Elizabeth Eppel

Cross-Agency Collaboration in New Zealand: An Empirical Study of Information Sharing Practices, Enablers and Barriers in Managing for Shared Social Outcomes

Improving cross-agency information sharing is at the heart of service transformation efforts to provide more effective services to individuals with complex social needs. So far, however, there is not much empirical research available on cross-agency information sharing. This article explores New Zealand-based cross-agency information sharing practices, with a specific focus on information sharing enablers and barriers in multi-agency collaborative initiatives aimed at achieving integrated social service provision. Empirical findings show the importance of personal data protection and trust in cross-agency information sharing in the New Zealand context; a distinction being made between “hard” and “soft” information; agencies having different information needs and requirements; clear differences in information sharing practices and procedures between agencies with a public service mandate and those with a public safety mandate; the contribution of information sharing protocols and co-location to effective information sharing; and information sharing challenges due to issues around data ownership, a lack of technical interoperability, and a lack of technical capability and knowledge. Generally, in line with operational practice, existing privacy legislation offers an appropriate “default position” for cross-agency information sharing in managing for shared social outcomes in New Zealand. However, there is a need for additional legal support of information sharing by agencies operating under a public service mandate.

What Does it Take to Make Surprises Less Surprising

Abstract It is not unusual for public management systems to be ‘caught by surprise’ when events unfold which had not been anticipated in policy processes. An empirical example from New Zealand is used to show the contribution complexity theory has to make to helping public management scholars and practitioners understand the origin of surprises and anticipate them. This illustrative case identifies a number of unforeseen events in tertiary education, their origins and effects through a complexity-informed lens. These self-organizing changes can be the source of unwanted surprises (unknown unknowns) which require complexity-compatible approaches to their anticipation and management.

Complexity thinking in public administration’s theories-in-use

ABSTRACT A compressed overview of complexity theory in public administration creates a starting point for comparison with other theories-in-use. The underpinning methodological traditions of extant theories of public administration are compared for compatibilities with complexity theory. Concepts generally acknowledged as within the scope and interest of public administration scholars (actors, policy processes, decisions, power, information and values) are used to extend the analysis of complexity theory’s contribution. The paper concludes that understanding the complexity friendliness of extant theories will both facilitate the greater use of complexity theory in PA and extend the explanatory capacity of the existing compatible theories.

Unpacking the black box of successful ICT-enabled service transformation: how to join up the vertical, the horizontal and the technical

This paper aims to understand what goes on in the black box of successful, joined-up ICT-enabled service transformation, where complex interactions and integration must occur among the horizontal processes internal to a joined-up service delivery network, the vertical top-down processes of the organizations involved, and the change processes caused by using ICTs. A new conceptual framework is developed and applied to an illustrative case study of successful, joined-up service transformation in New Zealand.

Advancing Complexity Theory as a Qualitative Research Methodology

Although complexity theory is increasingly used to explain and understand complex health-system behavior, little is known about utilizing complexity theory to augment qualitative research methods. We advance this field by describing our use of complexity theory as a qualitative research methodology to explore sustainable health-care responses to intimate partner violence. We outline how complexity theory shaped our theoretical perspective, conceptualization of the research problem, and selection of methodology and methods. We show how a research methodology informed by complexity theory can capture new insights into complex problems, advancing the application of complexity theory and qualitative research design.

Complexity theory and public management: a ‘becoming’ field

Since the special edition of Public Management Review on ‘Complexity Theory and Public Management’ in 2008 (Volume 10 (3)), co-edited by Geert Teisman and Erik-Hans Klijn, academic interest in comp...

Utilizing complexity theory to explore sustainable responses to intimate partner violence in health care

ABSTRACT Implementing effective and sustainable health care responses to intimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex public health problem internationally. Increasingly scholars are recognizing that research methods which explore health-system responses to IPV obscure the complexity of the problem. This paper discusses the use of complexity theory for researching sustainable responses to IPV within New Zealand primary health care. We reconceptualize IPV responses as complex adaptive systems and propose a complexity-friendly methodology to explore interactions within and between the problem (IPV), intervention (IPV response), and the setting (health care).

Digital data in New Zealand schools: Policy reform and school leadership

In 1989, New Zealand started to follow an international trend of reforming education policy according to the neoliberal principles of competition, choice and self-managing schools. Since then, the increasing availability of digital data in schools has corresponded with the development of student achievement measurement tools and benchmarking of standards that enable comparison of schools and cohorts of students. More recently, national policy targets for student achievement have been introduced and form the basis of accountability measures. The article uses Hargreaves and Shirley’s ‘Four Ways’ characterisation of education policy change as a framework to examine the influence that national policy has had on the use of data, on power relations between schools and the national policymakers, and on the challenges faced by school leaders. Interviews in 16 schools explored the types of data available in each school, how they are used and how principals, as leaders in these self-managing schools, would like to be able to use the data. Two systemic influences explain the patterns found in the research. The first is the tension principals face between data required for accountability reporting and data needed for school-based decision-making. The second is the issue with regard to economies of scale and marketisation of education that affects equitable access to the knowledge, tools and expertise that enable effective data usage.

Exploring the complex pathway of the primary health care response to intimate partner violence in New Zealand

BackgroundIntegrating sustainable responses to intimate partner violence in health care is a persistent and complex problem internationally. New Zealand holds a leading role, having established national health system infrastructure for responding to intimate partner violence within hospital and selected community settings. However, resources for, and engagement with, the primary health care sector has been limited. The present study focuses on what affects a sustainable response to intimate partner violence within New Zealand primary health care settings.MethodsUtilising complexity theory, we reconceptualised a sustainable primary health care response to intimate partner violence as a complex adaptive system. To explore interactions between agents, we analysed the function(s) of key policy, strategy, guideline and evaluation documents informing intimate partner violence responsiveness in health care. We chronologically threaded these documents together by their function(s) to show how discourse influencing intimate partner violence responsiveness emerges from agent interactions.ResultsThis paper presents a complexity informed implementation narrative of the New Zealand health system response to intimate partner violence across the last two decades, focused on the participation of the primary health care sector. We demonstrate how competing discourses have contributed to system gaps and unintended consequences over time. Our findings consider implications for a sustainable response to intimate partner violence in primary health care and call attention to system interactions that challenge a whole health system approach in New Zealand.ConclusionsUse of complexity theory facilitates an innovative perspective of a persistent and complex problem. Given the complexity of the problem and New Zealand’s leadership, sharing the lessons learnt is critical for the international community involved in developing health care system approaches to intimate partner violence.

Understanding and explaining online personal information-sharing behaviours of New Zealanders: a new taxonomy

ABSTRACT Although research evidence shows that people have strong concerns about their privacy online, this does not necessarily mean that they do not share their personal information in varying online relationships. This paper presents New Zealand-based empirical research findings into people’s actual online information-sharing behaviours rather than their attitudes: the motivations, extent, and conditions under which individuals share their personal information in varying online relationships with commercial providers, with government, and on social networking sites. A grounded theory methodology and an abductive analysis were used to identify patterns in the findings and construct a new taxonomy of online information-sharing behaviours: contrary to existing taxonomies, all participants in this study are very privacy aware and make quite deliberate choices about what personal information they share online, with whom, to what extent, and under what circumstances. Four distinctive classifications of people’s online information-sharing behaviours were derived from this study: privacy pragmatists, privacy victims, privacy optimists, and privacy fatalists.