Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

There is growing scholarly recognition that public organizations need to experience significant change to respond to the environment of the 21^st century. Public organizations traditionally evoke impressions of stability, predictability, and security, yet scholars are increasingly calling for a “new public governance” ( C. K. Ansell and Torfing 2014a; Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014) that focuses organizational and institutional capacities on engaging citizens, learning from experiences, and creating measurable public value.

Echoing scholars’ call for greater citizen engagement and responsive governance are leaders of local public organizations that administer human service programs within the United States. These leaders argue that to better serve those in need, public agencies charged with delivering services must begin to work collaboratively with those outside of government to develop programs that better address the multiple and intersecting needs of individuals and families.

Thus within both scholarship and practice, there is a desire to move public organizations in the direction of greater citizen engagement and collaboration with external actors. Yet we have limited understanding of the change processes necessary to move public organizations from the existing structures and capacities what is now being demanded. What factors enable public organizations to become more engaged and responsive? What factors restrict movement in this direction?

This project draws upon a rich literature on innovation and organizational change (Van de Ven and Poole 1995) to examine the process of organizational change in human service organizations operated by local government. A central goal of the project is to expand upon the existing literature by providing insights regarding the public sector manifestations of innovation processes. The project focuses on the strategic use of authority in the implementation of a particularly innovation (Bozeman 1987; Wamsely and Zald 1973; Moulton and Sandfort, 2017). Specifically, we analyze how strategic actors use political, economic, professional, and value-based authority to enable or restrict public sector innovation in the direction of greater responsiveness.

Our data was collected as part of the implementation of “Discover Together,” an initiative of Dakota County, Minnesota that aims to engage local stakeholders and community members and the co-creation of services. Discover Together is a collective impact initiative that was created in 2016 with the goal of developing more effective strategies for assisting people living below $200 of the federal poverty line. South St. Paul, a city in Dakota County with relatively high poverty indicators, was selected as the first focal community in this initiative.

Over 2017, a team of county and community participants and university researchers conducted an array of engagement activities, including semi-structured interviews with leaders in South St. Paul, “pop-up” engagement events, and focused conversations around important local issues (see www.letsdiscovertogether.org). The research team collected data from Core Team meetings, interview and focus group data, fieldnotes from engagement events, and material artifacts created by participants from the county and the community, allowing us to identify different forms of authority and trace their use across the first year of the project.