List of Panels

Corresponding Chair/Chair of Review Group

Ming Xie, West Texas A&M University, USA, mxie@wtamu.edu 

Chairs:

Viola Burau: University of Aarhus, Denmark

Siobhan O’Sullivan: The University of New South Wales, Australia

Ming Xie: West Texas A&M University, USA

Edwina Zhu: University of Bristol, UK

Co-chairs:

Kelly Hall: University of Birmingham

Richard Hazenberg: University of Northampton, UK

Malika Igalla: Erasmus University Rotterdam

Michael Mcgann: Maynooth University, Ireland

Jose Nederhand: Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Madeline Powell: University of York, UK

Tim Tenbensel: University of Auckland, New Zealand

Sanna Tuurnas: University of Vaasa, France

Suyang Yu: Arizona State University, USA

The notion of New Public Governance (NPG) has developed to encapsulate important new collaborative relations in the governance of public services. Third sector, social enterprise and community-based initiatives are crucial to both policy development and public service delivery. The centrality of the third sector to policy design and public service delivery is well established among countries that have explicitly pursued NPG. Yet the reach and dynamic nature of these relationships necessitates constant analysis and reinterpretation. Less studied, but no less important, are the ways in which hybrid organisations do, and will, inform service delivery and design in countries with centralised governments such as China, Singapore and other developing countries. Furthermore, within the NPG, as the frontline workers who interact with citizens, groups, and organizations directly, how do street-level bureaucrats, particularly, their perceived administrative burden and coping strategies influence policy outcomes and public service provision requires further research. In this panel we invite proposals for researchers interested in the themes of NPG, hybrid organisations, street level bureaucrats, and associated policy and delivery processes, broadly construed. The panel should be organised in themed sessions and submissions should focus on one of the following themes:  

1. Comparing the reach of NPG

• The extent to which NPG displaces more state-centred governance
• The importance of institutions in explaining the scope of NPG
• Analyses of the extent to which policy implementers shape policy formulation
• Tensions between government and non-government partners, and their management

2. The third sector, social enterprises, and community-based initiatives – Exploring their sustainability, capacity and durability to deliver public services during times of transition. This sub-theme seeks to explore:

• Whether third sector organisations, social enterprises, and community-based initiatives are sustainable public service organisations
• What challenges they face and how they respond
• What outcomes they produce; and
• The relationships between these organisations and government in public service delivery

3. State-civil society relations and street-level bureaucracy

• Comparative studies on state-civil society relations in various policy contexts and political regimes
• Resource acquisition strategies of non-profit organizations and civil society
• Street-level bureaucrats: Roles and strategies in policymaking and implementation and related outcomes
• Red tape, rule complexity, and administrative burden in public service delivery: citizens, organizations, and street-level bureaucrats’ perspectives

4. Third sector commissioning; exploring

• The role of third sector organisations in delivering public services, and how this is shaped by different commissioning models
• What procurement innovations can support third sector involvement in service delivery?
• How might digitalisation reforms disrupt third sector involvement in service delivery?  

We would like to invite you to submit your research abstract focused on the themes outlined above, broadly construed.

• Abstracts are expected with max 500 words including references
• Abstracts should clearly state the objective of the work, the results and accomplishments and their significance, and the advancement over previous work.

Panel corresponding chair                       

Keryn Hassall, Evaluation consultant, Australia        

keryn@aptavit.com.au 

Panel co-chairs                      

Burt Perrin, Independent consultant – planning, research and evaluation, France         

Daniela Schröter, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration, Western Michigan University           

Gregory Greenman II, Evaluation consultant, USA

Program evaluation has long been a means for facilitating social-political-administrative relations. Forms of evaluation continue to evolve to support public sector capability, accountability and learning – from policy and program design, through implementation and ex post evaluation.

This panel track will bring the experience from the evaluation field to matters of interest to IRSPM, as there are many shared topics of interest but few opportunities to engage across disciplines. This panel is open to a wide range of papers relating to contemporary evaluation theory and practice that address current issues in public policy, public administration, and public management. We are particularly interested in hearing about evaluation approaches that are less well known in public administration and their potential to contribute to public administration theory and practice.

Topics may cover:

• knowledge from the evaluation field about policy design, implementation and policy success – including theories of change, causal mechanisms, implementation design, etc.
• use of evaluation and evaluative thinking to inform policy and program design, democratic engagement in policy formation, implementation, policy learning and innovation
• evaluation approaches from across the different theories of evaluation practice (including use, methods, valuing and transformative approaches) and their potential contribution to public administration theory and practice – such as developmental evaluation, Indigenous-led evaluation, participatory and transformative evaluation, rapid evaluation, synthesis across evaluations, and evaluation of policy within complex social systems
• evaluation as a form of knowledge generation and approaches to support evaluation use
• the role of evaluation in strengthening public sector capability and adaptive management – such as sectoral monitoring & evaluation systems, and evaluation capacity programs
• formal and informal education for public managers on evaluation practice and evaluative thinking
• the role of evaluation to inform public scrutiny about the costs, benefits and harms of policies and programs
• evaluative approaches for valuing in the public interest and understanding public value creation.

Panel sessions

Papers will be presented in sessions of 1.5 hours. Sessions will generally have 3 papers on related topics, with each presenter speaking for 15-20 minutes, followed by a brief response from a discussant and general discussion facilitated by the session chair. These sessions will be scheduled to align with the timezones of the presenters.

We are open to other suggestions for the format of presentation sessions, please email keryn@aptavit.com.au to discuss a different format for a session.

Preparing your abstract

Abstracts are due by 24 January 2022 and must be submitted through the ExOrdo system.

Abstracts should be 300-500 words. In addition to the abstract text, please:

• explain how the proposed presentation relates to current issues in public policy, public administration, and public management and is relevant to IRSPM participants
• provide a list of key references
• advise whether you will submit a full paper (preferred) or if this is a work in progress seeking feedback, or other form of presentation
• include the time zone you will be in during the conference (April 19-22) as we aim to schedule each presenter in a session that occurs between 8am and 8pm in your time zone.

Decisions will be announced by 23 February. Full paper submission is due by 4 April.

Roundtable session

This conference track will also include a roundtable discussion on reconceptualising the partnership between evaluators, policymakers and administrators to address social and environmental challenges.

The roundtable will link the IRSPM theme with the central discussions in recent international evaluation conferences.

Facing the Future NOW – Reconceptualizing the partnership between evaluators and administrators: Facing our pressing social and environmental challenges, what is the role and responsibility of evaluators and administrators with regards to accountability and democratic engagement? What are the implications on how we frame and conduct evaluative studies? What are the implications on the partnerships? How do we broaden the conversation and our partnerships in a polarized context?

This roundtable will bring insights on both the evaluation process and the contribution of results to administrators’ responsibilities to be accountable and engage democratically with society.

More details of the roundtable session will be available in February 2022.

Corresponding chair:

Prof Danture Wickramasinghe, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow

Danture.Wickramasinghe@glasgow.ac.uk 

Panel chairs:

Prof Andre Carlos Busanelli de Aaquino, University of São Paulo

Prof Pawan Adhikari, Essex Business School, University of Essex

Prof Thankom Arun, Essex Business School, University of Essex

Prof Tat Kei Alfred Ho, City University of Hong Kong

Prof Kelum Jayasinghe, Essex Business School, University of Essex

Prof Lihua Yang, Peking University 

The IRSPM 2022 panel calls for papers under two interrelated themes - development and public management. On the one hand, development is considered as an analytical content rather than merely a context in which it is enacted. It captures localized issues in emerging initiatives such as social accountability and citizen engagement (Hopper et al., 2009; Van Helden et al., 2021). On the other hand, public management is considered as a set of localized agendas to gather rich and nuanced empirical material. While both themes are important in terms of generating public value and creating equitable and fairer society (Bracci et al., 2021), the post-COVID era has now warrants an excellent opportunity for a critical examination of how development discourses encounter public management in varying contexts with their localised issues.

The panel invites papers considering the notions of development and public management as two related theoretical constructs for framing and capturing varying encounters. For instance, the notion of development could be considered as an epistemology through which to study how global epistemic communities diffuse and propagate public management as a discourse being enacted within local development policies, programmes, and projects. Alternatively, development could also be envisaged as an ontology through which the social and political realities of neoliberalism can be understood in terms of new public management, neo-liberal accountability, and managerialist initiatives which broaden the arenas of public administration and public policy into a form of 'publicness' (Steccolini, 2019). The panel invites researchers to submit either theoretical or empirical papers focusing on the evolving notion of development and connecting it with wider social-political-administrative changes taking place in public management even within nascent territories which are marginalised or neglected previously.

