Pub Date : 2022-01-28DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1495
J. P. Burns
Human resource management in public administration considers the civil service broadly to include all those employed in mostly noncommercial entities funded by the state. These entities may range from government bureaus and departments to agencies and authorities with varying degrees of uniformity, at both the central and local levels, and include those in such nonprofit services as health and education that are completely or mostly publicly funded. The terms civil servants, government employees, and public servants are used interchangeably. Human resource management may include such functions as planning, recruitment and selection, performance management, training, compensation, and labor relations. Key challenges of managing human resource functions include motivating and compensating public employees to reward passion for public service, managing the political roles of civil servants and their political responsiveness, selecting for salient identities to achieve representation and diversity, and reforming the civil service. These challenges impact individual and organizational performance. Motivation and compensation focus on what binds individuals to organizations and energizes those individuals. One approach, inspired by rational choice, identifies self-interest and extrinsic incentives, including performance-based pay, monitoring and surveillance to manage employees. A second approach, inspired by self-determination theory, focuses on altruism and prosocial values, and prioritizes intrinsic incentives, job design, and careful selection to nurture a passion for public service. A key challenge is to identify and nurture those with public service motivation, and reward competence and passion for public service. Selecting and nurturing those with a passion for public service includes taking care that compensation policies and practices do not crowd out public service motivation. An additional challenge focuses on the political roles civil servants play in government and the extent to which civil servants are politically responsive. Selecting civil servants based on merit, with separate career structures for politicians and civil servants, is generally associated with more effective governance and economic growth, with some important exceptions. The tasks, role perceptions, and behavior of the senior civil service are dependent on historical tradition and political culture, and on structural characteristics, such as the presence or absence of political advisors, and the support civil servants receive or need beyond government from clients and interest groups. The role of senior civil servants also depends on their specialization and the capacity of political appointees. Systems that encourage more explicit political roles for senior civil servants do not appear to sacrifice public interest. Preparing senior civil servants for these roles is a critical human management resource challenge. Authorities also use human resource tools to increase po
{"title":"Human Resource Management in Public Administration: Key Challenges","authors":"J. P. Burns","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1495","url":null,"abstract":"Human resource management in public administration considers the civil service broadly to include all those employed in mostly noncommercial entities funded by the state. These entities may range from government bureaus and departments to agencies and authorities with varying degrees of uniformity, at both the central and local levels, and include those in such nonprofit services as health and education that are completely or mostly publicly funded. The terms civil servants, government employees, and public servants are used interchangeably. Human resource management may include such functions as planning, recruitment and selection, performance management, training, compensation, and labor relations. Key challenges of managing human resource functions include motivating and compensating public employees to reward passion for public service, managing the political roles of civil servants and their political responsiveness, selecting for salient identities to achieve representation and diversity, and reforming the civil service. These challenges impact individual and organizational performance.\u0000 Motivation and compensation focus on what binds individuals to organizations and energizes those individuals. One approach, inspired by rational choice, identifies self-interest and extrinsic incentives, including performance-based pay, monitoring and surveillance to manage employees. A second approach, inspired by self-determination theory, focuses on altruism and prosocial values, and prioritizes intrinsic incentives, job design, and careful selection to nurture a passion for public service. A key challenge is to identify and nurture those with public service motivation, and reward competence and passion for public service. Selecting and nurturing those with a passion for public service includes taking care that compensation policies and practices do not crowd out public service motivation.\u0000 An additional challenge focuses on the political roles civil servants play in government and the extent to which civil servants are politically responsive. Selecting civil servants based on merit, with separate career structures for politicians and civil servants, is generally associated with more effective governance and economic growth, with some important exceptions. The tasks, role perceptions, and behavior of the senior civil service are dependent on historical tradition and political culture, and on structural characteristics, such as the presence or absence of political advisors, and the support civil servants receive or need beyond government from clients and interest groups. The role of senior civil servants also depends on their specialization and the capacity of political appointees. Systems that encourage more explicit political roles for senior civil servants do not appear to sacrifice public interest. Preparing senior civil servants for these roles is a critical human management resource challenge. Authorities also use human resource tools to increase po","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114306781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-28DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.2044
