Challenges as Game Changers for Collaborative Knowledge Incubation in the Public Sector

Harnessing the knowledge citizens and government employees are willing to share on social media applications in the public sector is one of the most difficult things to do in the era of Government 2.0. Every day thousands of citizens are commenting on government Facebook posts and blog entries or reshare information published on Twitter. Rarely has government the opportunity to harvest innovative ideas and knowledge that is published through these channels. The main reason for many agencies to set up an organizational account is still “to be where the people are.” Recently Open Innovation platforms have started to address this disconnect and are providing an easy access to participate in making government cool again.publishe

Networks in Public Administration : Current scholarship in review

Network-focused research in public administration has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. This rapid growth has created come confusion about terminology and approaches to research in the field. We organize the network literature in public administration using compact citation networks to identify coherent subdomains focused on (1) policy formation, (2) governance and (3) policy implementation. We trace how these domains differ in their approach to defining the role of networks, relationships and actors and to what extent the articles apply formal network analysis techniques. Based on a subsequent content analysis of the sample articles, we identify promising research avenues focused on the wider adoption of methods derived from social network analysis and the conditions under which networks actually deliver improved results.publishe

The Multiple Institutional Logics of Innovation

How do decentralized systems deal with innovation? In particular, how do they aggregate the myriad experiences of their component parts, facilitate diffusion of information, and encourage investments in innovation? This is a classic problem in the study of human institutions. It is also one of the biggest challenges that exists in the governance of decentralized systems: How do institutions shape individual behavior around solving problems and sharing information in a fashion that is reasonably compatible with collective well-being? We use a particular decentralized institution (the U.S. House of Representatives), wrestling with a novel problem (how to utilize the Internet), to explore the implications of three archetypical principles for organizing collective problem solving: market, network, and hierarchy.publishe

Networks in Public Administration Scholarship : Understanding Where We Are and Where We Need to Go

This article examines the road that network scholarship has followed in Public Administration. We look at the historical drivers of the use of networks in practice and scholarship in the field and discuss how that has shaped the current literature. The body of the article focuses on the current challenges that network scholars face in the discipline, specifically basic theoretical issues, knowledge about formal networks, knowledge about informal networks, and methodological issues. We close the article with a look to the future and some suggestions for the future of network scholarship in Public Administration.publishe

Preparing for Disaster: Social Media Use for Household, Organizational, and Community Preparedness

Social media applications provide conduits for government agencies to promote disaster preparedness. This article illustrates the messaging strategies used by state‐level emergency management agencies in the United States and addresses a range of social units (e.g., households, organizations, and communities). While agencies frequently disseminate guidance on how to prepare for emergencies, strategies generally align with traditional government‐to‐citizen, one‐to‐many communication modes characterized by little to no interaction with the public. This practice denies citizens deliberative conversation with government agencies and short circuits information from citizens and other organizations that might inform an agency\u27s decision‐making. Some interactive tactics observed, however, provide a roadmap to facilitate future dialogue and collaboration