The papers selected for the panel will also be considered for submitting to the special issue at Financial Accountability and Management on ‘Beyond NPM in public sector accounting research- “publicness” and “localised-led development” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14680408).

References

Bracci, E., Saliterer, I., Sicilia, M., & Steccolini, I. (2021). Accounting for (public) value(s): Reconsidering publicness in accounting research and practice. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 34(7), 1513-1526.

Hopper, T., Tsamenyi, M., Uddin, S., & Wickramasinghe, D. (2009). Management accounting in less developed countries: What is known and needs knowing. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 22, 469-514.

Steccolini, I. (2019). Accounting and the post-new public management: re-considering publicness in accounting research. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 32, 255- 279.

van Helden, J., Adhikari, P., & Kuruppu, C. (2021). Public sector accounting in emerging economies: a review of the papers published in the first decade of Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies. Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies, 11(5), 776-798.

Corresponding chair & review group chair:

Soojin Kim sjkim@ntu.edu.sg

Panel chairs and co-chairs: Chung-An Chen and Liang Ma

Call for abstracts:

We are looking for papers that address, but not limited to, the following topics:

(i) Asia Pacific-based research that examines the applicability of propositions developed in the West;

(ii) Research that proposes new concepts tailored to the Asia Pacific context;

(iii) Research that compares public management between the East and the West, or large-sample, cross-country public management research;

(iv) Systematic reviews that explore variations associated with geographic region or country.

Corresponding Chair

Frank L. K. Ohemeng (Convener), Department of Political Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

frank.ohemeng@concordia.ca, ohemenfl@gmail.com 

Gedion Onyango (Convener), Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Nairobi, Kenya.

onyangoj@uonbi.ac.ke 

Panel Information 

In recent years, Africa has been described as a continent on the rise. The Economist, for example, noted in 2013 that "over the past ten years, real income per person has increased by more than 30%, whereas in the previous 20 years it shrank by nearly 10%. Africa is the world's fastest-growing continent just now. Over the next decade, its GDP is expected to rise by an average of 6% a year, not least thanks to foreign direct investment. FDI has gone from $15 billion in 2002 to $37 billion in 2006 and $46 billion in 2012." Despite the huge deposits of natural resources and the potential growth to effectively propel the continent, governance, defined as the ability to manage the economy for the betterment of citizens, continue to be seriously problematic. Poverty and corruption continue to be major issues affecting governance on the continent. Similarly, political upheavals continue to create socio-economic and political uncertainty. The recent coup d’état in Guinea and the precarious issue of shaky democracies have brought the issue of how Africa should be governed again.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the need for effective governance on the continent. It has been argued that the best way for Africa is building effective public institutions for governance if poverty, corruption, and wars are to be ended. Consequently, President Barrack Obama declared that Africa does not need strong men but rather strong institutions. The question then is how does one build such institutions?

Sadly, while there have been so many discussions about institutional development and building on the continent, such discussions have continued to be shaped by the neoliberal understanding of institutional building (Fosu, 2015; 2018; Poku and Whitman, 2018). As a result, there have been limited breakthroughs in institutional development and building to enhance Africa's development, especially on a continent where formal and informal institutions exist in tandem. The African state is yet to transform its society in its own image like those in the Western world following the industrial revolution (Hyden, 2021).

Indeed, the state's transformation in Western democracies was also characterised by merging the informal and formal governing structures (with some fixes like abolishing some structures as the situation demanded). The Asian Tigers and China went through a mix of regional and western forms of colonialism with similar fixes as European states as they transited into modernity. Also, compared to Latin American states like Brazil, where there were inter-generational and cross-generational experiences with colonialism, colonialism in Africa was relatively brief. Hence, the state's institutionalisation or the problems of 'limited statehood' (Risse, 2011) is somewhat less than can be said in Africa.

That being the case, there has been an increasing attempt to understand the African state differently and the implications for governance. This has led to the conceptualisation of two main approaches to governance – one normative, viewing the state's functions in the like and the form of the western democracies, and another functional governance, seeking to leverage or harness informal institutions, norms and values.

Thus, transforming the colonial state to a modernised one has been caught in-between African states trying to reinvent their own pre-colonial past and modernising in the manner and form of catching up with the western democracies. Hence, functional governance calls for a different approach that focuses on going by the grain (Hyden and Bratton, 1992; Levy, 2014; World Bank, 2017). Since it is in the grain where real governance lies, it determines the rules of the game or elite bargains and political settlements, addressing the issues of who gets what, how, and when (Olivier de Sardan, 2008).

Unfortunately, western scholars who have led many of these initiatives have not effectively wrapped their heads around these issues and how 'informal' institutions can be merged with formal institutions to improve governance. Their discourses have all stopped at mere theorisation without giving practical directions on how we can organise working with the grain. There is, therefore, the need to rethink African governance and transformation (Azeh and Lu, 2019) by combining formal and informal institutions to enhance development (Jütting et al. 2007; Meagher, 2007).

The panel contributes to knowledge by asking how formal and informal institutions can be merged in governing Africa. It seeks theoretical and empirical papers on Africa's governance with examples drawn across the continent to answer the following questions: (a) how should reforms of African political systems be designed in light of the structures and norms of the informal state and its political system?; (b) how can key arms of the government be structured to bring on board other public authorities like traditional chiefs, Council of Elders, etc., into formal decision making and political action?; (c) how can the justice system strengthen traditional justice systems and enhance their relevance in upholding human rights and directing political action, as well as in settling political disputes?; (d) how can local political administration be made more accountable to the citizenry?; and (f) how can indigenous knowledge and language be harnessed to improve public policy processes. In short, how can public policies be legitimised in light of indigenous knowledge, conceptualisation, and language?

The contributors' approaches, methods, and theories should effectively demonstrate a break away from the neoliberalism's image of failure in Africa. The approaches should help us understand inward-looking public policy strategies for effective governance. Papers can focus on:

• A single case or comparative studies of governance;

• Specific policy area or comparative analysis of policy areas;
• Best practices, success stories, and lessons learnt in governance;
• The role of different stakeholders in governance;
• Theories to explain success and failures of governance;
• The important role of traditional institutions in governance;
• The role of dialogue between formal and informal institutions;
• Forms of responsibility and accountability in stregthening governance;
• Informal institutions and the fight against corruption;
• The role of traditional authorities in governance;

References

Ezeh, A. and J. Lu (2019) Transforming the Institutional Landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa: Considerations for Leveraging Africa's Research Capacity to Achieve Socioeconomic Development, CGD Policy Paper 147, Washington D.C.

Fosu, A.K. (2018) Governance and Development in Africa: A Review Essay Working Paper Series N° 298, African Development Bank, Abidjan: Côte d'Ivoire.

Fosu, A.K. (ed.) (2015) Growth and Institutions in African Development, New York: Routledge.

Hyden, G. (2021) “Africa's governance imperatives: How Kenya has responded,” in G. Onyango and G. Hyden (eds.) Governing Kenya: Public Policy in Theory and Practice (7-26), London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hyden, G. (2013) Culture, administration, and reform in Africa. International Journal of Public Administration, 36(13), 922-931.

Hyden, G. and M. Bratton (eds.) (1992) Governance and Politics in Africa. CO: L. Rienner.

Jütting, J., D. Drechsler, S. Bartsch and I. de Soysa (eds.) (2007) Informal Institutions: How Social Norms Help or Hinder Development, Paris: OECD

Levy, B. (2014). Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies, Oxford: OUP.

Meagher, K. (2007) “Introduction: Special issue on 'informal institutions and development in Africa,” Africa Spectrum, 42(3), 405-418 

Olivier de Sardan, J.P. (2008). Researching the practical norms of real governance in Africa. Africa, Power and Politics Programme Discussion Paper, 5.

Poku, N. and J. Whitman (2018) Africa Under Neoliberalism. New York: Routledge.

