others are harsh critics. Empirical and normative arguments stumble over each other...

Theoretical fragmentation in e-government studies hampers the further development of this field of study. This paper argues that a metatheory can reduce theoretical confusion. Ideas from the philosophy of the social sciences are used to develop a metatheory of e-government consisting of three dimensions: explaining/understanding, holism/individuali...

Citizens are becoming increasingly likely to challenge the knowledge bases underlying policy programmes that deal with risks. This paper investigates how participants in online discussions engage in interactions between expert knowledge, ‘commons knowledge’ and policy assumptions. The concept of ‘boundary objects’, arrangements that allow different...

The Social Innovation game, which is developed within the LIPSE project, is aimed at all parties who are interested in getting a better understanding of the complex nature of public sector innovations and collaborative public management. The game consists of a simulation with 11 players and a backward mapping exercise.

Social innovation is a recurring theme in public administration, in order to face contemporary socalled ‘wicked’ challenges like an ageing population and youth unemployment. Social innovation can be considered as a process of co-creation, since it seeks the collaboration of multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders bring in their own specific resou...

Frontline workers, such as teachers and social workers, often experience stress when delivering public services to clients, for instance because of high workloads. They adapt by coping, using such practices as breaking or bending rules for clients, or rationing services. Although coping is recognized as an important response to the problems of fron...

To understand public policy decisions, it is imperative to understand the capacities of the individual actors who are making them, how they think and feel about their role, and what drives and motivates them. However, the current literature takes little account of this, preferring instead to frame the decisions as the outcomes of a rational search...

This article brings together empirical academic research on public sector innovation. Via a systematic literature review we investigate 181 articles and books on public sector innovation, published between 1990 and 2014. These studies are analysed based on the following themes: (1) the definitions of innovation, (2) innovation types, (3) goals of i...

In contemporary Dutch society, the content and outcomes of policy analysis activities are shaped by three forces which play a role when discussing the nature of specific societal challenges for which policies have to be formulated. The first force which is relevant relates to the increasing need to formulate evidence-based policies. The second forc...

The Netherlands is often regarded as one of the strongholds of policy analysis, both in academia and in policymaking. Few countries have such a high density of institutes specialized in policy analysis and in few countries such institutes have played and continue to play such a key role in policymaking as in the Netherlands. Policy analysis clearly...

Innovation is key to ensuring that public sectors are able to deliver services efficiently and effectively while also creating a system that can cope with the many societal challenges that exist in today's world. In this compelling collection,contributors explore ways in which civil services are adapting to meet the many challenges they now face.

Traditionally, images have played an important role in politics and policy making, mostly in relation to propaganda and public communication. However, contemporary society is inundated with visual material due to the increasing ubiquity of media and visual technologies that facilitate the production, distribution and consumption of images in new an...

This article presents a systematic review of 122 articles and books (1987-2013) of co-creation / co-production with citizens in public innovation. It analyses a) the objectives of co-creation and co-production, b) its influential factors and c) the outcomes of co-creation and co-production processes. It shows that most studies focus on the identifi...

Public employees are confronted with various pressures, such as increased work demands and the need to implement controversial policies. This study uses work alienation and policy alienation models to analyze work and policy pressures. Based on a survey of 790 respondents, it was firstly found that work alienation results in less work effort and mo...

Street-level bureaucrats implementing public policies have a certain degree of autonomy – or discretion – in their work. Following Lipsky, discretion has received wide attention in the policy implementation literature. However, scholars have not developed theoretical frameworks regarding the effects of discretion, which were then tested these using...

In this article visual technologies and their use in three reconstructions after an incident are linked with accountability issues. Conclusions are drawn on the relation between administration, the choice of technology to create and distribute visual occurrences, and society and how visualizations are used to frame accountability issues.

Informatiegestuurd werken kan binnen de politie rekenen op draagvlak, maar de voorwaarden om het concept goed in de praktijk te brengen zijn nog niet op orde. De theoretische grondslagen van het IGP-concept werden op de werkvloer van de politiepraktijk onder de loep genomen in gesprekken met bijna honderd betrokken politiemensen, ambtenaren Openbar...