Eric R. Boot
Appeals to the public interest in fields such as politics and law are commonplace. Government policies are criticized for contravening the public interest. A whistleblower’s violation of government secrecy laws may be deemed justified because their disclosures are in the public interest. Human rights violations may be considered justified if a particularly weighty public interest (national security, public health) is at stake. If biobanking promotes the public interest, its ambiguous relation to privacy may be deemed acceptable. The problem is that such appeals are made without clarifying what the public interest is and how it can be determined. Political philosophers are particularly well qualified to provide much-needed conceptual clarification and moral argument, yet during the past few decades they have largely ignored the issue. This is the consequence of a certain uneasiness with the concept of the public interest: It has been criticized for being empty, inimical to contemporary pluralistic societies, and a mere veil for the self-serving interests of the powerful. Proponents of the concept, however, respond that it is possible to provide a clear account of the public interest that meets (most of) these criticisms. The aggregative theory, for example, holds that the public interest corresponds simply to the sum of the private interests of those who make up the public. The procedural approach, instead, hopes to distill the public interest from a plethora of private interests through the process of either democratic competition or deliberation. Where these two accounts of the public interest derive the public interest from people’s private interests, the unitary account derives it instead from a comprehensive moral theory that applies equally to private and public interests. Finally, the civic account maintains that the public interest consists in interests we share in our capacity as citizens. Proponents of the concept of the public interest, moreover, argue that it can do normative work no other concept can. Though political philosophy has been dominated by the concept of justice for decades, not all political philosophical matters are reducible to questions of justice. Public interest is used to justify facilities, policies, and actions that are somehow beyond the purview of justice, such as public infrastructure, the disclosure of state secrets, the placing of limits on human rights, and much more.
{"title":"Public Interest","authors":"Eric R. Boot","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.2044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.2044","url":null,"abstract":"Appeals to the public interest in fields such as politics and law are commonplace. Government policies are criticized for contravening the public interest. A whistleblower’s violation of government secrecy laws may be deemed justified because their disclosures are in the public interest. Human rights violations may be considered justified if a particularly weighty public interest (national security, public health) is at stake. If biobanking promotes the public interest, its ambiguous relation to privacy may be deemed acceptable. The problem is that such appeals are made without clarifying what the public interest is and how it can be determined.\u0000 Political philosophers are particularly well qualified to provide much-needed conceptual clarification and moral argument, yet during the past few decades they have largely ignored the issue. This is the consequence of a certain uneasiness with the concept of the public interest: It has been criticized for being empty, inimical to contemporary pluralistic societies, and a mere veil for the self-serving interests of the powerful. Proponents of the concept, however, respond that it is possible to provide a clear account of the public interest that meets (most of) these criticisms. The aggregative theory, for example, holds that the public interest corresponds simply to the sum of the private interests of those who make up the public. The procedural approach, instead, hopes to distill the public interest from a plethora of private interests through the process of either democratic competition or deliberation. Where these two accounts of the public interest derive the public interest from people’s private interests, the unitary account derives it instead from a comprehensive moral theory that applies equally to private and public interests. Finally, the civic account maintains that the public interest consists in interests we share in our capacity as citizens.\u0000 Proponents of the concept of the public interest, moreover, argue that it can do normative work no other concept can. Though political philosophy has been dominated by the concept of justice for decades, not all political philosophical matters are reducible to questions of justice. Public interest is used to justify facilities, policies, and actions that are somehow beyond the purview of justice, such as public infrastructure, the disclosure of state secrets, the placing of limits on human rights, and much more.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127790208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1451
B. Peters
Contemporary administrative systems are shaped in part by their past and by the conceptions of good administration that are embedded in administrative culture. Administrative traditions shape contemporary administration in Europe and have been heavily influenced by European models. Administrative tradition means an historically based set of values, structures, and relationships with other institutions that define the nature of appropriate public administration. Seven dimensions can be used to both define these traditions and categorize public administration into four groups of nations. This explanation is similar to cultural explanations, but it includes the influence of structures as well as ideas. While the model of traditions developed is based largely on European and North American experiences, it can also be applied to a much broader range of administrative systems.