Risse, T. (ed) (2011) Governance Without a State? Policies and Politics in Areas of Limited Statehood, New York: Columbia University Press

World Bank (2017) World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Review Group Chair: 

Prof. Robert Shepherd robertpshepherd@carleton.ca 

Co-Chairs:                  Prof. Evert Lindquist

                                    Ms. Diane Simsovic

Call for Abstracts Text:

The COVID-19 pandemic can be regarded as a mega-crisis that has presented governments worldwide with not only a major public health challenge, but it has also surfaced several problems of agility, collaboration among actors, and governance of crisis. Governments had to adapt to crisis quickly and develop programs and services that met various demands. Government responses led to considerable fiscal drain. In response, governments around the world have begun planning for expenditure reduction in an effort to re-position budgets that can meet debt reduction expectations while also meeting current citizen and public programming needs.

This panel attempts to bring different country contexts together to determine how various jurisdictions are thinking about designing their respective expenditure reduction exercises and the lessons each can apply. Some countries will elect to take a comprehensive approach to spending or expenditure review, while others will take a more targeted approach. Some countries will have an ongoing system with embedded processes to steer these exercises, while others will prefer to carry out infrequent reviews. As such, the panel seeks to discuss various aspects of country or region-specific exercises in the planning stages or early implementation stages so that practice can be compared and contrasted. The idea is to generate these experiences, compare them across different country contexts, and isolate the design considerations that went into the decisions to carry these out. It is anticipated that a collection of papers will be brought together to form a special edition in Public Management Review (PMR) or other international journal.

We are looking for papers that address some or all of the following elements:

• The political, economic or other factors that are driving discussions of spending or expenditure reduction in a particular country, countries, or region;
• Institutional factors and conditions that are driving governance arrangements of spending or expenditure reduction exercises;
• Choices of spending review or expenditure reduction approaches being taken that account for type of system of government, extent of cooperation or collaboration with other governmental and non-governmental jurisdictions and institutions, and alignment with existing or previous exercises;
• Extent to which internal or external actors are driving design and/or implementation, and any arrangements being undertaken to engage various actor communities;
• Monitoring and evaluation arrangements being planned or undertaken to ensure such exercises are on track;
• Approaches to data collection, quality assurance and application; actors and arrangements for collecting and using data and information.

Panel Chairs:

1. Paresh Wankhade, Edge Hill University, UK (Corresponding Chair)  Paresh.Wankhade@edgehill.ac.uk 
2. Peter Murphy, Nottingham Trent University, UK
3. Lucia Velotti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA
4. Katarzyna Lakoma, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Informal inquries about abstracts or the panel can be made to Profs: Paresh Wankhade,  at Paresh.Wankhade@edgehill.ac.uk or Peter Murphy at peter.murphy@ntu.ac.uk  or Lucia Velotti at lvelotti@jjay.cuny.edu 

Panel details:

This year’s IRSPM conference concerns the evolution of social-political-administrative relations and the future of administrative systems. Facing the future in the case of emergency services relates to finding new ways of building and sustaining relationships through time. In particular, the panel seeks to understand what a sustainable relationship is in the field of emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) including also services offered by community based organizations and the non-profit sector and how sustainable relationships can be developed. The panel will provide an inter-disciplinary platform to debate and discuss the issues which are relevant to the emergency management communities and research groups at IRSPM. The proposed panel will provide a forum for an engaged and critical analysis of the emergency services amidst mounting calls for professionalization in these organizations along with the growing interest and capacity of the professionals and practitioners (in these services) against the backdrop of evolving social-political-administrative relations.

Submissions on the theme of ‘evolving social-political-administrative relations" in the context of emergency services will be particular welcome in addition to other themes including:

• Application of new technologies
• System re-design and associated challenges
• Challenges of multi-agency cooperation and interoperability
• Designing effective strategies to engage with service users
• Community and organisational capacities and resiliency
• Organisational culture and management of culture change
• Improving wellbeing and resilience of emergency service workers
• Building theoretical and methodological foundations for research, teaching and professional development
• Volunteer management systems

 This panel follows the successful panels at IRSPM since 2017 on various management aspects of the emergency services. In 2021, 13 papers were presented at the panel. Prof. Wankhade and Prof. Murphy have vast experiences in running emergency management at the EGPA and Academy of Management (Critical Management Studies) conferences, EURAM (since 2015), BAM (2016, 2019) and PAC (since 2009) conferences since 2009. The panel chairs have published widely on this subject area.  Prof. Wankhade is also the Editor-In-Chief of the International Journal of Emergency Services,  IJES (https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/ijes?id=IJES ), an Emerald publication. Prof. Murphy has also served as the editor to IJES. A special Issue of IJES, guest edited by Profs. Murphy and Velotti, was published in Feb 2020 (9:1) from the papers submitted at the IRSPM 2018 Conference in Edinburgh. 

Best Paper Award

Emerald Group Publishing and the International Journal of Emergency Services (IJES) will sponsor the best paper award at the panel. For more information on IJES and submission guidelines, please go to:

http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=IJES 

Submission deadline:

Deadline for Paper Abstracts is 24th January 2022. The abstract should be 500 words maximum including references, written in English, single spaced, plain text, with no tables or figures. Further information about the Panel and/or the Conference is available at the conference website.

Panel Manager:

Gianluca ANTONUCCI, gianluca.antonucci@unich.it 

Corresponding Chair:

Gianluca ANTONUCCI, gianluca.antonucci@unich.it 

Names and affiliations, contact emails of the Co-Chairs (review group):

• Co-Chair (and contact person): Hiroko KUDO, Faculty of Law, Chuo University, Japan
• Co-Chair: Joyce LIDDLE, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK
• Co-Chair (and contact person): Gianluca ANTONUCCI, DEA, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy
• Co-Chair (and contact person): Gabriele PALOZZI, Department Management & Law, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
• Co-Chair (and contact person): Paolo FEDELE, University of Udine, Italy 

Description of the panel topic and Abstract expectation

Public sector agencies should be involved in the provision of sport as a strategic incentive to support citizens’ relationships and their quality of life. Public bodies ought to be proactive in sustaining local community social growth by encouraging sporting activities with the twofold aims of fostering physical wellness and facilitating social diversities and interactions.

Accordingly, this panel would like to interrogate every aspect of public management and policies which use both professional and grassroot sporting activities as leverage for creating public value and safer/stronger communities by boosting youngsters’ education, elderly healthy living, social inclusion, connectedness & community identities.

The panel seeks both theoretical and empirical contributions that tackle the issue of the public management of sport. The panel format refers to standard presentations (10/15 min), followed by session discussions.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the followings:

• Social and/or economic outcomes of public sector involvement in sport.
• How can sport add “public and social value”?
• How sport can be linked to other policy fields to create more sustainable communities and community well-being/healthy living?
• Sport and the resolution of social and community issues fostering equality and inclusion through sport.
• Active ageing through the support of sport and physical activities.
• All aspects of the governance of sport.
• Public expenditure on Sport in spending review times
• Public and Private partnership in infrastructural investment on Sport facilities for grassroot and professional sports
• Models of Governance and Ownership of Professional Sport Clubs and Amateur Sport Associations and their interaction with public bodies

Panel chair & review group chair:

Prof. Dr. Peter C. Lorson, University of Rostock (Germany) peter.lorson@uni-rostock.de 

Panel co-chairs:

• Ellen Haustein, University of Rostock (Germany) 
• Hans-Henning Schult, University of Rostock (Germany) 
• Jaroslav Dvorak, PhD, Klaipėda University (Lithuania) 
• Lotta-Maria Sinervo, Tampere University (Finland)
• Pauliina Lehtonen, Tampere University (Finland) 

Description of the theme and list of sub-topics

Participatory budgeting is used since several decades in order to give citizens the opportunity to influence public spending decisions and to form a part of democratic decision-making processes. Thereby, it reshapes social-political-administrative relations and can help to rebuild ties with citizens. It can affect accountability relationships, strategic planning of public entities and also public sector accounting and is therefore an overarching topic of public management. Given nowadays opportunities of digital media and social networks, participatory budgeting enjoys renewed interest in order to foster values of community, political discourses and localism (Royo et al. (2010)) and also establish links with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 provided both opportunities for virtual designs of PB, but also challenges with respect to less face-to-face events organized. More generally, criticism has been raised that some forms and recent practices of participatory budgeting do not lead to enhanced legitimacy or better decision-making processes. On the contrary, research has shown that even the level of frustration can rise (e.g. Célérier and Cuenca Botey (2015)), the implementation is only ‘cosmetic’ and often local initiatives for participatory budgeting are stopped after a few years or disappear after a single run (e.g. Manes-Rossi et al. (2021)).

