Suchergebnisse

Même si la politisation est un éternel thème de recherche dans l'administration publique lorsqu'il s'agit d'étudier les relations entre les ministres et les agents de l'État, le concept est encore peu précis. Avec le présent article, nous entendons enrichir cette littérature en épinglant différentes conceptualisations de la politisation. Nous proposons par ailleurs une typologie comprenant trois mécanismes de politisation visant à renforcer la réactivité politique de la bureaucratie ministérielle : la politisation formelle, fonctionnelle et administrative. La typologie est validée sur le plan empirique au moyen d'une analyse de cas comparative des mécanismes de politisation en Allemagne, en Belgique, au Royaume-Uni et au Danemark. L'analyse empirique affine encore l'idée générale selon laquelle les démocraties occidentales deviennent « tout simplement » plus politisées, puisqu'elle indique que certains mécanismes de politisation, plutôt que de continuer à se renforcer, se stabilisent – du moins pour l'instant. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens On entend souvent dire dans les recherches et la pratique administrative que la politisation augmente dans les rapports entre les ministres et les agents de l'État. La neutralité absolue de la bureaucratie étant davantage un mythe qu'une réalité empirique, les démocraties sont toutes obligées de concilier les revendications en faveur d'une expertise neutre et de réactivité politique. Celle-ci passe souvent par l'introduction de mécanismes de politisation. La politisation peut prendre toute une série de formes et nous proposons, dans cet article, une typologie portant sur la politisation formelle, fonctionnelle et administrative. Nous verrons en outre comment les mécanismes de politisation non seulement se renforcent, mais aussi comment ils se développent et interagissent, modifiant les équilibres faits de neutralité et de réactivité de manière potentiellement contradictoire.

Dans le présent article, nous posons la question de savoir si les gouvernements locaux sont capables d'agir de manière unifiée lorsqu'ils réagissent aux menaces pour la réputation que représentent les couvertures médiatiques négatives. C'est en nous appuyant sur l'idée selon laquelle les gouvernements locaux qui sont victimes d'instabilité politique sont moins en mesure d'agir à l'unisson que nous examinons un certain nombre de perspectives, y compris divers types d'instabilité politique (instabilité du conseil, de l'agenda et du domaine politique) et leur relation avec différents types de réponses aux couvertures médiatiques négatives de la part des acteurs politiques et administratifs (comportement de communication, comportement destiné à fuir les reproches et les responsabilités et comportement sanctionneur). Dans notre article, nous observons ces relations pour certains de ces aspects. L'analyse indique également que l'historique des gouvernements locaux en matière de réputation est lié à l'ampleur du comportement unifié. L'analyse empirique repose essentiellement sur une enquête envoyée à tous les gestionnaires publics danois des trois niveaux supérieurs de la hiérarchie gouvernementale locale. Remarque à l'intention des praticiens La gestion de la réputation est devenue un domaine de gestion stratégique dans le secteur public, en particulier dans les administrations locales. Dans le présent article, nous allons voir que les gestionnaires publics se doivent d'être attentifs au degré d'instabilité politique qui caractérise leurs administrations locales lorsqu'ils font face à des menaces pour leur réputation. Lorsque le gouvernement local est caractérisé par une instabilité politique, il devient primordial d'aborder les désaccords potentiels entre les acteurs administratifs et politiques. De plus, les gestionnaires publics doivent tenir compte de l'historique de leur organisation en termes de réputation, ces antécédents pouvant influencer la capacité à coordonner une réponse unifiée entre les dirigeants politiques et administratifs en cas de menaces pour leur réputation.

