Strict enforcement or responsive regulation? How inspector–inspectee interaction and inspectors’ role identity shape decision making

In line with a general trend towards more responsive regulation, inspectors are expected to take inspectees’ needs and demands in account when making decisions. At the same time, inspection services increasingly apply instruments aimed at directing the inspectors’ actions. These contradictory signals can make the work of inspectors very difficult. By reviewing relevant literature, this chapter shows that not only inspectees’ behavior and characteristics, but also inspectors’ professional role identity, i.e. the way inspectors view their professional role, is critical to explain and predict decision making on the ground

Reshaping the Hybrid Role of Public Servants:Identifying the Opportunity Space for Co-production and the Enabling Skills Required by Professional Co-producers

This chapter starts by introducing how the public sector has adopted different governance metatrends during the last century and how the adoption of these metatrends over time has led to new, hybrid roles for service users and frontline staff. The focus in this chapter is dedicated to the changing roles of the frontline staff and especially the role ascribed to them as professional coproducers. The premise is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in the local co-production context that is a hybrid of the Old Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance. This complex, hybrid context is framed in the chapter as “the opportunity space for coproduction.” The problem is that this opportunity space represents an arena in which there is potential for the creation of “double or triple pressure” on the professional co-producers because they are expected to handle top-down and bottom-up expectations simultaneously - and perhaps also horizontal pressures stemming from the expectations of staff from other organizations (interorganizational collaborations). The argument is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in this dynamic context, acting together with service users and members from other organizations.</p

The governance of self-organization: Which governance strategy do policy officials and citizens prefer?

This article compares views of policy officials and members of community-based collectives on the ideal role of government in processes of community self-organization. By using Q methodology, we presented statements on four different governance perspectives: traditional public administration, New Public Management, network governance, and self-governance. Perceptions differ about how government should respond to the trend of community self-organization and, in particular, about the primacy of the relationship. Whereas some public servants and collectives favor hands-off involvement of policy officials, others show a preference for a more direct and interactive relation between government and community-based collectives. In general, neither of the two groups have much appreciation for policy instruments based on performance indicators, connected to the New Public Management perspective or strong involvement of politicians, connected the traditional public administration perspective. This article contributes to the discussion of how practitioners see and combine governance perspectives and serve to enable dialogs between practitioners