This panel therefore seeks to discuss traditional and innovative forms of participatory budgeting in order to elicit chances but also downsides of different ways to involve citizens in public spending decision-making. This also involves ideas on how to purposefully implement PB in times of the pandemic and how to address global threats such as climate change. The aim is to contribute with critical views on participatory budgeting thereby showing new perspectives and different theoretical and also practical insights to this hot topic.

Fields of special interest for PB are, for example:

• Gender responsive PB;
• Application of PB in schools;
• Evaluation of PB;
• Embedding the SDGs in PB;
• Connecting PB to smart city development;
• PB from an organizational viewpoint;
• PB as an evolving process;
• Citizen’s PB journeys;
• Citizen motivation theories to engage in PB.

Abstracts are expected with max 500 words including references submitted between 8 December 2021 and 24 January 2022 ONLY via the ExOrdo system.

Panel convenors 

Jean Hartley (Open University), jean.hartley@open.ac.uk  Corresponding Chair

Phil Davies (Open University)

Jeroen Maesschalck (Catholic University Leuven)

Nicky Miller (Open University)

Edoardo Ongaro (Open University)

Kathryn Quick (University of Minnesota)

Eckhard Schröter (German Police University)

Paul Walley (Open University)

Panel theme

Societies experiencing transitions due to political, economic, social and environmental changes rely on policing to help to protect the vulnerable, tackle changing crimes and maintain social order.  Simultaneously, policing is a public service which has coercive as well as welfare elements. These tensions raise important theoretical questions about legitimacy, authority, governance and service provision in a critical space of relationships between citizens and the state. These various issues have become more evident in these extraordinary times of the coronavirus pandemic, with police being key workers in high-profile, front-line service roles, and adapting to substantial and dynamic changes in the nature of crime, vulnerability and social order.  They interact very directly with various publics. Indeed, for some minority populations, law enforcement is the “face” of government most often encountered.

This panel addresses police and policing from a public management, governance and/or organization studies perspective to examine the links between policing, public management and democracy.  While public management theory has been informed and widely examined in the context of services of the extended welfare state and public utilities, policing – despite being a prominent facet of government - has been unduly neglected both in its own terms in public management and as a field of systematic and comparative public management research.  This neglect is detrimental to both the advancement of public management theory and the improvement of policing practices. Therefore, we invite papers exploring questions such as: legitimacy, equity, power, authority, governance and organizational performance in policing; whether and how policing is value-creating or value-destroying; changing roles and expectations of police at points of societal change and stress (e.g., natural disaster, Covid social distancing); and comparative analysis of policing values, operations, or consequences in or across different locales.

Submission of abstracts

We welcome papers in a range of formats.  Submissions, based on an abstract of no more than 500 words including abstract should be made through the IRSPM conference system.  The deadline for abstracts is 24 January 2022. 

Standard papers:  to be offered for presentation in the panel which will be ongoing through the conference.  All papers will be allocated a discussant, and in submitting a paper, each author indicates their willingness to be a discussant on another paper. 

Speed dating papers:  These aim to link early career researchers with more experienced researchers, and they will work in breakout rooms in pairs to discuss particular papers which are in development.  The matching will take place before the conference happens.  We feel this is an important innovation for IRSPM, given the pressures which the pandemic has created on early career researchers who may have fewer networks and resources to draw on to develop their research and their careers. 

Round table discussion This will involve a set of short presentations on a particular topic, with those presentations from three or more different countries, to enable a cross-national perspective on policing.  In submitting a round table idea, please contact the panel convenors directly in the first instance. 

Panel Chairs:

Saar Alon-Barkat, University of Haifa, s.alon.barkat@poli.haifa.ac.il 

Kristina S. Weißmüller, Universität Bern kristina.weissmueller@kpm.unibe.ch 

Co-Chairs:

Oliver James, University of Exeter

Gregg Van Ryzin (Rutgers University)

This IRSPM2022 panel calls for papers using behavioral and/or experimental research that advances understanding of core public-management concerns. Papers can be theoretical and/or empirical contributions that integrate psychological or behavioral science insights into public management research. The papers may employ various methodologies including experimentation, observational studies, computational text analysis, qualitative methods, or mixed methods. That notwithstanding, we strongly welcome studies of public management topics that employ experimental methods, including lab, field and survey experiments. Papers could be applications of behavioral science that address questions of importance to progressing theory, informing practice, or replications of previous experimental work. For the 2022 conference, we also encourage papers that contribute to the conference topic theme of “Facing the future: Evolving social-political-administrative relations and the future of administrative systems”. Besides this theme, papers that address other topics within public management and closely related research fields will be considered. We also encourage submissions to follow open science practices for instance by pre-registering experiments prior to raising data.

We invite papers reporting research that has already been conducted that report contributions to theory or practice, and request that they clearly set out their research questions, methods, results and that they draw out implications of findings. In addition, we invite papers that present developed experimental designs which include a plan for implementation of the experiment(s). This invitation for detailed designs is consistent with our aim of encouraging pre-review and critical feedback on experimental designs before data collection. Please note, for an experimental design, a full design paper is required that sets out the theory and methods including details of how the experiment will be conducted, the assessment of minimal sample size needed for detecting meaningful effects, and provisional plans for data analysis, with a references section. For guidance, it may be useful to look at information about pre-registration of experimental designs (see proposed resources on preregistration and reporting practices below).

Not all elements discussed in these sources are required for an experimental design paper, but any elements important to the proposed study should be included. The experimental design paper should be of similar length to a conventional IRSPM conference paper. As a reminder, conventional conference papers are also warmly invited and we anticipate a balance between both kinds of paper rather than a preponderance of only one kind.

We encourage paper submissions from all regions of the world and from researchers at various career stages, including doctoral students and postdocs. We encourage a diversity of presenters in terms of region, gender, career stage, methodological approach, and substantive research interests. This call builds on the success over the last few years at IRSPM conferences of similar panels of this kind.

Resources on preregistration and reporting practices:

• The American Economic Association website websites: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/site/instructions
• The American Psychological Association https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2019/02/open-science
• Governance and Politics website http://egap.org/content/registration
• Appendix ‘Recommended Reporting Requirements for Experiments’ in the edited book James, O., Jilke, S. R., & Van Ryzin, G. G. (Eds.). (2017). Experiments in public management research: Challenges and contributions. Cambridge University Press.

Panel manager: Prue Brown, Australia p.brown3@uq.edu.au 

Names and affiliation of the chair(s):

Prudence R Brown, University of Queensland, Australia

Sarah Warner, University of Queensland, Australia

Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren, Lund University, Sweden 

Description

Interpretive methods can illuminate the often-hidden role of politics and power in the processes of governing. They help us to understand how problems are constructed and understood, how ideas about causes and solutions are limited, and how change can be constrained through framing. Despite this, they continue to be overlooked by public management researchers and practitioners wedded to more traditional approaches. This panel explores how different interpretive methods can be used to unpack and understand evolving social-political-administrative relations challenges. Understanding the values, norms, power-relations and ideologies which underpin social-political-administrative relationships provides fresh insights into understanding systems.

Call for papers

Interpretive methods offer an opportunity to highlight the normative biases that underpin contemporary discussions because they allow us to problematize the ways in which discourses around issues are framed and articulated. This in turn provides insights into enabling and constraining factors for transformative change.

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words (including references) that use interpretive methods to explore the politics involved in addressing policy-making, bureaucracy or administrative practices. We take a broad approach to interpretive methods, because we acknowledge it is in this diversity that fresh insights are made possible. Papers that address the methodological challenges associated with mobilizing interpretive approaches are also welcome.

Further information and author guidelines will be available on IRSPM.org and the conference ExOrdo system. 

