Although theories of public policy and theories of governance both seek to establish relationships between policymaking and its consequences, they do not complement each other very well. Public policy models tend to de‐emphasize that which governance theories tend to emphasize: the influence on government performance of implementation, broadly described as the actions taken by those engaged in administration (including managers at all levels, those engaged in service delivery, and third‐party agents) after a policy has been lawfully promulgated by elected officials and interpreted by the courts. A comparison of a recently developed theory of public sector performance with several prominent theories of policymaking suggests that multilevel governance theories can supply what continues to be the missing link in public policy theories. At the same time, governance theories might be enriched by the process modeling of public policy theories.
The popularity of governance can be seen across academic genres. In some ways, the tremendous amount of theorizing on the subject has created contentious areas of debate. However, the approach that I argue will move the discussion forward is a focus on areas of agreement, where studying governance as a form of statecraft is considered. In order to advance the governance conversation, this essay speculates on the intersections of future governance research areas and maintains that making governance studies meaningful involves more empirical testing and inductive explorations by scholars.
This article combines the evaluation capacity building and nonprofit accountability literature to examine how nonprofits use evaluation data to address stakeholder expectations. Our study investigates how staff competency, technological resources, learning climate, and strategic planning influence a nonprofit's ability to demonstrate upward, lateral, and downward accountabilities. Results indicate different combinations of evaluation capacities matter more for particular stakeholder groups. We argue a more integrative nonprofit accountability requires that managers and staff know how to utilize evaluation results for internal and external audiences. Nuances between specific evaluative capacities and their influences on multiple accountabilities suggest several implications for practice.
Public service work and public-serving institutions are evolving by incorporating neoliberal modes of working more and more. Contemporary research oftentimes neglects to account for these changes in how we understand public service work, however. This article draws on the meaningfulness in work and public service motivation literature to explore how public service workers are making sense of their work and work environments to create meaningful work experiences under evolving conditions. The findings from 45 interviews with public and nonprofit managers are presented and compared. The changing world of work has implications for how public and nonprofit workers narrate and find meaningfulness in work but not what they find meaningful about their work. The findings suggest that both public and nonprofit workers create positive meaningfulness in work but in dissimilar ways. The findings also suggest that organizational leaders play a substantial part in workers’ meaningfulness-making process. The findings hold theoretical and practical implications for understanding the role workplaces and organizational leaders play in workers’ experience of meaningful public service work.
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