UNRAVELING CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT BY STUDYING MUNICIPAL PRACTICES

Citizen engagement can take various forms and is receiving a great deal of interest, especially in municipalities, which are embracing citizen engagement and searching for ways to integrate it in their day to day work. In theory development, the concept of citizen engagement is captured with various terms covering numerous aspects. This leads to inconsistency and ambiguity and can lead to unproductive debates among those who organize it. Empirical research on how municipalities develop citizen engagement is still limited. This article aims at a deeper understanding of the phenomenon by exploring dominant patterns in the way municipalities organize citizen engagement, the role of those involved and practices that emerge. This article builds on empirical research in 4 Dutch municipalities, 1 Danish municipality and 1 South African municipality. It appears that in practice, citizen engagement comes with a complex dynamic. Organizing citizen engagement affects the entire municipality and can be seen as an intervention in the municipal organization and those involved.   Key words: citizen engagement, municipalities, local practices

The use of hard and soft influence tactics in cooperative task groups

This study focused on the effect of relative competence and confidence in one's own task solution on the use of hard and soft influence tactics. For this purpose a 2 (relative competence: high/low) × 2 (influence tactic: hard/soft) between-subjects design, with the level of confidence generated by task characteristics as within-subjects factor, was employed. Results revealed that high competence individuals were less susceptible to the strength of the available influence tactic than low competence individuals: whereas high competence group members used hard tactics about as often as soft tactics, low competence group members used hard tactics less often than soft ones. However, this effect only showed when the task gave rise to high confidence in one's own task solution. When low competence group members had relatively low confidence, the frequency by which they used soft tactics declined substantially. All in all, the results suggest that people who aim for a positive group outcome employ influence tactics cautiously