Review group chair (panel manager), corresponding chair:

David Špaček, Masaryk University, Brno, david.spacek@econ.muni.cz 

Panel chairs and co-chairs:

Sara Brorström, Gothenburg University, Sweden

Bert George, Ghent University, Belgium

Åge Johnsen, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

David Špaček, Masaryk University, Brno, Sweden

Tara Kolar Bryan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, United States

Panel description:

Strategic planning is an approach to strategy formulation that helps public organizations develop a strategy that crosses and integrates the entire organization as well as demonstrates to core stakeholders what the organization wants to achieve, how and why. Strategic planning can also serve as a means of improving social-political-administrative relations, learning new practices, questioning ongoing development, and enhancing performance. There has, however, been considerable disagreement about the applicability and effectiveness of strategic planning in the public sector, especially in more complex entities like networks and collaborations, and more research is necessary to unravel the ways in which strategic planning can be useful, or not, to public organizations and, especially, to the creation of public value.

A number of questions related to strategic planning are still largely unanswered:

• In what forms (i.e., as a formal document vs. strategy as practice) do strategies exist?
• Who is involved in strategy formulation?
• How do public organizations and other entities (networks, communities, etc.) actually “do” strategy in practice?
• Which tools are used and how?
• What does the process look like?
• How are the strategies followed?
• What results do the strategies and strategizing produce?
• How was the problem at hand actually solved (or not?)
• Strategies for smart public services – do they exist?

Answering these questions may be helpful for advancing the theory as well as the practice of strategic planning in the public domain.

Requirements on abstracts

The panel invites both theoretical, review and empirical papers that deal with the questions outlined in the panel description.

Paper abstracts should include a short description of the topic, the research question(s) and method, and an indication of the research findings.

Corresponding and Review chair:

Ines Mergel, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz (Germany)

ines.mergel@uni-konstanz.de 

Co-chairs:

Mila Gasco-Hernandez (lead co-chair and panel mamager)

Center for Technology in Government and Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York (United States)

mgasco@albany.edu 

Albert Meijer

Utrecht University (The Netherlands)

Call for paper abstracts

This panel focuses on the ongoing digital transformation of the public sector, defined as a holistic effort to revise core processes and services of government beyond the traditional digitization efforts (Merget el al., 2019). While governments have gone through many different phases of using information and communication technologies (ICT), the current wave allows public organizations to fundamentally rethink how they deliver public services by innovatively working with stakeholders, building new frameworks of service delivery, and creating new forms of relationships.

For this panel, we are seeking papers that focus on these transformative elements and provide empirical evidence of the changes that are observable. We are interested in papers, that provide empirical evidence on how public administrations are orchestrating transformative change processes: what are new modes of interactions with  the participants in the digital transformation? What new modes of service design are introduced in the public sector? Which agile methods are introduced and how can they be implemented in the routines of public administrations? How are technology procurement processes changing? What are the organizational, procedural, technological outcomes of a digitally transformed public administration?

Given these unanswered questions, this panel focuses on implementation of digital transformation in public administrations and asks for submissions that provide  empirical  evidence for the above  listed questions. We seek evaluative submissions that build on empirical evidence and welcome case studies or large-scale survey studies that explore digital transformation in the public sector from an implementation perspective. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Service design in public administrations
• The role of organizational and/or institutional factors in the implementation of digital transformation
• Digital transformation competencies
• Digital transformation methods
• Changing the relationships with digital transformation stakeholders
• Public value creation in digital transformation projects 

Paper abstracts format

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words including references. All papers should be submitted via our online system for abstract submission. The same platform will be used for the review, evaluation and acceptance of abstracts. Please do not submit papers by email as any such submissions will not be processed or redirected.

Corresponding Panel Chair:

Dr. Birgit Grüb, Associate Professor, Institute for Management Accounting, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria, birgit.grueb@jku.at

Co-Chairs:

Dr. Christopher Klinger, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, christopher.klinger@utoronto.ca

Dr. Sebastian Martin, Professor, Department of Health, Social and Public Management, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Linz, Austria, Sebastian.Martin@fh-linz.at

Panel Description

Not just the COVID-19 experience showed that critical bottlenecks in the health care sector exist – in developing and developed countries alike. Future-facing solutions are needed, with resulting (r)evolutions targeting service delivery with the overall goal to improve quality and coordination of care and to curb spending. Topics discussed within the panel may include but are not limited to: 

• Emerging service delivery models/management approaches and collaborative/digital generation of solutions;
• Digitalization (e.g., AI, apps, electronic health cards);
• New forms of communication (e.g., word of mouth, social media);
• Emergency preparedness/lessons from the pandemic;
• Future performance indicators – the good, the bad, and the ugly;
• evolving social-political-administrative relations and the future of health care systems.

We seek for abstracts/ papers that use quantitative or qualitative approaches as well as contributions that encourage scholarly discourse towards theoretical or conceptual development.

Abstracts should be submitted via Exordo until January 24th 2022.

Corresponding chairs

• Alex Murdock, Professor Emeritus at London South Bank University, UK and Visiting Professor at University of Potsdam, Germany. alex.murdock@lsbu.ac.uk 
• Jieqiong Wu, PhD Candidate, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, jieqiong.wu@uni-konstanz.de 

Panel co-chairs and reviewers

• Dr. Eva Thomann, Full Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Germany
• Chiara Civera, Associate Professor, University of Turin, Italy

Panel Topic

This panel invites research submissions on collaboration and partnering between stakeholder to achieve policy success.  (Bauer et al  2020, Kumar et al 2020, Bauer et al 2020, Bianchi et al 2021).  Often this involves complex and ‘wicked’ policy problems, rising citizen expectations, dire fiscal constraints, and the resulting innovation demand.

Questions would include:

 1) Varieties of stakeholders working together and contributing to policy success.

2)  Ways different actor groups support/oppose a policy affecting collaboration and policy success in practice.

3)  Theory development in the light of COVID19  involving partnering and collaboration between stakeholders  . viz the impact on supply chains and essential goods and services.

Abstracts

We welcome abstracts which present original research which may derive from analysis of either primary or possibly secondary data.   Abstracts which involve comparative research are especially welcome.  We also welcome abstracts which develop theory.

References

• Aday, S. and Aday, M.S., 2020. Impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain.Food Quality and Safety, 4(4), pp.167-180.
• Bacq, S. and Lumpkin, G.T., 2020. Social entrepreneurship and COVID‐19. Journal of Management Studies.
• Bauer, Z., AbouAssi, K. and Johnston, J., 2020. Cross-sector collaboration formality: the effects of institutions and organizational leaders. Public Management Review, pp.1-23.
• Bianchi, C., Nasi, G. and Rivenbark, W.C., 2021. Implementing collaborative governance: models, experiences, and challenges. Public Management Review, pp.1-9.
• Civera, C., Cortese, D., Mosca, F. and Murdock, A., 2020. Paradoxes and strategies in social enterprises’ dual logics enactment: A csQCA between Italy and the United Kingdom. Journal of Business Research, 115, pp.334-347.
• Eriksson, E., Andersson, T., Hellström, A., Gadolin, C. and Lifvergren, S., 2020. Collaborative public management: coordinated value propositions among public service organizations. Public Management Review, 22(6), pp.791-812.
• Francis, J.R., 2020. COVID-19: Implications for Supply Chain Management.Frontiers of health services management, 37(1), pp.33-38.
• Kumar, S., Pandey, N. and Haldar, A., 2020. Twenty years of Public Management Review (PMR): a bibliometric overview. Public Management Review, 22(12), pp.1876-1896..
• Mook, L., Murdock, A. and Gundersen, C., 2020. Food banking and food insecurity in high-income countries. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 31(5), pp.833-840.
• Nutbeam, D., 2021. The vital role of meaningful community engagement in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Health Research and Practice, 31(1).
• Oberoi, R., Halsall, J.P. and Snowden, M., 2021. Reinventing social entrepreneurship leadership in the COVID-19 era: engaging with the new normal. Entrepreneurship Education, pp.1-20.
• Ratten, V., 2020. Coronavirus (covid-19) and social value co-creation. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.
• Rowan, N.J. and Laffey, J.G., 2020. Challenges and solutions for addressing critical shortage of supply chain for personal and protective equipment (PPE) arising from Coronavirus disease (COVID19) pandemic–Case study from the Republic of Ireland. Science of the Total Environment, 725, p.138532.
• Weaver, R.L., 2020. The Impact of COVID-19 on the Social Enterprise Sector. Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, pp.1-9.

Corresponding chair:

Peter Aagard, Associate professor, Roskilde University, Denmark, peteraa@ruc.dk 

Co-organisers:

Eleanor MacKillop*, Andrew Connell, James Downe, and Hannah Durrant, Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP), Cardiff University (UK);

Marleen Easton, Ghent University (Belgium), and Brian Head, University of Queensland (Australia).

