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Though the use of narrative has become widespread through many disciplines, it has yet to establish a strong footing in public administration. The article first explains why narrative analysis has not been incorporated into mainstream public administration as the latter has become increasingly empirical, quantitative, and hypothesis driven. The article then outlines a number of key narratological concepts that could readily be applied to the field. Demonstrating the possibilities they offer, the concepts are applied to the analysis of the 31 finalists in the 2008 and 2009 Innovations in American Government Awards to identify a dominant innovation fable incorporating incremental problem-solving and interorganizational cooperation. Because the Awards application process results in three distinct narratives-a detailed article application, a site visit report, and an oral presentation to the selection panel-the analysis focuses on the differences among them, with the application form representing an insider's story written by experts for an expert audience, the site visit report often incorporating a counter-narrative that points out the innovation's unresolved conflicts or uncertainties, and the oral presentation functioning as an advocacy narrative directed at a generalist audience. The article concludes with suggestions for further narratological research about public management innovation, taking advantage of the new application form to the Innovation Awards that was designed to elicit more explicit narratives. More generally, it raises possibilities for public administration scholars to incorporate narratological concepts and methods into their research. Adapted from the source document.

Through a consideration of the Singapore government's moves to encourage citizens to create innovative, high-technology enterprises—or to become 'technopreneurs'—this essay looks at how government efforts to promote innovation, can articulate with prevailing national and social imaginaries, in ways that reshape notions of citizenship and nationhood and that have potential ramifications for the kinds of risks and burdens that citizens can be asked to bear. I show, specifically, how the new value of innovation is being incorporated into Singapore's older narrative of national survival in a way that changes this narrative's mode of emplotment from one of comedy to one of satire. Through this shift, promises of collective prosperity and progress, which are integral to the nation's founding era of industrial manufacturing-based development, are withdrawn, while new notions of individual and financial risk and reward are introduced. I argue that attending to modes of emplotment may be a useful way to identify the broader entailments of different governments' innovation policies and programmes.

AbstractSocial innovation is a process in which local communities build social and cultural capital to address challenges and social needs. The diffusion of social innovation requires compelling narratives that encourage people to join them. Using qualitative techniques and a multiple case study methodology, this article examines the content of narratives of social innovation in rural areas and how actors construct, spread and change them. We propose a narrative analytical framework comprising four key components: problematisation; solutions and goals; actors; and plot, which we apply to three initiatives in Scotland and Spain. Our findings suggest that marginalisation, the natural environment and community activation are central themes in the content of narratives. In addition, we explain how policies and public actors can support social innovation as well as how collective leadership of social innovations can reduce imbalances in power relations, and contribute to a consistent evolution of narratives over time, enhancing the sustainability of social innovation projects overall.

Summary This article focuses on user involvement in social work innovations in the public sector and provides an overview of how public innovation via user involvement in social work has been studied to date. Through analyses based on a systematic review combined with a narrative review of the identified literature, we offer a typology of social work innovations. The article concludes by discussing possibilities and barriers inherent in user involvement in social work and suggesting topics for future research. Findings Through a systematic review we identify the relevant literature describing different kinds of user involvement in social work innovation. In the narrative review, we analyze the literature and identify three types of innovation: user-centered innovation, co-produced innovation, and citizen-driven innovation. With empirical examples we illustrate the different types of innovation and the citizen's role in the different innovation processes. Application The typology provides an analytic tool to differentiate types of innovation and user involvement, but it may also function as inspiration to practitioners to reflect more about the roles of users and frontline workers and to be more aware of existing barriers when designing new social initiatives in the public sector.

Narrative Innovation and Cultural Rewriting undertakes a systematic study of postmodernism's responses to the polarized ideologies of the postwar period that have held cultures hostage to a confrontation between rival ideologies abroad and a clash between champions of uniformity and disruptive others at home. Considering a broad range of narrative projects and approaches (from polysystemic fiction to surfiction, postmodern feminism, and multicultural/postcolonial fiction), this book highlights their solutions to ontological division (real vs. imaginary, wordly and other-worldly), sociocultural oppositions (of race, class, gender) and narratological dualities (imitation vs. invention, realism vs. formalism). A thorough rereading of the best experimental work published in the US since the mid-1960s reveals the fact that innovative fiction has been from the beginning concerned with redefining the relationship between history and fiction, narrative and cultural articulation. Stepping back from traditional polarizations, innovative novelists have tried to envision an alternative history of irreducible particularities, excluded middles, and creative intercrossings