How to increase citizen coproduction: replication and extension of existing research

ABSTRACT

The value of coproduction—the joint productive efforts by regular producers, such as teachers, and consumer producers, such as parents, in helping children to learn—has been recognized for some time. However, strong empirical evidence of how these benefits can be achieved is scarce, and recent research has found mixed results. A new randomized field trial replicates elements of previous studies and extends them by using an additional age-appropriate outcome measure. Methodologically, the results illustrate the challenges of carrying out replication studies because when target groups change, outcome measures also often change. Substantially, the findings suggest that a government initiative providing parents with materials and information to enhance parents’ coproduction efforts can be extended to a broader target group of parents. Together, the findings illustrate how findings from single studies should be generalized with caution and the value of working systematically with replications and extensions.     

The role of imprinting on the adoption of diversity management in German universities

This study questions the universal effect of organizational imprinting and argues that the relevance of the imprint differs across organizations' administrative levels. Specifically, this study analyses how institutional founding conditions affect the adoption of diversity management, as a method of responding to increasing institutional pressure to conform to a logic of inclusion and equality in institutions of higher education. Focusing on 112 universities in Germany, results show that the imprint does not affect the adoption of diversity management in general but does so at higher administrative levels. Through a discussion of these findings, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how imprinting affects organizations. Further, it contributes to a better understanding of factors that influence the diffusion of diversity management in universities.     

Revolutions without guerrillas

While most scholars and policy analysts have long focused on guerrilla warfare as the predominant model of revolution, it has actually been revolutions without guerrillas that have toppled regimes throughout the world in the past decade. The 1989 popular uprisings in Eastern Europe that marked the end of more than 40 years of Communist rule were only the latest manifestation of a trend that had seen governments fall from Iran to the Philippines. Among the key differences between traditional insurgencies and the growing phenomenon of revolutions without guerrillas is the sudden and explosive nature of the latter. Whereas it may take an insurgency years, or even decades, to reach a point of ‘crisis’, thereby allowing sufficient time to design policy, supply weapons, or create strategies, in this new situation governments can be toppled in a matter of weeks and countries can become paralyzed overnight. Popular uprisings also tend to be less ideological and usually less violent than guerrilla campaigns. This article, which is a policy‐oriented study, outlines the characteristics of this phenomenon and discusses its implications for US interests in the 1990s.