In recent years, the idea that public policy can be viewed as a horizontal and polycentric process (if not a series of interlocked processes) has become widely acknowledged in the field of public administration research. Still to be explored, however, are implications of this view for policy...

The focus of this article is organizational learning in Dutch governmental agencies in relation to evaluation studies of the Court of Audit. A theory is developed in which the impact of evaluation is related to institutional conditions, such as - formal arrangements and normative frameworks....

Strategies for change in organizations often have unintended effects, and their intended effects are not always achieved. In this article, some aspects of the dynamics of such strategies are analyzed. Strategies are shown to be transformed in the course of processes of change, especially as a...

Some questions in the study of public administration are difficult to answer on the basis of field research. A field of inquiry may be absent, as in the case of research that seeks to explore future outcomes of present policies, or of policies that are still being developed. Another example is...

This research presents the results of an inductive comparative case study of how exploratory and exploitative market learning is balanced during the development of eight discontinuous new product development projects in six different business units of different multinationals in the chemical...

Policy processes evolve in highly institutionalized environments, and policy effects are generally shaped by these environments. Policy outcomes could therefore be expected to be patterned and even predictable. In practice, however, prediction of policy outcomes is difficult. In part this lack...

Debriefing is an important phase in using simulation games. Participants are invited to make a connection between experiences gained from playing the game and experiences in real-life situations. Thus, debriefing is the phase meant to encourage learning fromthe simulation game. Although design...

The idea of process is prominent in organization theory but less so in research. Limited access to organizations is a likely explanation, particularly because process analysis often requires detailed data. Experimental research may provide the necessary data, if only a method is used that allows...

New product development is usually teamwork. Product development teams are cross-functional, representing different functional units, or multidisciplinary, involving several disciplines, or both. In any case, conceiving and developing new products is a joint effort, which means that the standard...

In social psychology, poor performance of individuals in teams is usually classified under the heading of ‘social loafing.’ In economics and administrative sciences, the concepts of ‘shirking’ and ‘free riding’ are used to denote poor performance by individuals working in...