Alors que les conseillers spéciaux jouent un rôle important dans la plupart des gouvernements occidentaux, les recherches sur la question sont peu nombreuses. Le présent article entend expliquer les variations observées dans les relations de « ménage à trois » entre les ministres, les hauts fonctionnaires et les conseillers spéciaux dans deux systèmes politico-administratifs différents. Le point de départ théorique consiste à conceptualiser et à expliquer ces relations trilatérales comme des « marchés bureaucratiques » (Public Service Bargain) multiples. On constate que les différences entre les marchés bureaucratiques donnent lieu à des différences dans ces ménages à trois, ce qui se traduit par différents types de différentiation fonctionnelle ainsi que par des différences dans le degré de coopération ou inversement de conflit. Ces différences sont avant tout le résultat de différences dans les intérêts ainsi que dans les règles formelles et institutionnelles et dans les compétences des acteurs concernés. Les données empiriques comprennent des documents, ainsi que des entretiens avec des hauts fonctionnaires et des questionnaires complétés par ceux-ci. Les pays comparés sont la Belgique et le Danemark. Remarques à l'intention des praticiens Notre étude confirme qu'il est important que les « ménages à trois » (ministres, conseillers spéciaux et haute fonction publique (HFP) « ... définissent les termes du marché qui s'applique aux conseillers politiques (...) » (Hood et Lodge, 2006 : 128) afin de réguler la relation entre les conseillers spéciaux et la HFP et d'éviter les conflits potentiels entre ceux-ci. L'étude fait en outre apparaître que le nombre de bénéficiaires d'une nomination politique influence la relation. Enfin, l'étude révèle que l'existence de différences marquées dans les compétences qu'apportent les deux types d'agents dans le marché permet d'assurer la coopération et le respect mutuel, tandis que des compétences qui se recouvrent partiellement risquent de donner lieu à des rivalités.

Public organizations are increasingly paying attention to strategic communication. However, the extant literature on public sector communication is predominantly descriptive, exploring how strategic communication is performed in practice, with little emphasis on why strategic communication has become so popular. Drawing on organizational institutional theory together with reports from a case study of strategic communication in Danish local governments, we take a first step towards explaining "all this communication". Our results reveal how normative and mimetic institutional pressures occur, as key external stakeholders support and legitimize strategic communication while communicating general, yet detailed, instructions for performing strategic communication in a context of radical organizational changes. Moreover, we demonstrate how local governments translate strategic communication somewhat differently than external stakeholders, causing not only isomorphism but also heterogeneity in organizational strategies. Based on the empirical findings, we argue that strategic communication issues might benefit from being interpreted in a broader socio-political context rather than as a simple management tool for professionalizing public sector communication.

Danish permanent secretaries, top civil servants in the Danish state administration, are formally both administrative heads of their ministries as well as prime advisers to Danish ministers. In this article we analyse whether and how the public service bargain (PSB) (Hood and Lodge, 2006) of Danish permanent secretaries primarily reflects elements of a managerial role as prescribed in many of the New Public Management reforms or whether their role as policy adviser is as important as their role as manager, as is formally prescribed. The PSB is assessed in terms of the typology of Hood and Lodge, including the dimensions: reward, competency, loyalty and responsibility. The analysis demonstrates that although elements of a managerial bargain have entered the role of Danish permanent secretaries, it is not more salient than the advisory aspect of the PSB.

This article investigates how and provides tentative explanations of why reputation and crisis management—defined as two different yet not incompatible sets of ideas stemming from the same institutional logic—have been institutionalized in the public sector in Denmark. More specifically, we examine whether reputation and crisis management become integrated (coupling) or not (decoupling) as disciplines after having being introduced to the individual organizations. The empirical context is the organizational field of Danish municipalities. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data, including, an elite survey conducted among administrative actors from the municipalities and communication plans, the analysis found that although reputation and crisis management per se are widely disseminated within the field, they are neither entirely institutionalized nor strongly coupled.