At the core of the concept of social innovation lies the active involvement of citizens into public service delivery. This involvement is often referred to as ‘co-creation’ or ‘co-production’. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview about the existing knowledge concerning the a) objectives, types and definitions of co-creation/co-produ...

Social media monitoring is gradually becoming a common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. The main purposes of social media monitoring are strategic control and responsiveness. Social media monitoring poses normative questions in terms of transparency, accountability and privacy. We investigate practices of social media monitoring...

Why does e-government look as it looks? One could argue that the explanatory power of many e-government studies is weak. In this article it is argued that the explanatory power of -government studies could be improved by making use of three bodies of knowledge: a) open innovation studies because ICT is an important source of innovation, b) technolo...

In this chapter, we explore the pressures faced by professionals when implementing public policy programs. This is relevant, as many of the pressures exerted on professionals are related to the policies that are implemented (Duyvendak et al. 2006; Freidson 2001). This chapter will specifically focus on the public professional in his relationship wi...

Over the past decade, public services have come under increasing pressure to perform like private-sector organisations. This study demonstrates that professionals have much leeway in coping with changes caused by IT developments, distributed knowledge and more demanding public which have all created new pressures on public services. The authors con...

In Western European welfare states, one of the uses of ICT is the delivery of integrated public services in social security. In order to do this, the deployment of ICT (especially in the back office) requires coordination among various central and local levels of government, and among social insurance executive institutions, welfare authorities, an...

In this chapter the potential of GIS oriented neighborhood websites in the Netherlands will be researched. This new way of location based e-government will be analyzed by conducting four case studies in which neighborhood websites hold a central position. Relevant questions include to what degree these websites improve service delivery on the side...

Nowadays, public policies often focus on economic values, such as efficiency and financial transparency. Public professionals often resist implementing such policies. We analyse this using the concept of ‘role conflicts’. We use a novel approach by conceptualizing and measuring role conflicts on the policy level, thereby linking policy implementati...

Nowadays, public policies often focus on economic values, such as efficiency and financial transparency. Public professionals often resist implementing such policies. We analyse this using the concept of ‘role conflicts’. We use a novel approach by conceptualizing and measuring role conflicts on the policy level, thereby linking policy implementati...

An examination of emerging forms of knowledge creation using Web-based technologies, analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective. Today we are witnessing dramatic changes in the way scientific and scholarly knowledge is created, codified, and communicated. This transformation is connected to the use of digital technologies and the virtualization...

The willingness of public professionals to implement policy programmes is important for achieving policy performance. However, few scholars have developed and tested systematic frameworks to analyse this issue. In this study, we address this by building and testing an appropriate framework. The aims have been: (1) to build a three-factor model (pol...

Why does e-government look as it looks? One could argue that the explanatory power of many e-government studies is weak. In this article it is argued that the explanatory power of -government studies could be improved by making use of three bodies of knowledge: a open innovation studies because ICT is an important source of innovation, b technology...

Currently, there is an intense debate on the pressures facing public professionals in service delivery. Several studies show increasing discontent among professionals toward policies they have to implement. In this article, we aim to contribute to this topic by analyzing this discontent of public professionals in terms of ‘policy alienation’. The p...

In opdracht van het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties is in de maanden oktober en november 2012 een beknopt onderzoek uitgevoerd naar: “Nationale wetten versus lokale besluiten: een spanningsveld voor burgemeesters”. Als eerste stap in het onderzoek is een nadere uitwerking van de onderzoeksvraag uitgevoerd. Deze nadere uitwe...

This chapter sets out to assess the success of the strategies that has been presented in this chapter to deal with the challenges of simultaneous fragmentation and interconnectivity. It reconsiders the main findings of the chapters in this volume, but also tries to go beyond these empirical findings and sketch a number of options that can be follow...

E-government studies can benefit from three theoretical discourses, when e-government studies want to increase their explanatory power. These discourses relate to innovation theory, the technology debate and the debate on the governance potential of ICT. An answer is given to the question why e-government looks as it looks as well as questions for...

This chapter starts by explaining the paradoxes, dilemmas and challenges that are connected with the simultaneous occurrence of fragmentation and interconnectivity. It then briefly introduces the backgrounds of fragmentation and interconnectivity in modern societies and describes how fragmentation and interconnectivity are manifested in the public...