Institutionalizing Reflection as Assessment: Affirming the Value of Competency-Based E-portfolio in Dialogue with Nonprofit Practitioners

Democratic professionalism in public services

Social networking sites (SNSs) have established an important presence in our daily lives and at work. This study explores how public service professionals use SNSs and how they perceive the potential of SNSs. This study further examines the relationship between the use of SNSs and social trust and civic participation. Last, this study identifies the challenges and opportunities facing public administration practitioners who use SNSs to build collaboration and promote public interests. Based on the nationwide survey results, this study provides a broader understanding of SNS use among public service professionals. Furthermore, it also provides management recommendations on how public service professionals can make full use of SNSs to facilitate their interactions with other public service professionals and citizens, and foster collaboration to pursue public interests.

Injury Reporting on Local TV News: A Prime-Time Opportunity for Prevention

Team diversity is key in public service delivery. Yet, teamwork in functionally diverse teams can be undermined by mutual scepticism among different professionals. This article examines the mechanisms explaining teamwork attitudes with two experiments. We theorize that public service professionals’ negativity towards working in functionally diverse teams arises because other team members are perceived as lacking warmth and competence. Our evidence from Danish public schools confirms that teachers prefer co-teacher teams over diverse teams but shows that this reflects a warmth, not competence, deficit. These findings advance research on professional collaboration and inform public managers facilitating teamwork across functional lines.

To assess how West Nile virus (WNV) was reported to the American public on local television news and identify the main factors that influenced coverage. A representative sample of WNV stories that were reported on 122 local television news stations across the United States during October 2002, covering 67% of the nation's population, were coded for self-efficacy, comparative risk scenarios, symptoms and recommendations, high-risk individuals, and frame. In addition, public service professionals (PSPs) interviewed in the segments were identified. Comparisons were made between stories in which a PSP was interviewed and stories without an interview with respect to discussion of the 5 variables coded. Of the 1,371 health-related stories captured during the study period, 160 WNV stories aired, the second most common health topic reported. Forty-nine of the 160 WNV stories contained at least 1 of the 5 reporting variables. Forty-two PSPs were interviewed within 33 unique WNV stories. Public health officials composed 81% of all PSP interviews. Stories containing a public health official interview had 15.2 times (odds ratio 15.2, confidence interval 5.1-45.9) higher odds of reporting quality information, controlling for station affiliate or geographic location. Emerging infectious disease stories are prominently reported by local television news. Stories containing interviews with public health officials were also much more likely to report quality information. Optimizing the interactions between and availability of public health officials and the local news media may enhance disaster communication of emerging infections.

ABSTRACT: Daily decisions taken by public service professionals such as social workers may directly impact their client’s rights, especially if they are working in a law and policy context that is questionable in human rights terms. This article takes a novel approach by exploring what human rights roles are attributed to public service professionals by United Nations (UN) Treaty Bodies and UN Special Rapporteurs. The analysis reveals that the narrow conceptualization of human rights roles offered by (interpretations of) international human rights law may in fact diminish the potential of public service professionals to make a real contribution to human rights realization.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on how public service professionals cope with co-production as a way to produce and develop public services. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on the literature of co-production and collaborative public service innovation. The research approach was an explorative case study, presenting a pilot neighbourhood co-production project. Findings – Conflicting approaches to co-production with various implications are used simultaneously, causing uncertainly among the professional co-producers. When moving from rhetoric to practice there seems to be a lack of tools and methods for applying and utilising the possibilities of co-production. The processes of co-production and their implications should be thoroughly understood and managed throughout public service organisations, from politicians to frontline workers. Practical implications – The paper demonstrates that co-production calls for renewed organisational structures and managerial tools, especially concerning the evaluation of co-production. Focal managerial, organisational, cultural and processual notions for supporting professional co-production are provided. Originality/value – This paper makes an important contribution to the discussion of co-production, examining an important, yet understudied, perspective on public service professionals as co-producers.

Working in the public sector implies the need to make decisions in the face of dilemmas. As consistent decision-making is highly desirable for organizational performance, the question arises: what do public service professionals base their decisions on? This study aims to increase our understanding of whether public service motivation and professional role identity are useful concepts by which to predict what decisions public service professionals will make in complex situations. Using survey data, this research investigates the impact of these two concepts on the decision-making of veterinary inspectors working at the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority. The results support the hypothesis that decision-making is influenced by the way in which veterinary inspectors interpret their professional role. Public service motivation, in contrast, seems to have neither a direct nor a moderating effect on decision-making in the context of dilemma situations. Points for practitioners Two important conclusions of this study are of interest for managers working with professionals. Our findings should urge them to consider the different views that employees have about their job when teams are formed or when specific combinations of tasks are assigned. For example, attention should be paid to the question of which mixture of professional role identities is most suitable to accomplish organizational objectives. Second, the construct of public service motivation can be used by human resource managers to assess whether public professionals are motivated to provide public services. However, the results also indicate that the operationalization of public service motivation needs to be adapted to the professional context of public service providers.

