Mark van Twist

Innovations in Accountability: Learning Through Interactive, Dynamic, and Citizen-Initiated Forms of Accountability

Governments are experimenting with new forms of accountability that depart from tradition and are less bureaucratic in form, content, and symbolism. This article reports on the learning potential of recent public accountability innovations in Australia, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. All these innovations depart from the set formats of established forms of accountability, using new media and digital technology, not to increase the level of bureaucratic reporting, but to open up the accountability process to interactions with internal and external stakeholders. This enables critical dialogue on organizational conduct and performance that may foster organizational learning processes.

Understanding the Dynamics of Open Data: From Sweeping Statements to Complex Contextual Interactions

This chapter challenges existing impact assessments of open data in the public sector for three reasons: (1) the exclusive focus on economic effects of open data and not on other desirables such as a clean environment, good education, equitable health care, etc.; (2) the assumed linear relation between open data and impacts that ignores the dynamics of the interactions between the various stakeholders that may result in unpredictable and unforeseeable outcomes; (3) the homogeneous perspective on open data in the public sector that fails to acknowledge the variation of open data incentives, practices and consequences between countries and business sectors. As an alternative to “naive impact assessments,” this chapter develops an approach that embraces the complexity and contextuality of societal dynamics and takes a variety of values and desirables into account. We argue that whether open data delivers its “promise” depends on specific, local interactions that can be managed and controlled to a limited extent. Open data and its uses should be studied as social constructions that emerge over time in a specific context. We use two cases—open data in public transportation and in policing—to show the use of our perspective. For policy makers the complexity, contextuality, and multi-value approach means that they should shift their focus from working on “grand open data designs” to facilitating and promoting smart, local, pluralistic approaches to open data.

Creating public value in global wicked problems

ABSTRACT This essay seeks to explore in which way Public Value Theory (PVT) would be useful in guiding analysis and action with respect to global wicked issues like forced migration. We found that (1) PVT enables envisioning global, collective, public value as well as value for individuals, communities and states by including voices of ‘all affected interests’ even when discourses prove to be extremely conflicting; (2) PVT enables acknowledging collaborative innovation as a possible means of facilitating cross-sectoral and local – global (transnational) connections which might help reframing wicked global issues and delivering results; (3) When PVT is applied to global wicked issues it offers an opportunity to explore which kind of institutional innovation is required to convene an appropriate authorizing structure in the ‘institutional void’ at the transnational level. Requisite adjustments to PVT are identified.

Joined-Up Government in The Netherlands: Experiences with Program Ministries

Over the last 15 years there have been many experiments with joined-up (also known as whole of) government practices, aimed at horizontal coordination to overcome the fragmentation of vertical governmental structures due to departmentalism and New Public Management. These practices were initiated to address wicked problems and to better interact with society at large. Now that there are signs that the rhetoric of joined-up government is winding down and many joined-up government developments are being dismantled, it is time to evaluate this approach. This is especially appropriate as some suggest that the overall impact of these developments may be relatively small, despite (overly) optimistic claims made in the past. In this article we take experiences with joined-up government in the Netherlands as the departing point for a critical discussion of this approach. By comparing the Dutch experiences with those in other countries, we will draw a picture of the challenges and dilemmas of horizontal coordination in the vertical world of government.

Between State, Market and Community

Abstract Hybrid organizations operate in complex and diversified institutional environments that combine characteristics of the state, the market, and the nonprofit sector. These environments impose challenges on the marketing of hybrid organizations. This article focuses on the challenges and dilemmas in the marketing of hybrid organizations by analysing the slogans of Dutch sheltered work companies. These slogans reflect the core values and distinctive competences of these organizations. Our analysis accentuates the tensions between the demands from the multiple domains and shows how a specific group of hybrid organizations – sheltered work companies – deals with these tensions in the formulation of their slogans.

Exploring the future through creative competition: the RWS2020‐project

Purpose – This paper aims to argue that utilising foresight becomes a more useful tool to organisational management, if the innovative technique of “creative competition” is applied. In an empirical analysis, it seeks to show how the technique of creative competition was used in a scenario‐project. The case study shows how and why the technique of creative competition “worked”. These findings will then be used to explore the broader application of creative competition in organisational foresight.Design/methodology/approach – The study first elaborates theoretically on the difference between “forecast” and “foresight” and explores how the addition of the organisational dimension to these terms changes their meanings. It then focuses on the organisation that commissioned the study – Rijkswaterstaat – and describes its history with respect to exploring the future and certain other relevant contextual elements of the case study, such as how the project was organised. After that, it conceptualises the RWS2020 ...

When Citizens Take Matters into Their Own Hands

Citizens have begun to take public matters into their own hands and establish their own communities. They have self-defined rules and norms, separated from what is regularly defined as the public arena but are still included in a more general framework of societal rules. The public sphere in these domains has become privatized, in the sense that others are excluded from it and social interaction is regulated in private contracts between individuals, or between individuals and actors other than the state. The trend of citizens organizing public matters privately and opting out of certain shared public institutions poses ethical questions for representative democracy and for society as a whole. What does it mean for society if these practices of self-government keep growing in number and size? Are there lessons to be learned from self-government in local communities?

Complex causality in improving underperforming schools: A complex adaptive systems approach

textabstractWhen designing and implementing policies, policy makers usually assume linear, proportionate causation between interventions and consequences. Yet frequently unexpected consequences occur that seem unintended and disproportionate. This article argues that interventions are more appropriately understood as loops, not lines. System dynamics shows that causes and consequences interact in circular patterns, creating unexpected outcomes and self-reinforcing mechanisms. Some loops are vicious, causing deterioration of the situation, others are virtuous, propelling self-sustaining improvements that exceed original intentions. The article illustrates the circular approach to causality by applying it to interventions aimed at the improvement of the performance of primary schools in the Netherlands.

Coping with Complexity: Internal Audit and Complex Governance

ABSTRACT Complexity, a key issue in accountability research, is almost coterminous with modern governance. Increased complexity is a key external contingency driving analyses of public administration. Scholars often conclude that “traditional” forms of centralized accountability and control are no longer feasible in the face of complexity, but at the same time, internal audit in government, as a form of centralized accountability and control, is expanding its scope. This apparent paradox is addressed by means of mixed research methods focusing on how internal auditors in government understand and cope with complexity. The article demonstrates that auditors do so by hybridizing values and through professional and relational anchoring of practices. The results suggest that public administration scholars should not write off centralized control in complex systems of governance. The article also suggests that new accountability issues arise, relating to professional autonomy and influence inside government.

Public Managers, Media Influence, and Governance: Three Research Traditions Empirically Explored

Nowadays, media and media logic have become important and inherent elements in everyday practices of public administration and policy making. However, the logic of the media is often very different from, and conflicting with, the logic of political and administrative life. So the question of how public managers experience and deal with media attention is more relevant than ever. An analytical sketch of the literature on the relationship between public managers and media provides three main categories of literature (public relations, agenda, and mediatization tradition). These three categories are used to develop statements (so-called Q-sort statements) to capture the way public managers experience their relationship with the media. A group of managers involved in oversight then sorted these statements into order of preference. The research reveals three different groups of managers who show different attitudes to media attention and whom we have labeled as adaptors, great communicators, and fatalists.