Rethinking Public Organizations as Knowledge-Oriented and Technology-Driven Organizations

Public organizations should rediscover the role of knowledge as a source for designing and implementing internal processes and adopt a knowledge management approach by using and managing technology as means and enabler for building a citizen-centered public management, sustaining democratic and civic values by promoting openness and fostering participation in order to encourage collaboration with citizens for co-producing public services and co-creating public value. Information and communication technologies are driving public organizations as responsive institutions in front of the citizens to proceed towards sustainability as a principle of governance for promoting the public interest and sustaining active citizenship, enhancing both collaboration and interaction between citizens and public administration. Introducing and actively implementing technology in government helps rethink public organizations as knowledge oriented and information based organizations seeking sustainability by involving citizens, businesses and other stakeholders for public value creation, enabling access to information, sustaining openness, transparency and accountability in order to engage citizens and encourage them to be included and actively participate in democratic public life, involving citizens to assume the responsibility for co-production of public services and fostering citizen participation in public policy choices. Technology opens up new opportunities for public organizations seeking sustainability by rediscovering knowledge as source and strategic asset following a knowledge management approach for designing and implementing democratic and administrative processes, redesigning the relationship with citizens, building public trust, encouraging citizen participation and sustaining co-production of public services

The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area

The phenomenon of eParticipation is receiving increasing attention, demonstrated by recent technology implementations, experiments, government reports, and research programs. Understanding such an emerging field is a complex endeavor because there is no generally agreed upon definition of the field, no clear overview of the research disciplines or methods it draws upon, and because the boundaries of the field are undecided. Using conventional literature review techniques, we identify 131 scientific articles considered important for the field's theoretical development. This sample provides the starting point for a grounded analysis leading to the development of an overview model: the field of eParticipation seen from a researcher's perspective. The model provides structure for understanding the emerging shape of the field as well as an initial indication of its content. It also provides the basis for developing research agendas for the future

Professional Publics/Private Citizens: Human Rights NGOs and the Sponsoring of Public Activism

This dissertation examines the role of human rights Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in sponsoring public deliberation and activism. Activists who take part in an NGO’s campaigns encounter a system of genres that aligns their human rights literacies and discourse with the NGO’s ideological and organizational structure. The genres that activists use thus play a powerful socializing role, placing the discourse of activists within a complex context of organizational discourse that not only embodies specific human rights exigencies, but also specific organizational rationales for addressing those exigencies. Human rights NGOs, while often reflecting an ideology of a common, unified voice for human rights, are in fact heterogeneous networks of discursive agents that are linked together through complex interdiscursive exchanges. I argue that these rhetorical exchanges reflect a set of mediating rhetorical strategies that NGOs employ to translate their professional advocacy into terms and genres accessible to their membership and to their public activists. This analysis is developed from a case study of the organizational structure and discursive communities of Amnesty International (AI) and the influence of Amnesty‘s advocacy structures and techniques on the NGOs and social movements that lobby for human rights. Chapters one and two analyze the problem of discursive agency in discussions of global and transnational civil society, aligning critical discussions of the development of global public opinion with critiques of the growing professionalism of human rights NGOs. In chapter three, I trace the relationship of AI’s professional genres to the international institutions of human rights policy and law. Chapter four examines the activist genre system of Amnesty International and the role of professional discourse plays in framing opportunities for the activism of Amnesty’s members. I then turn in chapter five to an analysis of the multi-modal genres and web genres that AI has utilized to construct public awareness of its campaigns. Chapter six concludes the study by tracing out the implications of this analysis for theories of the public sphere and global civil society. I argue that genre analysis provides a means for understanding the social contexts, discursive agencies, and embodied literacies of contemporary public discourse