{"title":"Administrative Traditions: Concepts and Variables","authors":"B. Peters","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1451","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary administrative systems are shaped in part by their past and by the conceptions of good administration that are embedded in administrative culture. Administrative traditions shape contemporary administration in Europe and have been heavily influenced by European models. Administrative tradition means an historically based set of values, structures, and relationships with other institutions that define the nature of appropriate public administration. Seven dimensions can be used to both define these traditions and categorize public administration into four groups of nations. This explanation is similar to cultural explanations, but it includes the influence of structures as well as ideas. While the model of traditions developed is based largely on European and North American experiences, it can also be applied to a much broader range of administrative systems.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116287144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1499
E. Gardell, B. Verbeek
In crisis-ridden times, when events like the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of terrorism, and climate change-induced crises are making constant headlines, states, businesses, and individuals alike look to international organizations (IOs) to help them weather the storm. How can the role of IOs be better understood in the context of crisis and crisis management? For a start, it requires a distinction between objective and subjective crisis perspectives in studying IOs. From an objective perspective, IOs are examined as unitary actors that have the aim of contributing to the stability of the international political system. On the other hand, in a subjectivistic approach, IOs’ actual crisis management is the focus. In this perspective, the emphasis is on an IO’s internal life, that is, its perceptions, bureau politics, and decision-making. In the exploration of these issues, IOs can no longer by studied as entities but have to be unwrapped into small groups and individuals, such as members of secretariats or member state’s top politicians. As borne out by theories developed by scholars of crisis management and foreign-policy analysis, centralization and cognitive bias are of special interest in the study of IOs. IOs’ crisis management has four crisis phases and tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, and crisis termination. Finally, crises may prove a threat to, or an opportunity for, IOs. Transnational crises may usher in IOs’ foundation and flourishing, or they may contribute to IOs’ demise.
{"title":"Key Actors in the Management of Crises: International and Regional Organizations","authors":"E. Gardell, B. Verbeek","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1499","url":null,"abstract":"In crisis-ridden times, when events like the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of terrorism, and climate change-induced crises are making constant headlines, states, businesses, and individuals alike look to international organizations (IOs) to help them weather the storm. How can the role of IOs be better understood in the context of crisis and crisis management? For a start, it requires a distinction between objective and subjective crisis perspectives in studying IOs. From an objective perspective, IOs are examined as unitary actors that have the aim of contributing to the stability of the international political system. On the other hand, in a subjectivistic approach, IOs’ actual crisis management is the focus. In this perspective, the emphasis is on an IO’s internal life, that is, its perceptions, bureau politics, and decision-making. In the exploration of these issues, IOs can no longer by studied as entities but have to be unwrapped into small groups and individuals, such as members of secretariats or member state’s top politicians. As borne out by theories developed by scholars of crisis management and foreign-policy analysis, centralization and cognitive bias are of special interest in the study of IOs. IOs’ crisis management has four crisis phases and tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, and crisis termination. Finally, crises may prove a threat to, or an opportunity for, IOs. Transnational crises may usher in IOs’ foundation and flourishing, or they may contribute to IOs’ demise.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131174946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1892
Donald Abenheim, Carolyn C. Halladay
The German soldier and German politics in the second decade of the 21st century face the challenges of a deteriorating international system as well as the reappearance of integral nationalism at home and abroad. The security-building roles and missions of the German armed forces in the three decades since unity are being reoriented to alliance collective defense as well as security building amid great friction with sources near and far. These phenomena in their variety threaten the civic and multilateral tenets of German statecraft as well as fundamental military standards and defense organization since 1949, and in particular, since unification in 1990. Specifically, the constants of postwar German democratic civil–military relations—the citizen in uniform, both bound and empowered by Innere Führung, serving in arms in a force firmly located in European and alliance structures but with a low profile at home, undergirded by both legal and social preferences—have had to withstand multiple blows of late. Some of these blows have been a result of unintended consequences of various policies or nonpolicies articulated without sufficient regard for current context; some as a result of unforced errors by leaders relying on outdated assumptions; and some as intentional provocations amid a fraying political consensus. While the German defense establishment—civilian and uniformed—has thus far mostly mastered these circumstances, the strain on German democratic civil–military relations is unmistakable. Thus, Germany’s civil–military relations face the test that they have well surmounted in the past, that is, to have a good democracy and a good army at the same time. The Bundeswehr’s 2020 deployment amid the coronavirus crisis, alongside discussions about a corona dividend in times of exploding state deficits, seems to have boosted soldiers’ popularity, and thus has opened a new facet of civil–military relations. However, the Bundeswehr must be careful not to foster a self-image of camouflaged civilian service or to create an identity crisis of its Afghanistan veterans serving for months as attendants in retirement homes. The public debate and official reflection manifest at best a mediocre comprehension of the needs of the soldier and the imperative to find a usable past for soldiers asked to defend democracy against its many enemies, without falling prey to militarism and integral nationalism. Innere Führung remains the valid heritage of the German soldier, even—or perhaps especially—for those who are asked by duty and fate to risk their lives in combat.
