Victor Bekkers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Victor Bekkers

European Journal of Education

Does the school as a learning organisation affect staff outcomes? This article examines the relat... more Does the school as a learning organisation affect staff outcomes? This article examines the relationship between the school as a learning organisation and staff job satisfaction and the school's responsiveness to staff needs using a purposefully designed “Schools as Learning Organisations Survey” completed as part of an OECD study in Wales. A positive and significant relationship is found between the school as a learning organisation and both job satisfaction of staff—that is school leaders, teachers and teaching support staff—and the school's responsiveness to staff needs. The article proposes ways of realising these outcomes and identifies areas for further research. Policy makers, school staff and other stakeholders in education and other public sectors internationally can use these findings as supporting evidence in recommending people to develop their organisations into learning organisations, given the potential benefits for employees and the organisation at large.

Revue Internationale des Sciences Administratives, 2022

Electronic Journal of e-Government (EJEG), 2018

Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom, 2019

Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have to implement public policies. However, they are ... more Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. They have autonomy or discretion in their work. This chapter shows how a psychological perspective can be beneficial when investigating discretion. This is firstly illustrated using the concept of policy alienation. Many street-level bureaucrats feel alienated from public policies. This attitude can furthermore lead to different types of behaviours. These behaviours can be classified using the notion of coping during public service delivery. Coping can be grouped in three types: moving towards clients, moving away from clients and moving against clients. We discuss policy alienation and coping and conclude with future research directions for scholars interested in studying discretion from a psychological perspective.

Governance and the Democratic Deficit, 2016

Het doel van dit onderzoek luidt: - Het conceptualiseren van behoorlijk bestuur als een levende e... more Het doel van dit onderzoek luidt: - Het conceptualiseren van behoorlijk bestuur als een levende en lerende bestuurspraktijk die verder gaat dan alleen maar een set van principes die verwoord zijn in een governance code. - Het beschrijven van praktijken van duurzaam behoorlijk bestuur op het niveau van gedrag en cultuur in onderwijsinstellingen waar corrigerende mechanismen aantoonbaar hebben gewerkt; - het analyseren van de condities waaronder deze mechanismen werken; en - het formuleren van uitgangspunten voor de versterking van het corrigerende vermogen

Innovation is key to ensuring that public sectors are able to deliver services efficiently and ef... more Innovation is key to ensuring that public sectors are able to deliver services efficiently and effectively while also creating a system that can cope with the many societal challenges that exist in today's world. In this compelling collection,contributors explore ways in which civil services are adapting to meet the many challenges they now face.

Revue Internationale des Sciences Administratives, 2018

Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour I.I.S.A.. © I.I.S.A.. Tous droits réservés pour tous pa... more Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour I.I.S.A.. © I.I.S.A.. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2020

Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated 600,00... more Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated 600,000 Sina Weibo microblogs. This study reports on a study of Chinese citizens’ adoption of microblogs to interact with the government. Adoption results from trust and peer pressure in smaller-network ties (densely knit, pervasive social networks surrounding individual citizens). Larger-network ties (trust in institutions at large, such as the Chinese Communist Party, executive organizations, the judicial system, the media, etc.) are not associated with the adoption of microblogging. Furthermore, higher levels of anxiety are correlated with lower levels of use intention, and this finding underlines the impact of the Chinese authority’s surveillance and control activities on the lives of individual Chinese citizens. Based on these findings, we outline a theory of why citizens use microblogs to interact with the government and suggest avenues for further research into microblogs, state–citizen...

Bestuurskunde, 2018

Bij iedere onderwijsorganisatie doen zich incidenten voor. Deze incidenten lopen soms ernstig uit... more Bij iedere onderwijsorganisatie doen zich incidenten voor. Deze incidenten lopen soms ernstig uit de hand. Er zijn echter ook incidenten die tijdig en effectief worden aangepakt en niet uitgroeien tot echte ongelukken of zelfs misstanden. Aan de hand van zes concrete incidenten binnen het onderwijsdomein is onderzocht hoe dankzij adequaat optreden ongelukken zijn voorkomen en welke mechanismen daarbij een rol spelen. * Wijlen drs. Peter Siep was als onderzoeker verbonden aan Risbo. Dr. Dennis de Kool is als onderzoeker werkzaam bij Risbo. Prof.dr. Victor Bekkers is hoogleraar en decaan van de Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) van de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Prof.dr. Bram Steijn is als hoogleraar verbonden aan de Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) van de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Dr. Alex Straathof is lector Management van Cultuurverandering aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Wij bedanken de directie Kennis van het ministerie van OCW, die het onderzoek heeft gefinancierd.

Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, 2019

Translating medical evidence into practice is difficult. Key challenges in applying evidence-base... more Translating medical evidence into practice is difficult. Key challenges in applying evidence-based medicine are information overload and that evidence needs to be used in context by healthcare professionals. Nudging (i.e. softly steering) healthcare professionals towards utilizing evidence-based medicine may be a feasible possibility. This systematic scoping review is the first overview of nudging healthcare professionals in relation to evidence-based medicine. We have investigated a) the distribution of studies on nudging healthcare professionals, b) the nudges tested and behaviors targeted, c) the methodological quality of studies and d) whether the success of nudges is related to context. In terms of distribution, we found a large but scattered field: 100 articles in over 60 different journals, including various types of nudges targeting different behaviors such as hand hygiene or prescribing drugs. Some nudges – especially reminders to deal with information overload – are often ...

Policy and Society, 2017

Co-creation – where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues ... more Co-creation – where citizens and public organizations work together to deal with societal issues – is increasingly considered as a fertile solution for various public service delivery problems. During co-creation, citizens are not mere consumers, but are actively engaged in building resilient societies. In this study, we analyze if and how state and governance traditions influence learning and policy change within a context of co-creation. We combine insights from the co-creation and learning literature. The empirical strategy is a comparative case study of co-creation examples within the welfare domain in childcare (Estonia), education (Germany) and community work (the Netherlands). We show that state and governance traditions may form an explanation for whether co-creation, learning and policy change occurs. Our paper suggests that this seems to be related to whether there is a tradition of working together with citizens and a focus on rule following or not.

Policy Studies, 2018

Although studies on policy transfer have expanded, a general and comprehensive understanding of p... more Although studies on policy transfer have expanded, a general and comprehensive understanding of policy transfer is lacking. This study offers an evidence-based explanation of policy transfer processes. We extracted constraining and facilitating factors from 180 empirical studies using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis) and aggregated these factors into a conceptual framework. We synthesize our findings in four "transfer routes". We conclude that actors could shape a subset of those factors by taking certain decisions regarding transferability, adoptability and process design, albeit within the boundaries of the environment.

Public Money & Management, 2017

Co-creation in public service delivery assumes a new kind of partnership between citizens and civ... more Co-creation in public service delivery assumes a new kind of partnership between citizens and civil servants. Whether this partnership actually occurs varies per country. We examine to what extent state and governance traditions can explain whether co-creation changes public service delivery. Our research shows that state and governance traditions determine the extent to which co-creation can become institutionalized in a country's governance framework. Where there is an authoritative state tradition, co-creation initiatives will probably face more barriers and it will only cause change incrementally. Where there is a governance culture of consultation, the changes might occur faster and more openly.

Innovation in the Public Sector addresses issues relevant to an understanding of the innovation j... more Innovation in the Public Sector addresses issues relevant to an understanding of the innovation journeys on which public organizations have embarked. If public innovation is defined as a necessary condition for establishing meaningful interactions between the government and society, what are the relevant issues that may explain successful processes and forms of public innovation?

Policy analysis in the Netherlands, 2014

Op 1 januari 2013 trad de Politiewet 2012 in werking. Artikel 74 van de wet bepaalt dat de Minist... more Op 1 januari 2013 trad de Politiewet 2012 in werking. Artikel 74 van de wet bepaalt dat de Minister van Justitie en Veiligheid binnen vijf jaar na inwerkingtreding een evaluatie van die wet aan de Staten-Generaal moet sturen over doeltreffendheid en effecten van de wet in de praktijk.In dit rapport staat de vraag centraal hoe de Politiewet 2012 in de praktijk is geimplementeerd en welke consequenties zich voordoen voor de politieorganisatie en voor de verschillende externe partijen die bij het politiewerk betrokken zijn. De hoofdvraag die aan dit onderzoek ten grondslag ligt, luidt: Hoe kan de werking van de Politiewet 2012 inzake de thema’s (1) politiek bestuurlijke sturing en politiek-democratische verantwoording, (2) samenwerking en (3) maatschappelijke inbedding, worden geevalueerd?

This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals fac... more This paper contributes in two ways to our understanding of the pressures public professionals face in service delivery. First, it theoretically analyses the influence of policy pressures (measured using the policy alienation framework) and politicking pressures on job satisfaction, thereby combining the literature streams of policy implementation and organizational politics. Second, we use a large-scale survey of 1,317 Dutch healthcare professionals to examine the effects of these pressures on job satisfaction. A large-scale quantitative approach can provide new insights to the debate on pressured professionals. The results show that both politicking pressures and the policy alienation dimension powerlessness (perceived lack of influence and autonomy during policy implementation) affect the job satisfaction of public professionals. Further, they interact, the negative effect of powerlessness on job satisfaction is strongest among professionals working in a highly politicized environ...

The effects of work alienation and policy alienation on behavior of