COVID-19-Induced Service and Governance Innovation in the Public Sector

A special issue of Administrative Sciences (ISSN 2076-3387).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 3611

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Roskilde School of Governance, Roskilde University, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Interests: collaborative governance; co-creation; hybrid governance and the role of public leadership and management

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Roskilde School of Governance, Roskilde University, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Interests: public leadership; public leadership and management; trust dynamics within the public sector; co-creation and governance reform

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Everybody knows how difficult it is to transform the public sector. Even the most well-intended reforms fail in the face of the structural inertia, engrained habits and institutionalized practices that make up the stable paths of public governance and administration. Occasionally, institutional deadlocks and path-dependencies are unraveled by new disruptive events and emerging crises that question the status quo and call for innovative solutions. Against a tragic background of despair and economic recession, the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a magnifying glass for studying how crisis can induce transformation and innovation in public governance and public services. It was soon clear that the turbulent events associated with the global health crisis could not be dealt with in the usual way and that public sector actors as well as private stakeholders had to develop a new set of practices to cope with the crisis. This special issue aims to draw lessons from the pandemic and advance research on crisis-induced public sector transformation. As such, it welcomes single or comparative case studies that show whether, how and to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to transforming and innovating public governance and public service provision around the world. Papers are encouraged to reflect on the triggers and drivers of change, the content of public sector transformations, the impact of new practices, the lessons that can be drawn from crisis-induced change, the prospect for learning retention, and/or the lasting positive or negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on how public governance is organized and performed and how public services are produced and delivered. Papers are expected to answer a clearly formulated research question, provide adequate theoretical framing and methodological accounts, and present well-documented findings in ways that lead to plausible conclusions.

Prof. Jacob Torfing
Dr. Tina Øllgaard Bentzen
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Covid-19
  • Public sector
  • Service innovation
  • Governance innovation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 532 KiB  
Article
When Civil Servants Go Frontstage—The Mediatization of the Role of the Civil Servant during the COVID-19 Crisis
by Birgitte Poulsen
Adm. Sci. 2022, 12(3), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci12030073 - 28 Jun 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2738
Abstract
Mediatization scholars have shown how institutions adapt to the penetrating role of the media. This article investigates the mediatization of the civil servant role when moving from their well-known backstage role to a frontstage role. The COVID-19 pandemic is seen as an extreme [...] Read more.
Mediatization scholars have shown how institutions adapt to the penetrating role of the media. This article investigates the mediatization of the civil servant role when moving from their well-known backstage role to a frontstage role. The COVID-19 pandemic is seen as an extreme case, where some civil servants were entitled key, frontstage roles in the handling of the pandemic, compared to their normal backstage role. Thus, the pandemic has created an opportunity to study the frontstage role of civil servants as a form of mediatization. Theoretically, the study provides a conceptual framework for analyzing the mediatized role of the civil servant by linking theories on mediatization and public administration with Goffman’s role theory. Empirically, the article provides an example of a hyper-mediatized civil servant during the extreme case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. The article explores how media logic entangles with the logic of bureaucracy, creating a new role for part of the civil service, resulting in governance dilemmas. The article thus contributes to the mushrooming literature on the mediatization of central government, showing the implications of a mediatized role of the civil servant, such as competition with the minister, increased vulnerability for the civil service, and blurred boundaries between administration/expertise on the one hand and politics on the other. Full article
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