{"title":"Germany: An Army in a Democracy in an Epoch of Extremes","authors":"Donald Abenheim, Carolyn C. Halladay","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1892","url":null,"abstract":"The German soldier and German politics in the second decade of the 21st century face the challenges of a deteriorating international system as well as the reappearance of integral nationalism at home and abroad. The security-building roles and missions of the German armed forces in the three decades since unity are being reoriented to alliance collective defense as well as security building amid great friction with sources near and far. These phenomena in their variety threaten the civic and multilateral tenets of German statecraft as well as fundamental military standards and defense organization since 1949, and in particular, since unification in 1990. Specifically, the constants of postwar German democratic civil–military relations—the citizen in uniform, both bound and empowered by Innere Führung, serving in arms in a force firmly located in European and alliance structures but with a low profile at home, undergirded by both legal and social preferences—have had to withstand multiple blows of late. Some of these blows have been a result of unintended consequences of various policies or nonpolicies articulated without sufficient regard for current context; some as a result of unforced errors by leaders relying on outdated assumptions; and some as intentional provocations amid a fraying political consensus. While the German defense establishment—civilian and uniformed—has thus far mostly mastered these circumstances, the strain on German democratic civil–military relations is unmistakable. Thus, Germany’s civil–military relations face the test that they have well surmounted in the past, that is, to have a good democracy and a good army at the same time. The Bundeswehr’s 2020 deployment amid the coronavirus crisis, alongside discussions about a corona dividend in times of exploding state deficits, seems to have boosted soldiers’ popularity, and thus has opened a new facet of civil–military relations. However, the Bundeswehr must be careful not to foster a self-image of camouflaged civilian service or to create an identity crisis of its Afghanistan veterans serving for months as attendants in retirement homes. The public debate and official reflection manifest at best a mediocre comprehension of the needs of the soldier and the imperative to find a usable past for soldiers asked to defend democracy against its many enemies, without falling prey to militarism and integral nationalism. Innere Führung remains the valid heritage of the German soldier, even—or perhaps especially—for those who are asked by duty and fate to risk their lives in combat.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128487665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-22DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1539
D. McEntire
Disasters and the theory of emergency management are vibrant subjects for scholars. Researchers have focused on a variety of topics, including the definition of disasters, human behavior in extreme events, the nature of emergency management, ways to make the profession more effective, the pros and cons of various paradigms, and new areas of research. In studying these subjects, scholars have employed a variety of methods, including observation, field research, and comparison, among others. Findings from research reveals that humans are responsible for disasters and that vulnerability must be reduced. Studies reveal that antisocial behavior is less likely to occur than more common activities to support victims of disasters. The principles of emergency management have been elaborated, and scholars have argued that the phases of disasters are more complex that initially meets they eye. Research also reveals that bureaucratic approaches to emergency management are based on false assumptions and are too rigid. Scholarship also explores how to make emergency management functions more effective, and a number of articles have been written to explore paradigms to guide research and practice. Theoretical work on disasters and emergency management has examined planning, improvisation, and spontaneous planning. Research has also explored humanitarian logistics, the use of social media, the scholarship of teaching and learning, cultural competency and the culture of preparedness. Going forward, more research is needed on the complexity of disasters and the use or impact of technology in emergency management. A greater understanding of public health emergencies is warranted due to the challenges of Covid-19.
