Bing Ran

Imaging the Organization: Language Use in Organizational Identity Claims:

This article investigates the cognitive linguistic processes involved in organizational identity construction through language-based identity claims. The organizational imaging process constructs an organization’s identity in relation to a system of positively and negatively valued conceptual categories. It involves using language to establish a classification scheme and to define the organization within this scheme. The authors develop a framework for identifying these cognitive linguistic processes based on a grounded-theory study of language use in corporate mission statements. Their findings contribute to a deeper understanding of language’s role in organizational identity construction.

Requirements engineering in new product development

How effective are the socio-technical interactions in developing new products?

Who Are We? The Social Construction of Organizational Identity Through Sense-Exchanging

Using Pennsylvania State University’s responses to an identity threat, this article discusses the social construction of organizational identity as a negotiated outcome between various stakeholders. The authors propose four main characteristics of the social construction of organizational identity—intentional, temporal, relational, and external—that extend Ran and Duimering’s demarcation of two identity construction processes: the linguistic and the social construction. The authors also provide some guidance for public institutions, universities, or nonprofit organizations as they construct, maintain, and negotiate a positive identity in the context of threatening changes.

Education for Ethics and Human Resource Management

Many public administration ethicists argue that a single stand-alone course in ethics should be a part of every M.P.A. curriculum, but some programs may prefer to incorporate ethics into several courses. This article suggests that a series of courses would be a promising alternative to a standalone ethics course. It would begin in the M.P.A. introductory course by setting a foundation for the study of ethics and then relate ethics to human resource management (HRM) in a sequence of required and elective HRM courses. The long and evolutionary relationship between ethics and HRM can provide a strong basis for ethics education with two purposes in mind: first, to show the generalist public administration student the ethical issues involved in managing personnel systems, and second, to acquaint students interested in careers in HRM to be ethically aware in situations they are likely to face in their careers. The literature in HRM and ethics is reviewed to develop a conceptual linkage between the two topics. The article concludes by showing how the two have been integrated in a three-course sequence in a NASPAA-accredited M.P.A. program.

Effective leadership in managing NPM-based change in the public sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find underlying causes of leadership failure in NPM-based reforms in the public service, and propose leadership principles to guard against such failure as leaders meet the demands of a changing, complex public service environment. Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of the managerial philosophy of Dr Berwick and its effects on CMS overall performance and employee morale. Findings – NPM-based reforms create an environment in which administrative wrongdoing can occur. The principles of leadership found in NPLT, which advocates values-based, relationship-based distributed leadership provide a template for effective leadership that can reverse and possibly prevent leadership failure due to NPM-based reforms. Research limitations/implications – The authors used a single case to demonstrate NPLT leadership principles can reverse leadership failure in a Federal Agency. No quantitative analysis is attempted in this paper. The authors choice of papers to use in the ...

Developing a Citizen Perspective of Public Participation: Identity Construction as Citizen Motivation to Participate

Public participation affords public officials the opportunity to tap into diverse citizen knowledge that may help solve complex social problems. In order to best understand how to design effective participation, it is necessary to consider the perspectives of both public administrators and citizens; however, public administration literature has focused less on the citizen perspective. This article narrows the gap in the literature by elaborating a citizen perspective of participation and suggesting that identity plays a role in participation. It adopts a social identity approach in order to theorize how citizen identity constructed through participation is best conceptualized as a social identity, and to demonstrate how this social identity relates to citizen motivation to participate. The authors suggest that linking participation to a social identity approach elaborates a citizen perspective of participation and has value for furthering understanding of citizen-administrator collaboration.

Contingencies of Power Sharing in Collaborative Governance

Studies on dynamics of power relationship play a significant role in the collaborative governance literature because many issues and challenges in collaborative governance can be linked to power asymmetry in collaboration. This article proposes a contingency framework on power asymmetry in collaborative governance that includes six contingency factors of power sharing from contextual, network, and node perspectives. We focus on how each contingency factor influences the relationship between power sharing and the effectiveness of collaborative governance and suggest that, instead of focusing on the attempt to balance power and share power in collaboration, it will be more fruitful to design and implement collaborative arrangements based on the dynamic contingencies.

Issues and challenges of public service procurement in China: a collaborative governance perspective

As a form of collaborative governance, government procurement of public services from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has become a major channel for public service delivery. Different from the relative mature practices of public service procurement in Western countries, China is attempting to adopt this mechanism in recent years, calling for more research in sense making the issues and challenges in the procurement process. This paper discusses six major issues in Chinese Government procurement of public services from the perspective of collaborative governance theory, analyses the reasons that lead to these six challenges, and proposes some important solutions to these issues.

The Entangled Twins: Power and Trust in Collaborative Governance

Power and trust are two important issues of interorganizational relations in collaborative governance. This article develops a critical conceptual analysis of the dyadic relationship between power and trust in the context of collaborative governance. Three dynamic relationships and seven corresponding propositions are proposed regarding the shared sources of power and trust, the effects of power asymmetry and power sharing on trust building, and the influence of trust building on the management of power relationship in collaborative governance. These dyadic relations will help scholars and practitioners to deal with the dynamics brought forth by power and trust in collaboration.

Identity Construction: an Intangible Citizen Benefit of Public Participation

Recognizing the current public participation literature predominantly adopting the public administrator’s perspective rather than a citizen perspective, this paper identifies the concept of identit...