Like all areas of politics, administration and civil society, the evidence-policy-practice relationship has been impacted by Covid-19.

The panel will be composed of two sessions: 

1. Architectures of Knowledge Exchange uncovered in times of crisis.

In a time of recurrent crisis, the conduct of expertise and politics becomes entangled with the new institutional arrangements of knowledge exchange. Such architecture is organized around epistemic communities, advisory committees, public campaigns, or the crisis management operations of state agencies. Such institutional architecture of knowledge exchange emerged during the Covid-19 pandemics and can also be detected in crisis like global warming or the 2008 financial crises. The aim of the panel is to detect and describe these new institutional arrangements across different regions of the world, how they derive from recurrent crisis, and what consequences and dilemmas they pose for good, efficient governance, accountability, and legitimacy.

1. What Future for the Evidence-Policy-Practice Relationship?

This session explores the reality of the role played by knowledge brokers/evidence producers and their impact. For example,

• What difference do these individuals/organisations make, and in what ways?
• Are we witnessing the scientisation of politics or the politicisation of science?
• Has the role of experts in policy changed since Covid-19?

Format of the panel:

Once the papers have been selected (three papers in each session), we will be in contact with the authors to organise presentation and discussion times that suit as many contributors as possible (e.g., time zone differences, caring and teaching responsibilities). Paper presenters will be asked to circulate a written document in advance – length to be determined with IRSPM organising committee – that will be forwarded to all panel presenters, with discussants being pre-assigned to guarantee as much feedback and discussion as possible. All presenters will be asked to send their presentation slides (if using them) in advance so that IT issues on the day are avoided.  We will also ask permission from participants to record the whole panel, for other conference participants to watch later.

Corresponding Chair: 

Maria Cucciniello, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Maria.cucciniello@ed.ac.uk 

Call for abstract

This panel provides an opportunity for new researchers in public management (doctoral students and researchers in the first three years of their academic careers) to discuss their research and work in progress with a distinguished international faculty in a format that allows for targeted discussion around the publication of the work presented.

We award the Osborne Best Paper Prize to the paper which comes closest to publishing standard. Selected panelists are entitled to join the conference activities of the IRSPM New Researchers Chapter and be part of a family of high flyers enjoying the full support of the society in their career development. Subject-specific, publishing as well as career advice will be offered by selected IRSPM board members and established academic members.

We invite proposals of stand-alone papers, rather than PhD progress reports, on any public management topics but the selection process will prioritize the papers which are most relevant to the conference theme. The theme of the IRSPM 2022 conference is Facing the future: Evolving social-political-administrative relations and the future of administrative systems.

The proposals will consist of a short outline of the paper (no longer than 500 words in length), with authors’ contact details on a separate sheet.

The outline will cover the following: (i) purpose of the paper, (ii) intended contribution to the literature (iii) methods, (iv) main findings.

Proposals submissions can be made through the IRSPM conference Abstract submission form.

Any queries about submissions should be directed to the Panel Chair Maria Cucciniello maria.cucciniello@ed.ac.uk 

Corresponding chair: 

Iris Saliterer, Professor, University Freiburg, Germany, Iris.Saliterer@vwl.uni-freiburg.de 

Panel chairs:

Enrico Bracci, Professor, Universitá di Ferrara, Italy

Judy Brown, Professor, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ

Giuseppe Grossi, Professor, Kiristanstad University, Sweden

Ringa Raudla Professor, Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance, Estland

Ileana Steccolini, Professor, Essex Business School, UK

The SIG on Accounting and Accountability centers its work around the questions of how accounting impacts public officials and decisions, how and why it is used, and how it helps to assist in fostering accountability. This year we focus on the role and facets of accounting and accountability in changing social-political-administrative relations.

In doing so we particularly encourage scholars to investigate the role of accounting in identifying, shaping and translating different perspectives, values and interests in (changing) public service arrangements and between politicians, managers, frontline workers and society as well as to explore how accounting can contribute to a better understanding of public values(s), beyond a merely economic perspective.

The panel encourages research that addresses, but is not limited to, the following questions.

• To what extent, and how, are the multiple public values which “count” for citizens being accounted for?
• What accountability gaps are opened in the face of the plurality and polarization of public values?
• How do processes of prioritization of public values shape accounting and accountability? And how do the latter shape processes of prioritization among public values?
• What might we learn from contemporary democratic theory about ways of engaging different public(s) and addressing their multiple values?
• What are the implications of different models of democracy (e.g. deliberative, agonistic) for accounting and accountability practices and, relatedly, changing socio-political-administrative relations? What types of "publicness" do they entail?
• What are the implications of the evolution and hybridization of public governance for accounting and accountability?

The SIG Panel calls for theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions addressing the role and facets of accounting and accountability from multiple perspectives.

At this year’s conference, the SIG Panel will start with a roundtable where scholars apply different perspectives to discuss and bring forward ideas on the state of the art and future avenues for research in public sector accounting, accountability, and financial management. This is followed by sessions of paper presentations and discussions by nominated discussants, before opening up the Q & A session to the plenary. Breakout rooms will be set up to host (1) a mini-panel that is designed for mini-presentations of research projects by new/junior researchers, as well (2) an informal meet-up that is designed as an open space for colleagues to meet virtually and talk broadly about puzzling questions of public service accounting and accountability.

Corresponding chair:

• Prof Joris Voets (Panel Contact), Department of Public Governance and Management, University of Ghent, Joris.Voets@UGent.be 

Co-chairs:

• Dr Elizabeth Eppel, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
• Prof Robyn Keast, School of Business and Tourism, Southern Cross University
• Prof Erik-Jans Klijn, Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Dr Mary-Lee Rhodes Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin

The SIG C&NG has the ambition to connect scholars and practitioners studying complexity and network governance worldwide. Therefore, at the annual IRSPM-conference, we organize panel sessions dealing with theoretical, empirical, methodological, and practice-related topics.

For the 2022 edition, we welcome papers that:

• Introduce, discuss, develop, and apply established and new theoretical perspectives in studying complexity and network governance.
• Raise questions, offer new insights, and encourage debate as to which established perspectives prove valuable to tackle questions about how network governance can be organized and managed, (the lack of) performance(s) of collaborative arrangements, to understand and develop complex adaptive systems, etc.
• Identify and discuss methodological challenges and new ideas on how to develop our knowledge on C&NG: are there interesting new QCA-approaches being set up and used? Has the behavioural and experimental trend in PA also extended (further) into C&NG-research? To what extent are sophisticated methods like agent-based modelling being developed further and applied in new studies? We especially invite papers that apply some of these (new) analytical techniques.
• Bring new and interesting empirical studies to the table, especially studies that showcase the extent and reach of novel empirical work that substantiates nuances or even questions what we think we know about C&NG?
• Inspire and reflect on knowledge in action, what practitioners ‘do’ with academic C&NG-insights in the real world, identify the conditions for making such knowledge transfer work, how practitioners can become more active co-producers of C&NG?

For the 2022 edition, we especially welcome papers on the categories mentioned above that align with the conference theme and deal with new developments of network governance and complex decision-making and/or theoretically or empirically exploring the consequences of these developments for democratic and administrative systems.

Authors will present accepted papers in thematic panel sessions, and discussants will be appointed to ensure relevant feedback. Panel session chairs will also formulate more overarching insights and challenges to broader discussions around these main categories and themes. We plan to actively engage with the journal ‘COMPLEXITY, GOVERNANCE & NETWORKS’ to explore opportunities for a special issue and to make a connection with the ASPA Section on Complexity and Network Studies to strengthen the broader collaboration between it and our SIG.