{"title":"Disasters and the Theory of Emergency Management","authors":"D. McEntire","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1539","url":null,"abstract":"Disasters and the theory of emergency management are vibrant subjects for scholars. Researchers have focused on a variety of topics, including the definition of disasters, human behavior in extreme events, the nature of emergency management, ways to make the profession more effective, the pros and cons of various paradigms, and new areas of research. In studying these subjects, scholars have employed a variety of methods, including observation, field research, and comparison, among others.\u0000 Findings from research reveals that humans are responsible for disasters and that vulnerability must be reduced. Studies reveal that antisocial behavior is less likely to occur than more common activities to support victims of disasters. The principles of emergency management have been elaborated, and scholars have argued that the phases of disasters are more complex that initially meets they eye. Research also reveals that bureaucratic approaches to emergency management are based on false assumptions and are too rigid. Scholarship also explores how to make emergency management functions more effective, and a number of articles have been written to explore paradigms to guide research and practice.\u0000 Theoretical work on disasters and emergency management has examined planning, improvisation, and spontaneous planning. Research has also explored humanitarian logistics, the use of social media, the scholarship of teaching and learning, cultural competency and the culture of preparedness. Going forward, more research is needed on the complexity of disasters and the use or impact of technology in emergency management. A greater understanding of public health emergencies is warranted due to the challenges of Covid-19.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123104662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.164
B. Peters
Although most public sector governance depends upon specialized organizations, there is also a need to create greater coordination and policy integration. Improving coordination can overcome problems of duplication, waste, and turf-fighting. Producing coordination is not easy, but there are a number of mechanisms available to would-be coordinators to make governments more coherent. Most of these mechanisms depend on hierarchy, but others depend more on ideas or networks. Although coordination is important for governance, it is not a panacea, and coordination may produce problems as well as solving them. Therefore, the choice between higher levels of specialization and coordination depends upon numerous political and administrative variables.
{"title":"Public Policies: Coordination, Integration, Coherence, and Collaboration","authors":"B. Peters","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.164","url":null,"abstract":"Although most public sector governance depends upon specialized organizations, there is also a need to create greater coordination and policy integration. Improving coordination can overcome problems of duplication, waste, and turf-fighting. Producing coordination is not easy, but there are a number of mechanisms available to would-be coordinators to make governments more coherent. Most of these mechanisms depend on hierarchy, but others depend more on ideas or networks. Although coordination is important for governance, it is not a panacea, and coordination may produce problems as well as solving them. Therefore, the choice between higher levels of specialization and coordination depends upon numerous political and administrative variables.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122377107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1593
William L. Benoit
Image repair theory observes that threats to image (for individuals, groups, and organizations, such as companies or countries) are inevitable. Because reputation is important, criticisms usually provoke a response, defense, or image repair message(s). Each attack (each criticism) has two components, offensiveness and blame. Defenses can address either component (e.g., arguing that an act was offensive or rejecting blame for it). Five general strategies and 14 tactics exist for image repair. Perceptions are key in image repair: the audience’s perceived image of the target prompts criticism and attack; the audience’s perceptions of the message influence the effectiveness of a defense. Those who feel impelled to create image repair messages may face one or more audiences; the image concerns of various audiences may overlap or may be different. This means the defender must decide which audiences to address and develop image repair messages with this in mind. One must select one or more image repair strategies that the defender believes will be most effective with the target audience(s) and embed that strategy in one or more messages. Note that a defender should choose the most effective strategy or strategies; adding in more strategies does not necessary improve the defense. The defender must decide which medium or media should be used to get the message(s) to audience(s). Image repair theory was developed to help understand threats to reputation, face, or image. Such threats are commonplace in human interaction, including contexts such as interpersonal communication, public communication, and social media.
{"title":"Image Repair in Crisis Communication","authors":"William L. Benoit","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1593","url":null,"abstract":"Image repair theory observes that threats to image (for individuals, groups, and organizations, such as companies or countries) are inevitable. Because reputation is important, criticisms usually provoke a response, defense, or image repair message(s). Each attack (each criticism) has two components, offensiveness and blame. Defenses can address either component (e.g., arguing that an act was offensive or rejecting blame for it). Five general strategies and 14 tactics exist for image repair. Perceptions are key in image repair: the audience’s perceived image of the target prompts criticism and attack; the audience’s perceptions of the message influence the effectiveness of a defense.\u0000 Those who feel impelled to create image repair messages may face one or more audiences; the image concerns of various audiences may overlap or may be different. This means the defender must decide which audiences to address and develop image repair messages with this in mind. One must select one or more image repair strategies that the defender believes will be most effective with the target audience(s) and embed that strategy in one or more messages. Note that a defender should choose the most effective strategy or strategies; adding in more strategies does not necessary improve the defense. The defender must decide which medium or media should be used to get the message(s) to audience(s).\u0000 Image repair theory was developed to help understand threats to reputation, face, or image. Such threats are commonplace in human interaction, including contexts such as interpersonal communication, public communication, and social media.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115136016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1377
A. Kay
The study of policy implementation and evaluation is the subject of a conflict between the viewpoint that the quality of public administration is defined by its capacity to implement policy faithfully and accurately, as it has been designed and promulgated, and the viewpoint that policy as it is practiced and delivered on the ground to citizens will only ever bear a passing similarity to policy as the purposeful design of central policymakers. As elsewhere in public administration, this conflict is far from a creative engagement and lacks a definitive resolution between the main schools of policy implementation that stress, in turn, top-down or bottom-up approaches. Progress has been made in the recognition that policy implementation and policy evaluation have become increasingly, in theory and practice, less distinct from one another and are best understood as different values of the same thing—policy feedback—rather than analytically different things. In this line of inquiry, the contextual analysis of implementation and evaluation is critical, and recent work has begun to uncover important success factors not conventionally labeled as implementation and evaluation. Connections between the study of implementation capacity and evaluation are now able to be made with prominent public administration debates on scale, complexity, and participation. These connections hold promise for future research.
