Logics and Agency in Public Management Research

Abstract

The article analyses the negative effects of the use of logics in public organisation research on active human agency. We build up a new conceptual model with which to approach logics in current research on organising public services; suggesting ways in which current models using logics in public organisation research can be strengthened. Our contribution is two-fold: we argue that Elder-Vass’ approach benefits from close synthesis with social learning theory (including recent thinking on trust, emotions, and distributed learning) and secondly, that grounding all usage of logics in logic-of-practice helps avoid a reification of logics and thirdly that situated learning better suits public organisation problem solving that the application of ‘new’ universal solutions.