Linking with the debate around new public management (NPM) and new public governance (NPG), the article studies different conceptual approaches for explaining dynamically changing systems that locally deliver integrated health and social care. To make our case, we analyse three health and social care ecosystems: London in England, Tampere in Finland, and West Lothian in Scotland. We argue (a) that network analysis is suited to NPM striving for efficiency, rather than NPGs seeking service effectiveness and innovation; (b) that classifying service systems as networks or ecosystem has important strategic and management implications; and (c) from examining three self-classified local public service ecosystems, that these distinctions are misunderstood in practice.
The aspired potentials of the Smart City (SC) and its deficits in practice are essential reasons why the subject is assigned to a rapidly growing body of literature. This situation requires a specific review of the literature summarizing the research efforts to date into research branches and topics, unifying essential basic concepts and thus forming a solid basis for futher research. The present study first derives a basic structure of research by an analysis of the available literature reviews. Subsequently, a systematic examination of SC literature by means of an EBSCO data query identifies the current research topics and compiles a comprehensive view of the research topics. The present study is therefore not only of interest for scientific use, but also offers practitioners an overview of the various sub-areas of a SC, as well as of the currently available findings and experiences in relation to the implementation of SC (sub-)projects.
In nearly all of the framework models of collaborative governance (CG), leadership is always shown as having a major and strategic role. However, specific studies that discuss leadership tend to be limited. Most of the studies on CG are more concerned with the implementation of CG as carried out through several examples of cases. This study intends to perform a precise analysis of the leadership typologies exhibited by the regents of Kulon Progo and Banyuwangi in mobilizing CG, as well as to discover similarities in the indicators that they display in serving their leadership role. This research uses the quantitative approach by referring to the theory of leadership and leadership typologies as developed by Ricard et al. (2017). Ricard distinguished between 5 leadership typologies in the public sector, encompassing transactional, interpersonal, transformational, entrepreneurial, and network governance typologies as arranged into 23 indicators. Data was obtained through a survey of 39 respondents who are Heads of Agencies who have intensive interaction with the Head of the Region. The results of this survey show that the leadership of the two Regents have a tendency to display similarities in typologies, dominated by the entrepreneurial, network governance, and transformational typologies. In the case of the two leaders, the transactional and interpersonal typologies have the lowest average value. Meanwhile, the predominant characteristics of the leadership of these two heads of the region include indicators such as taking initiative, being visionaries, showing commitment to colleagues and organizations, and lastly, being problem oriented. The results of this research may serve as a reference for other Heads of the Region in exercising leadership for collaborative governance.
Strategy has become an essential of public management. Research shows that there are many different approaches to this; however, research has not explored the strategic resources that different approaches provide. This paper contributes to this field of research by applying neo-institutional theory and paradox theory to strategy in public management. Institutional logics form socially constructed patterns of cultural and material practices by which managers define interests and asks and provide meaning to their daily activity. Institutional logics thus accommodate strategic behaviour when managers – and other strategic actors – respond to institutional pressures and expectations. We show that Public administration, Professional Leadership, New Public Management and New Public Governance offer different configurations of strategy in the public sector, i.e. different reasons and resources for doing strategy, which provide public management with different strategic foci, goals and practices. To explore strategy in public management, the institutional logics should be analysed together with an emphasis on the dynamic interaction between them in order to understand how the strategic resources of a particular institutional logic are applied and legitimized as responses to the flaws of other institutional logics.
In 2018, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada developed the Living Laboratories Initiative, a network of agroecosystem living labs, to encourage the adoption and scaling up and out of innovation in both technology and practice in climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. This paper explores living labs as a new collaborative innovation approach that can build trust and develop long-term relationships between different actors in the agri-food system. It answers the question: what can collaborative innovation approaches, like agroecosystem living labs, reveal about the needs of actors within the collaborative governance process? Using a combination of semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this study gathered early-stage insights from various agroecosystem living lab partners in two Canadian agroecosystem living lab sites. It argues that starting conditions of partners were particularly influential in developing living labs. To mitigate current and potential obstacles, metagovernance can be a way to maintain commitment from partners.