This chapter investigates the asymmetries associated to child language brokering in Swedish welfare institutions. Group interviews with (a) people who have experiences of language brokering as children and (b) public service professionals who have used children as brokers in encounters with non-Swedish speaking service users are analyzed. Results show that both groups consider that resorting to child language brokering is wrong but at the same time they reproduce this social practice and see benefits in it. This ambiguity leads interviewees to lay responsibility on several levels: the parents who place unreasonable demands on their children; the public service professionals who allow children to take on responsibility in precarious situations, and society at large that may be accomplice to structural discrimination of non-Swedish speaking service users. The responsibilities identified by interviewees in their narratives are critically discussed in relation to the concept of “structural complicity” showing how power relations and social structures create situations where individuals act with complicity even when they do something that they consider to be a good solution for an imperative problem and for which they do not see any alternatives.

This chapter focuses on the effects of management ideas. In particular, it examines the transformation of the work situation of public service professionals generated by the core ideas associated with New Public Management (NPM). This change creatively absorbed management ideas such as ‘culture’, ‘leadership’, and ‘network’ and, overall, represented a paradigm shift in the meaning and relevance of ‘public service’. While NPM has undergone a series of reformulations—as technocratic, managerial, and neo-liberal—it continues to shape the institutional landscape in which public service professionals are embedded. In doing so, it presents them with a series of existential challenges to their occupational authority and identity that threaten to undermine their organizational power and control.

Faced with an impending demographic and cultural shift in the ranks of public service, government agencies, non-profits and private contractors for public sector are exploring ways to develop the next generation of public service leaders. Leadership development encompasses a diverse set of strategies ranging from informal mentoring to executive degree programs for experienced public service professionals. Yet there is scant assessment of these programs of the scope and impact of specific leadership development programs. The article presents the findings of the first national survey of executive degree programs offered by National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) for public service professionals and examines their role in leadership development in the public sector. The survey results suggest that the strength Executive MPA degree is the capacity to engage a diverse cohort of public sector professionals in a sustained manner and bridge traditional academic content with experiential learning. The findings also reflect continued challenges with Executive MPA programs, including securing funding, making the programs more relevant to the specific missions of organizations, and the impact of Executive MPA programs on improving public policy.

The era of globalization demands a change in the paradigm of public service in government characterized by clean government or what is known as good governance. This has become a concern for the local government. The effect is that the state civil apparatus, or ASN, is required to provide quality public services based on the principle of public service. For this reason, a strategy is needed to build ASN competencies that include knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Therefore, the research aims to analyze the competency development of the State Civil Apparatus in creating public service professionalism. This research uses a qualitative approach with descriptive methods. The results of the study show that the creation of public service professionalism is highly dependent on the development of ASN competencies related to public services. This is supported by performance, employee accountability, employee loyalty, and employee capabilities. In this study, the authors suggest 6 points that can create public service professionalism if ASN competence is increased, namely increasing accountability, strengthening a sense of nationalism, forming public ethics, fostering an anti-corruption attitude, creating quality commitment, and providing optimal public services.

Performance + InstructionVolume 34, Issue 5 p. 34-37 Article Using subject matter experts to identify high-liability tasks John Sample, John Sample John Sample, Ph.D. is the director of Professional Development, Center for Professional Development and Public Service, Florida State University (FSU). He also teaches in the graduate Adult Education program at FSU. He may be reached at FSU, 3322 Lucky Debonair Trail, Tallahassee, Florida 32308, (904) 668–;1067.Search for more papers by this author John Sample, John Sample John Sample, Ph.D. is the director of Professional Development, Center for Professional Development and Public Service, Florida State University (FSU). He also teaches in the graduate Adult Education program at FSU. He may be reached at FSU, 3322 Lucky Debonair Trail, Tallahassee, Florida 32308, (904) 668–;1067.Search for more papers by this author First published: May/June 1995 https://doi.org/10.1002/pfi.4170340509 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume34, Issue5May/June 1995Pages 34-37 RelatedInformation

The aspiration to use evidence to enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of policies is widely shared but often falls short. A common explanation for failure is the presence of barriers to utilising evidence or the inadequacies of the evidence available to policy makers. The article examines how and why evidence-based policies sometimes fail to enhance policy performance, through a comparative analysis of evidence-based management in Danish public school and active labour market policies after 2000. The two cases are characterised by similar policy performance problems but vary in terms of evidence-based management styles and responses from public service professionals. The article relies on document analysis and expert interviews with civil servants and key stakeholders to explain how and why evidence-based policies fail to improve policy performance in the two cases. We find that evidence-based policy making did not resolve performance problems in either case, though for different reasons. In public school policy, conflict over the 2014 Public School Reform impacted negatively on its implementation despite efforts to incorporate evidence in its design. In active labour market policy, evidence-based policies were imposed on job centres and institutionalised in key performance indicators, but over time critique of processual requirements and indignified casework accumulated and contributed towards a political decision to reform job centres. We advocate for setting realistic expectations about the potential of evidence in resolving policy performance problems and caution against overstating the 'dream' of evidence-based policy making.

In the past, when politicians have celebrated the achievements of the public sector workforce they have inevitably pinpointed the contribution of public service professionals such as nurses, teachers and police officers. Recently, however, a striking feature of public service modernisation has been the increased recognition of the contribution of assistant roles, such as teaching and health care assistants that has started to pepper policy documents (Blair, 2002; Cabinet Office, 2008). This higher public profile reflects the extent to which the growth of assistant roles has been integral to work restructuring and public service modernisation. Assistants work alongside public service professionals, often in welfare roles that support vulnerable members of the community. These positions are usually filled by women and traditionally have been low-paid with limited career prospects (Clayton, 1993; Thornley, 1996).