How to Make the Mix Matter: A Case Study of Post-Transformational Leadership in Hybrid Public Management

The purpose of this article is to explain how public managers can influence the mix of institutional logics in a process of organizational change. To do this, the concept of post-transformational leadership is related to institutional logics. The article is based on a case study of the Danish Crime Prevention Council. The study shows how post-transformative leaders are urged to move from strategies of collaboration to strategies of manipulation, hypocrisy, and the hijacking of institutional logics.     

Public Administration Reform and Its Implications for Foreign Petroleum Companies in Kazakhstan

Since 2000, Kazakhstan has followed the New Public Management reform trajectory in modernizing its public sector and public service delivery. This article employs an actor-centered perspective to examine the effects of the public administration reform and its implications for foreign petroleum companies in Kazakhstan. The study builds on primary sources in the form of 81 semi-structured interviews with public servants, representatives of foreign petroleum companies and experts. The main conclusion is that the reform effects are ambiguous. Despite some success in greater efficiency of public services, many weaknesses remain, with highly varying implications for foreign petroleum companies.     

Urban Regeneration Policy from the Integrated Urban Development Model in the European Union: an Analytical Approach Based on the Study of Spanish Cities

For several years, local governments have been tackling new challenges related to the regeneration of their cities within the physical sphere, as well as in their economic and social aspects. This task is developed in accordance with what has been called the Integrated Urban Development Model, understanding the integrated nature of this approach not only in terms of the spheres of public policy involved, but also in relation to their management. In this paper, this management is analysed in terms of the development of mechanisms for New Local Governance and New Public Management (NPM). Using Spanish municipalities as a case study, this paper develops an analytical tool for the analysis of this model of urban intervention within the European context, paying close attention to the development of mechanisms for New Local Governance from a multilevel perspective, as well as the development of mechanisms for NPM.     

Intergovernmental Grants and Public Expenditures: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

The relationship between intergovernmental grants and public expenditures is one of the most studied phenomena in the local public finance literature. However, little is known about whether the impact of unconditional grants is fundamentally different from that of other sources of municipal revenue. We study this question by means of a large-scale randomised survey experiment among Danish local politicians, which allows for a comparison of the impact of changes in various sources of municipal revenue. Our findings challenge the conventional conception in the public finance literature that money works differently depending on which sector they are generated in. Instead, ideology plays an important role in explaining how local politicians want to allocate resources when faced with changes in local government revenue.     

Transparency and Public Value—Analyzing the Transparency Practices and Value Creation of Public Utilities

This article examines to what extent transparency is a condition for the creation of public value. Transparency is usually narrowly defined as a tool for external stakeholders to monitor the internal workings of an organization, but public value management positions transparency as a broader instrument for actively engaging stakeholders. We investigate empirically whether transparency is indeed necessary to create public value, distinguishing between transparency about operational capacity, authorizing environment, and value proposition. We find that more transparent public organizations achieved higher public value scores, especially if they disclosed information about the design and dynamics of their authorizing environment.     

Corporate policy entrepreneurship and cross-boundary strategies: How a private corporation champions mobile healthcare payment innovation in China?

The private nature of corporate actors does not necessarily preclude them from contributing to public interest. When business strategies and genuine public motivation are favorably aligned, corporate actors from the private sector can also drive public sector innovations. For a private corporation, policy entrepreneurship inherently entails crossing not only the public–private boundary but also various policy domains. This study formulates five propositions to characterize the cross-boundary strategies of corporate policy entrepreneurship, a distinct form of policy entrepreneurship in a developing authoritarian state. The case study of mobile healthcare payment innovation in China finds that the corporate entrepreneur used a series of cross-boundary strategies adeptly that eventually made the innovation not only adopted in one locality but also rapidly diffused nationwide. These strategies were not used in isolation or in a pure stepwise fashion but appeared to be recursive and interactive, suggesting the dynamic nature of corporate policy entrepreneurship in a multilevel governance system. More studies could be done to further examine strategies and processes of other forms of policy entrepreneurship in various national and sectoral settings.     

The use of mindfulness to promote ethical decision making and behavior: Empirical evidence from the public sector in Thailand

The study has two main purposes. First, the study explores core ethical values and behaviors from the perspective of Thai public service organizational leaders. Second, the study investigates the extent to which public sector leaders in Thailand consider Buddhist-based mindfulness practice to be a potentially effective mechanism for reinforcing core ethical values and behaviors in the public sector in Thailand. Using interview data derived from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 senior public sector officials in Thailand, the analysis elicits four dimensions of core ethical values and behaviors that are perceived by Thai public service organizational leaders as central to ethical behavior in the public sector. The study also sheds light on the interviewees' positive perceptions towards mindfulness and the role its associated practices can play in promoting ethical decision making and behavior in the public sector in Thailand.     

Diffusion models over the life cycle of an innovation: A bottom-up and top-down synthesis approach

The diffusion models tend to be tested individually in isolation and remain the same over time for the studied innovations in the literature. Moreover, there is growing interest to learn from other countries in our current age of globalization. Therefore, this paper chooses the innovation of public resources trading platforms in China to fulfill above literature gaps. We have examined key events and the issuances of related laws and regulations by Chinese governments. Our contributions are twofold: (a) Our analysis and results show that the diffusion models evolve over the different stages of a life cycle of an innovation, contrasting to the literature results that diffusion models remain the same for their studied innovations. Due to major diverse characteristics among different adopter categories over a life cycle of an innovation, we argue that it is appropriate and necessary to apply different diffusion models on different adopter categories, which is missing in the current literature. (b) We find a first bottom-up and then top-down synthesis approach as an effective, efficient diffusion process for both fitting local needs (i.e., effective) and adopting innovations rapidly nationwide (i.e., efficient).     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

Public service ethics,values and spirituality in developing and transitional countries: Challenges and opportunities

Concerns over the unethical conduct of leaders and public officials have led to the renaissance of interest in public service ethics and values. Although national and organizational systems and structures have been instituted to either eradicate or ameliorate unethical behaviours in the public service of countries, the practice still persists with devastating consequences. As one way forward, spirituality has been touted as having the potential of stimulating the moral thoughts of individuals who are dealing with ethical issues, thereby reducing unethical behaviour and generating positive organizational behaviour. Drawing from the perspectives of developing and transitional countries, this special issue empirically examines the extent to which ethics, values and spirituality can reduce unethical behaviours.