As a result of the global proliferation of branding and reputation management, Scandinavian municipalities have become the arena for activities that involve the definition and implementation of a coherent brand identity and/or reputation platform. The evidence of these activities comes in the form of visible outputs such as municipal brand statements, slogans, core values, taglines, reputation seminars, communication strategies, reputation audits, and so on. The intensity of these activities can be assumed to have increased dramatically in Scandinavian municipalities over the last decade. Municipal and local government research, however, has largely neglected reputation and brand management efforts. Building on the 2013 International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) IRSPM panel on public sector reputation ("Reputation management in the public sector: Strategies, processes, and effects"), this call for papers intends to summon contributions that focus specifically on Scandinavian municipalities and their strategic efforts to build a municipal brand and/or create a favorable municipal reputation. We therefore welcome manuscripts that address how these processes unfold in practice as new forms of governance, how they are designed as strategies, and the effects they have on the workings of local democracy. Relevant questions include, but are not limited to, the following topics: (1) Are reputation and brand management associated with reforms; are they integrative powers, do they create and intensify differences? (2) How do municipal organizations implement reputation and brand management into practice: what is the content projected by the municipalities and what is the relation to identity, history and culture, how/ do they involve citizen and key stakeholder groups? (3) Do these activities have implications for municipal governance, identity and democracy and broader trust in local governments? (4) To what extent does municipal reputation and brand management distinguish between the development of place branding and organizational branding strategies? Are they the same or do they imply different approaches? (5) What is the role of municipal identity in branding and reputation management strategies? (6) Which are the main challenges associated with the increasing use of municipal performance units, which seek their own independent reputation, for the development of a favorable overarching municipal reputation/brand?Professor Hilde Bjørnå, The Arctic University of NorwayProfessor Haldor Byrkjeflot, University of OsloAssociate Professor Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen, Aalborg UniversitetDead-line for submission: March 31, 2014 Submit your manuscript in accordance with the SJPA author guidelines, see sjpa.gu.se, mark your submission "Reputation and brand management" Questions/Information: For additional information regarding the special issue, please contact Hilde Bjørnå at hilde.bjorna@uit.no

Public service motivation (PSM) is a pro-social motivation to serve the public good and shape the wellbeing of society. Although the key relevance of PSM is its potential effect on behavior, much of the evidence of the impact of PSMrelies on subjective measures of behavior. Additionally, the literature has not investigated whether PSM clashes with other types of pro-social motivation. This paper addresses these limitations by investigating how PSM and user orientation (pro-social motivation oriented towards the individual user) affect university teachers' grading behavior in two Danish political science departments. We find that individuals with high PSM behave in ways that can be interpreted as protecting the public good. In contrast, university teachers with high user orientation behave in ways that benefit the individual user. The effect of PSM is moderated by institutional rules and norms, and the results imply that different types of pro-social motivation can affect behavior differently, especially when institutions are weak.

Public service motivation (PSM) is a pro-social motivation to serve the public good and shape the wellbeing of society. Although the key relevance of PSM is its potential effect on behavior, much of the evidence of the impact of PSMrelies on subjective measures of behavior. Additionally, the literature has not investigated whether PSM clashes with other types of pro-social motivation. This paper addresses these limitations by investigating how PSM and user orientation (pro-social motivation oriented towards the individual user) affect university teachers' grading behavior in two Danish political science departments. We find that individuals with high PSM behave in ways that can be interpreted as protecting the public good. In contrast, university teachers with high user orientation behave in ways that benefit the individual user. The effect of PSM is moderated by institutional rules and norms, and the results imply that different types of pro-social motivation can affect behavior differently, especially when institutions are weak.

This conceptual article extends three ongoing scholarly debates on the mediatisation of politics – the risk of media centrism, the tendency to see mediatisation as a linear process, and the preoccupation with elected officials. We argue for the need to identify, foreground, and systematise non-media dimensions of mediatisation processes. We also argue that actors encounter mediatisation as a set of dynamic ideas rather than a fixed logic. With a focus on government agencies and a comparison of the politico-administrative systems in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, this article gives certain attention to politicisation, autonomy, and accountability and suggests that the degree of freedom granted to agencies in Denmark and Norway is relatively limited compared with agencies in Sweden. Consequently, we present two propositions: 1) agencies in Denmark and Norway are less inclined to mediatise, whereas 2) Swedish government agencies will more likely mediatise and show conformity with widely accepted norms regarding media.

A key argument in recent theorizing on the drivers of bureaucratic behaviour is that agencies seek to establish and maintain a unique reputation. While recent years have witnessed substantial empirical support for this claim, the field lacks comparative examinations of the dynamics of reputation and its management throughout crisis periods. This article draws on a systematic media content analysis to explore the exposure and communication responses of the German, Belgian and Danish financial regulators to reputational threats before, during, and after the financial crisis. Our results point at the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of reputation management.

A key argument in recent theorizing on the drivers of bureaucratic behaviour is that agencies seek to establish and maintain a unique reputation. While recent years have witnessed substantial empirical support for this claim, the field lacks comparative examinations of the dynamics of reputation and its management throughout crisis periods. This article draws on a systematic media content analysis to explore the exposure and communication responses of the German, Belgian and Danish financial regulators to reputational threats before, during, and after the financial crisis. Our results point at the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of reputation management.