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Pub Date : 2021-11-29DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1747
Jason L. Jensen, Laura C. Hand
Public administration has experienced academic growing pains and longstanding debates related to its identity as a social and administrative science. The field’s evolution toward a narrow definition of empiricism through quantitative measurement has limited knowledge cumulation. Because the goal of all scientific endeavors is to advance by building upon and aggregating knowledge across studies, a field-level point of view eschewing traditional dichotomies such as qualitative/quantitative debates in favor of methodological pluralism allows for examination of both the art and science of public administration. To accomplish this, traditional notions of quality, namely rigor, must be reconceptualized in a way that is appropriate for the philosophical commitments of a selected methodology. Rigor should focus on the accuracy, exhaustiveness, and systematicity of data collection and analysis. This allows for quality judgments about the degree to which the methods resulted in evidence that addresses the research questions and supports stated conclusions. This is a much broader approach to rigor that addresses multiple types of inquiry and knowledge creation. Once the question of rigor is not limiting the types of research done in the field, attention can be turned to the ways in which high-quality studies can contribute to knowledge cumulation. Case studies can be used as an example of a field-level point of view, as they have the ability to utilize abductive reasoning to consider both the whole (the entire case) and the particular (factors that contribute to outcomes, processes, or theories). Case studies explore the relationship between context-independent theories and context-dependent factors using different types of data collection and analysis: a triangulation of sorts. They can test theories in multiple ways and create or suggest new theories. Considering field-level questions as a case study and synthesizing findings from multiple related studies, regardless of methodology, can help move the field forward in terms of its connection between theory and practice, art and science.
{"title":"Qualitative Research and Case Studies in Public Administration","authors":"Jason L. Jensen, Laura C. Hand","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1747","url":null,"abstract":"Public administration has experienced academic growing pains and longstanding debates related to its identity as a social and administrative science. The field’s evolution toward a narrow definition of empiricism through quantitative measurement has limited knowledge cumulation. Because the goal of all scientific endeavors is to advance by building upon and aggregating knowledge across studies, a field-level point of view eschewing traditional dichotomies such as qualitative/quantitative debates in favor of methodological pluralism allows for examination of both the art and science of public administration.\u0000 To accomplish this, traditional notions of quality, namely rigor, must be reconceptualized in a way that is appropriate for the philosophical commitments of a selected methodology. Rigor should focus on the accuracy, exhaustiveness, and systematicity of data collection and analysis. This allows for quality judgments about the degree to which the methods resulted in evidence that addresses the research questions and supports stated conclusions. This is a much broader approach to rigor that addresses multiple types of inquiry and knowledge creation. Once the question of rigor is not limiting the types of research done in the field, attention can be turned to the ways in which high-quality studies can contribute to knowledge cumulation.\u0000 Case studies can be used as an example of a field-level point of view, as they have the ability to utilize abductive reasoning to consider both the whole (the entire case) and the particular (factors that contribute to outcomes, processes, or theories). Case studies explore the relationship between context-independent theories and context-dependent factors using different types of data collection and analysis: a triangulation of sorts. They can test theories in multiple ways and create or suggest new theories. Considering field-level questions as a case study and synthesizing findings from multiple related studies, regardless of methodology, can help move the field forward in terms of its connection between theory and practice, art and science.","PeriodicalId":203278,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126943014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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