Corresponding & Review group chair:

Dr. William Voorberg, voorberg@essb.eur.nl 

Co-chairs:

Prof. dr. Jenny M. Lewis

Prof. dr. Albert Meijer

Dr. Mateusz Lewandowski 

Dr. Daniela Sangiorgi 

Dr. Christian Bason  

Description of theme:

Shrinking resources, discontented electorates and complex problems of the last decade have prompted the public sector to look for new ways of governing, and developing and delivering public services. In this effort, design has been heralded as a central concept because of its people-centeredness that in a co-productive or co-creative way bridges the gap between public policies, services and citizens’ needs and expectations, and environmental challenges (Thorpe & Gamman, 2016; Thomas & Grace, 2008; Junginger, 2014; Mulgan, 2014, Sangiorgi, 2015). Consequently, all kinds of living labs, policy experiments and other ways of ‘learning-by-doing’ are rapidly gaining popularity in public administration (Gascó, 2016), in order to co-create value with involved stakeholders and in particular service users to strengthen the people-orientation in public policy and services and collectively solve complex challenges (Oosterlaken, 2009; Tromp, Hekkert, & Verbeek, 2011). Although the notion of public administration as a design science is certainly not new (Simon, 1971; Miller, 1984; Shangraw & Crow, 1997; Meyer, 2005), there is much that we do not know about the application of design thinking to public policy, governance, management and services. Further, the contribution of design as a co-production strategy within public sector contexts needs further debate (Bason 2010, 2017).

Hence, this panel is dedicated to explore the principles, methodological underpinnings, challenges and practices of applying design-oriented approaches to the field of public policy and governance. In particular, within the scope of the IRSPM theme, the panel seeks to explore how design-led approaches contribute to realising ambitions around the co-creation and co-production of public services. Concretely, this panel aims to:

• Enhance the methodological rigor and relevance of design methodologies in public management and policy environments;
• Offer theoretical and empirical explorations of the conditions that support the effective application and integration of collaborative design-led approaches within public sector and government;
• Explore and evaluate the value and impact of labs and design-led approaches to value creation in public service delivery and policy making (health care, culture, education, social interventions, transportation, safety etc.);
• Identify and discuss limitations and routes for improvement of design-led approaches for the innovation of public service provision and wider institutional change. 

Description of kind of abstracts:

This panel welcomes both conceptual and empirical papers. These may include papers reporting on living labs, public sector innovation labs, policy labs, and design experiments at different levels of the public sector system, including also simulations and testing of prototypes. Also, we might expect theoretical papers that lay the foundations or the theoretical frames for better integration, relevance and value of design-led approaches for public administration and public management. Finally, besides traditional paper presentations, we welcome contributors who wish to demonstrate a working prototype illustrating how this was developed and tested.

Corresponding chair:

Jarmo Vakkuri, Tampere University, jarmo.vakkuri@tuni.fi 

Chair for review group:

Jan-Erik Johanson, Tampere University 

Panel co-chairs:

Marieke van Genugten, Radboud University, Nijmegen

Giuseppe Grossi, Kristianstad University and Nord University 

Philip Marcel Karré, Erasmus University Rotterdam

Mirko Noordegraaf, University of Utrecht 

Ulf Papenfuss, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen

Governance forms in-between public and private spheres are becoming more common and influential in society. Likewise, scholarly attention for hybridity, hybrid governance, hybrid organizations and hybrid professionalism has increased. What all these manifestations of hybridity have in common, is that they mix inherently contradictory institutional logics. However, current research is not yet successful in theorizing some of the most important aspects of societal governance: why and how do the distinct forms of ownership and different institutional logics within hybrids sometimes contradict and collide, while they at other times, via collaborative design, promote societal aims.

The aim of this SIG is to join researchers from traditionally separate areas of study to have an open debate on governing and managing hybridity in society, aimed at dealing with complex societal issues. This panel investigates the relationships, balance, potential rationalities, and complications among public, private, and civic domains contributing to societal outcomes. While all these domains play a role in how intended social aims transpire, it is still not entirely clear why, how, and to what effect this occurs. Hybrids, hybrid governance and hybridity appear in many forms (Johanson & Vakkuri 2017; Koppenjan, Karré & Termeer, 2019; Billis & Rochester, 2020; Brandsen & Karré, 2021; Vakkuri et al. 2021; Besharov & Mitzinneck, 2021). For instance, universities, health care organizations, non-profits, social enterprises and state-owned enterprises are regarded as types of hybrid organizations. They all must reconcile different and often conflicting institutional logics in order to be financially, socially and ecologically sustainable. In addition, one can see hybrids at micro, meso and macro levels of societal activity consisting of networks between business firms, public agencies, and other organizations. Circular economy initiatives, national innovation systems and global air travel are showcases of such hybrid governance arrangements.

Hybridity may be the strength of all these arrangements, as it helps them to generate innovation and synergies. It is also their biggest potential downfall, as it can lead to excessive ambiguity, accountability problems and value clashes. However, scientific research should help us understand these evolving social-political-administrative relations. This makes hybridity and its effects an important field of research, as public service provision in a complex world is increasingly taking place within hybrid governance arrangements. Consider the current global crisis of COVID-19 that has demonstrated the urgent need for understanding boundary-crossing activities between public, private, and civic action. Accordingly, the analytical scripts based on which we understand the public-private-civil society links in maintaining health, welfare, safety, and social inclusion may be significantly influenced by the current developments of public policies.

Hybrids are equipped to satisfy business aims, and public policy goals simultaneously. In performance measurement, hybrids can apply multiple yardsticks in the evaluation of their activities. Furthermore, hybrids need to pay attention to several, often contrasting principles in balancing their goals, acquiring resources from multiple sources and legitimizing the value of their activities to customers, citizens and stakeholder groups.

This SIG panel aims to facilitate important research discussion in the public management community, as hybrid arrangements are ill understood, poorly classified and difficult to evaluate. We seek conceptual, theoretical, and empirical papers assessing the developments of hybrid arrangements. We also encourage novel inter-disciplinary perspectives to understanding hybridity in different contexts of institutions and organizations, but also policies, management, evaluation, and accounting. The topics of the papers may be associated with, but are not limited to the following:

• Shared ownership between public and private owners in different settings.
• Governance and accountability of different types of hybrid organizations, such as state-owned enterprises (SOE), quasi non-governmental organizations (quangos) and social enterprises.
• Goal incongruence and other effects of mixing different institutional logics in the same organization or in a larger network.
• Variety in the sources of funding for societally important activities
• Impact of hybridity on strategies, performance management and accountability of service delivery systems.
• Current forms of crisis (COVID-19 or other similar turning points) shaping the role and identity of hybrid governance and organizations.
• Changing relationships between public policies and agencies, business firms and civic organizations in responding to global policy challenges.
• The role of public managers, and other professionals in creating understanding on hybridity and hybrid governance.
• Collaborative forms of governance as responses to deal with the problems of institutional hybridity.
• Financial and social forms of control in the hybridized service delivery.

Corresponding chair: 

Stefano Calciolari

Università degli Studi di Milano “Bicocca”, Milan (Italy)

Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano (Switzerland)

stefano.calciolari@unimib.it 

Chair review group:

Cecilia Luini, cecilia.luini@usi.ch 

Chairs and co-chairs:

James Gillespie, University of Sydney, Sydney (Australia)

Emanuele Vendramini, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza (Italy)

The IRSPM SIG-HCM focuses on the cross-fertilization of ideas between the fields of Healthcare Management and Public Management.

We invite submissions with either a MICRO perspective – regarding works focused on the intra-/organizational level (including topics focused on professionals) – or a MACRO perspective (concerning studies focused on the inter-organizational and/or systems level). 

• Patient-centered organizations
• Integrated care (including clinical pathways)
• Initiatives targeting Frailty, Chronicity, Multimorbidity
• Emergency and crisis planning/management
• Primary care models/innovation
• Health systems reforms, especially focused on resiliency
• Performance Measurement/Management
• Value-based Healthcare
• Resilience of healthcare organizations and systems

 The panel welcomes quantitative and qualitative analysis with a strong linkage to the literature and the most recent academic debate.

The best (submitted) papers will be eligible for fast track by Health Services Management Research.

Panel Chairs

• Reto Steiner, ZHAW School of Management and Law, CH, stno@zhaw.ch
• Denita Cepiku, University of Rome Tor Vergata, IT
• Filippo Giordano, LUMSA, Rome and Bocconi University, IT
• Enrico Guarini, University of Milano-Bicocca, IT
• Sabine Kuhlmann, University of Potsdam, DE
• Carmen Navarro, Universidad Autonóma de Madrid, ES
• Christopher Tapscott, University of Western Cape - School of Government, ZA

Description of the Theme

Globally, local authorities are significant players in the provision of public services. The local tier is close to the citizens. Therefore, developments such as societal, economical, technological and ecological changes and challenges have a direct and high impact on what services are needed at the local tier of government, and the way these services are being provided.

