Programmatic Formation: Practical Applications of Parametric Design

Programmatic Formation explores design as a responsive process.The study we present engages the complexity of the surroundings using parametric and generative design methods. It illustrates that responsiveness of designs can be achieved beyond geometric explorations.The parametric models can combine and respond simultaneously to design and its programmatic factors, such as performance-sensitive design-decisions, and constraints.We demonstrate this through a series of case studies for a housing tower.The studies explore the extent to which non-spatial parameters can be incorporated into spatial parametric dependencies in design.The results apply digital design and modeling, common to the curriculum of architecture schools, to the practical realm of building design and city planning.While practitioners are often slow to include contemporary design and planning methods into their daily work, the research illustrates how the incorporation of skills and knowledge acquired as part of university education can be effectively incorporated into everyday design and planning

Exploring artificial intelligence adoption in public organizations: a comparative case study

Despite the enormous potential of artificial intelligence (AI), many public organizations struggle to adopt this technology. Simultaneously, empirical research on what determines successful AI adoption in public settings remains scarce. Using the technology organization environment (TOE) framework, we address this gap with a comparative case study of eight Swiss public organizations. Our findings suggest that the importance of technological and organizational factors varies depending on the organization’s stage in the adoption process, whereas environmental factors are generally less critical. Accordingly, this study advances our theoretical understanding of the specificities of AI adoption in public organizations throughout the different adoption stages

Exploring the Motives of Citizen Reporting Engagement: Self-Concern and Other-Orientation

In smart city contexts, voluntary citizen reporting can be a particularly valuable source of information for local authorities. A key question in this regard is what motivates citizens to contribute their data. Drawing on motivation research in social psychology, the paper examines the question of whether self-concern or other-orientation is a stronger driver of citizen reporting engagement. To test their hypotheses, the authors rely on a sample of users from the mobile application “Zurich as good as new” in Switzerland, which enables citizens to report damages in and other issues with the city’s infrastructure. Data was collected from two different sources: motivation was assessed in an online user survey (n = 650), whereas citizen reporting engagement was measured by the number of reports per user from real platform-use data. The analysis was carried out using negative binomial regression. The findings suggest that both self-concern and other-orientation are significant drivers of citizen reporting engagement, although the effect of self-concern appears to be stronger in comparison. As such, this study contributes to a better understanding of what motivates citizens to participate in citizen reporting platforms, which are a cornerstone application in many smart cities

Public service motivation, prosocial motivation and altruism : towards disentanglement and conceptual clarity

Research on public service motivation (PSM) has made great strides in terms of study output. Given the enormous scholarly attention on PSM, it is surprising that considerable conceptual ambiguities and overlaps with related concepts such as prosocial motivation, and altruism still remain. This study addresses this issue by systematically carving out the differences and similarities between these concepts. Taking this approach, this study clarifies the conceptual space of both PSM and the other concepts. Using data from semi-structured interviews with police officers, it is illustrated that PSM and prosocial motivation are different types of motivation leading to different types of prosocial behaviour

Attracting future civil servants with public values? An experimental study on employer branding

A frequently cited recommendation of public service motivation (PSM) research is to use PSM in the context of HR marketing. However, empirical evidence demonstrating the usefulness of addressing PSM in the recruitment process is limited. Moreover, we know little about the relative importance of PSM for public employers’ attractiveness. We address this gap using an experimental research design to investigate whether public service motivated individuals differ from extrinsically motivated individuals in terms of their attraction to organizations that emphasize either “traditional” public or private values in their employer branding. Our findings indicate that public service motivated individuals are attracted neither to public nor to private values in employer branding. Furthermore, individuals with very high levels of extrinsic motivation are more attracted to private values employer branding than to public values employer branding and to the control group