Many local governments have increased the engagement of citizens in the decision making and in the delivery process as well.

The aim of this panel is to discuss the future of service delivery at the local tier of government with a special emphasis on what citizens expect from their local governments and how the municipalities address the needs of the citizens and let them participate in the service delivery process. Potential topics might include the following:

• What do citizens expect from their municipalities? Have the expectations changed over time? How can this be measured?
• How can citizens and other stakeholders participate in the decision-making process? Do technologies support the inclusion of different stakeholders expectations?
• How are new technologies changing the government-citizen interaction?
• How do municipalities address the needs of the citizens?
• How do municipalities interact with different stakeholders and handle heterogenous expectations?
• Do managerial reforms improve service delivery at the local level?
• What is the impact of digital transformation on decision making and local service delivery?
• How can local authorities become more responsive?
• What services can be made smart and what does this mean for the serv ice delivery? 

We invite scholars studying public administration and management at the local tier of government to reflect theoretically and share empirical research. We especially expect papers presenting comparative studies that for example compare local service delivery across different policy fields or tiers of government, organizational contexts or countries. A focus on the contribution of digital transformation on the local tier of government is highly appreciated.

Submission

The deadline for abstracts is 24 January 2022. Please submit an abstract ONLY via the ExOrdo system

Co chairs:

Christine Flynn, Christine Flynn Consulting:  (Panel contact) christine.flynn@bigpond.com 

Professor John Diamond, Edgehill University

Dr Garth Britton, University of Queensland

2022 Conference theme: Facing the future: Evolving social-political-administrative relations and the future of administrative systems

Over the more than 12 years that the Practice SIG has existed, we have contributed to an increasing interest in and desire to create a space within which practitioners, academics and professionals can share ideas, reflect on their respective practice and co-create new ways of engaging with and learning from each other. The last two years have highlighted the focus on these ways of working, with emerging models of relations and connection. The SIG continues to support the development of innovative and impactful approaches to these concepts. The 2022 conference theme of evolving social/political/ administrative relations challenges us to continue this dialogue.

We intend to create an opportunity to challenge the idea that submitting papers to the Panel and having them accepted does not have to mean that participants come at a designated time, present and then leave. This approach limits the effectiveness of the SIG. On the contrary we want people to stay and have extended facilitated conversations where they might or might not use their paper as a starting point not a finishing point.

The concepts of sustainability, succession and regeneration we are exploring as a response to the evolving future in the political, social and administrative contexts. We see it as an on-going process of adaptation and regeneration which rests on new and resilient configurations of institutions and relationships between the academy and practitioners, enabling different responses to the emergent challenges of the future. Equally these concepts apply to the SIG and IRSPM itself.

We invite contributions which draw on practice and research relevant to the 2022 conference theme and which invite us to explore the spaces for critical reflection and thinking in this context… and perhaps some positive disruption. Both empirical and reflective papers are welcome. We particularly encourage papers that present the shared perspectives of researchers and practitioners. We seek insights into how those perspectives have developed and created impact.

The Practice SIG, through the conference panel and linked global dialogues, will continue to provide the platform for dialogue between public management researchers and practitioners with recognition that language like academic and practitioner, the applications and the thinking are more fluid now more than ever.

Our panel takes the form of a facilitated dialogue where each paper contributes to and builds the discussion with everyone present engaging with the papers, the thinking and the challenges. The chairs are the discussants and facilitators. 

Corresponding chair

Associate Prof Pablo Sanabria-Pulido, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia  psanabri@uniandes.edu.co 

Panel Chairs     

Professor Karen Johnston, University of Portsmouth

Professor Linda Colley, CQ University Australia 

Panel Review Group

Dr Peter Kruyen, p.kruyen@fm.ru.nl (review group chair)

Professor Alma McCarthy, National University of Ireland, Galway

Noreen O’Connor, National University of Ireland, Galway

Michael A. O’Neill, University of Ottawa 

Jodie Curth-Bibb, Flinders University

Prudence Brown, University of Queensland 

Panel description

We seek to celebrate the positivity of public services, and in ‘praise of bureaucracy’ (Du Gay, 2000) and their efforts and ongoing challenges in the post-pandemic world. In many ways, the image of public servants has never been stronger. Street level bureaucrats have been front and centre of health, employment and social policy and service delivery, and there have been many examples of tangible appreciation for the emotional labour of nurses, teachers, police, ambulance officers and others. Senior executives have been thrown unprecedented policy challenges and led new policy directions in often unchartered territory. Despite the enormous financial and emotional impact of the pandemic, there has been little discussion to date of smaller government and downsizing of public services.

We welcome papers on a wide range of topics including: human resource management; wellbeing amidst increased workloads and stresses; creativity; flexible working and work life balance; sustainable career development; losses and gains for gender equality; remote working and managing; and continuity and quality of public service delivery.

We particularly invite works that aim to answer the following questions:

• Post-pandemic what lessons can we learn to better appreciate public servants in the future?
• In the wake of the Post-pandemic, how can public organisations grasp the opportunity to attract the best talent?
• What role for public policy and management training and education in addressing the current and future labour requirements of the public sector (or words to that effect).

Contact the SIG co-chairs

Adrian Ritz, University of Bern, Switzerland, adrian.ritz@kpm.unibe.ch (corresponding chair, panel manager/review group chair)

Gene Brewer, The University of Georgia, United States 

Carina Schott, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Wouter Vandenabeele, Utrecht University, The Netherlands 

Call for paper abstracts

Public service motivation refers to an individual’s desire to help others, improve the well-being of society, and work towards the common good and public interest. Such motives are not the exclusive province of government employees; rather, they are exhibited by many other individuals including politicians, volunteers, nonprofit and private sector employees, government contractors, and private citizens, all of whom may perform meaningful public service during their lifetimes. In a context of ideological polarization and stormy politics, the role public service motives play in various collaborative settings between individuals such as, for instance, politicians and administrators, or between collaborating public and private organizations, is of great interest. We are looking for research papers addressing questions such as, for instance:

• How do tensions between politics, administration, and civil society affect public employees’ motivation and work outcomes?
• How does the phenomenon of public service motivation as a traditionally strong pillar of bureaucrats’ identity change under such circumstances?
• Do private collaborators and civil society actors develop their own unique public service-oriented motives?
• What role does (public) leadership play in this situation?

In addition, other paper ideas on the topics of public service motivation and its implications for leadership and performance in public, private, or hybrid organizations and settings are welcomed.

Three types of proposals

Despite the recent surge of research on public service motivation, many questions remain unanswered and new ones evolve. Therefore, within the framework of the SIG public service motivation, we invite proposals for two types of papers. First, regular research papers are invited. We are looking for papers in line with the general theme of public service motivation and motivation in the public sector in its broadest sense. Papers could focus on many related issues within these topics and the paper will be presented through a regular online presentation and be subject to discussion afterwards. A second type of papers concerns research proposals. We will devote one or more sessions to the peer-review of research proposals, be it before or after submission to funding agencies. This will enable researchers to increase the quality of the proposals and subsequent research, thereby the probability of success. Papers in this strand should at least entail a research question, a theoretical framework and an elaborate research plan. Third, we invite scholar to submit an idea for a round-table discussion on a specific topic within the field of public service motivation with suggestions for at least three invited discussants and one round-table host. All panels of the 2022 SIG will be held in an online format using communication technology organized by the conference organization. We expect to have about three to four panel sessions, which will be organized according to the presenters’ geographical origin and time zone (e.g. late afternoon sessions WET (UTC +0)).

Propose an abstract

In order to participate in any of the above-mentioned activities, please submit an abstract ONLY via the ExOrdo conference system (if you do not have an ExOrdo account, create one first). All proposals will be subject to review before acceptance. Abstracts should be NO longer than 500 words including references and should clearly indicate which type of proposal is being made (research paper, research proposal or round table discussion). If you have questions about the content of the activities or regarding the topic, do not hesitate to contact any of the SIG-chairs listed below.

Special issue

If possible and if the quality allows, we aim to publish a special issue in an academic journal based upon the research papers presented (just as we have done previously – in the International Journal of Public Administration (Brewer, Ritz and Vandenabeele, 2012), Public Administration (Vandenabeele, Brewer and Ritz 2014) and International Public Management Journal (2019).