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This qualitative study investigates the managerial practices adopted during the Covid-19 emergency in Lombardy, Italy, amidst unforeseen changes in public service ecosystems. Using longitudinal data, we identify seven key practices adopted by public service managers to organize amidst disruption. Our findings underscore the public managers' role in fostering adaptation, innovation, and coordination among ecosystem actors. Extending roles outlined by Osborne et al. as 'appreciate, engage, and facilitate', our study reveals how these roles were interpreted following logics of entrepreneurial stakeholder engagement, rather than citizen-centred services. We discuss conceptual implications to further develop the theory and practice of public service management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social enterprises, promoted by policymakers as effective and efficient public services producers and deliverers, are increasingly gaining academic focus. This paper explores the state of studies on social enterprise within Public Administration (PA) field, highlighting through a bibliometric analysis a community of 274 scholars contributing to 138 articles, grouped in six research clusters. We discuss three scenarios for SE-PA relationships: separation, cooperation, and integration into public administration & management (PAM) field alongside suggesting a future research agenda for SE in the PAM domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces the Special Issue on public value, urging scholars to ask fundamental questions about what public value organizing entails. It proposes key conceptual dimensions to foster public value thinking, highlighting the contested nature of the concept and the subjective understanding of public value among different publics. Themes emerging from the contributions to the Special Issue include re-imagining the State's role in post-capitalistic regimes, re-designing approaches to economic planning, and re-experiencing public value through transforming relationships between planners and the planned, practicing active citizenship endeavors, and integrating environmental concerns into processes and systems of valuation. Problematizing the neoliberal misrecognition of the State as a legitimate institution for wealth creation, this special issue showcases its key role in fostering post-capitalist possibilities. The articles offer evidence and inspiration regarding innovating the ways we plan, design, produce and account for public value by leveraging what we conceptualize as new collaborative governance possibilities. Overall, we call for establishing stronger connections between existing studies on alternative economic, political, and democratic organizing with scholarship on public policy, strategic public management, transformative social innovation and social movements. Four areas for future research on post-capitalist governance are also proposed: State-businesses relationships beyond capitalism; changing conceptions of value including the value of care; municipal approaches toward community wealth building; re-imagining new public institutions for more participatory democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study the role of local political leadership and the use of emotions and rationality in public communication by focusing on the case study of Marco Borradori. The participation and the popular emotions shown by citizens from any political positioning after the death of Onorevole Borradori makes him an interesting character for studying the role of emotions in local political leadership. The research question this paper tries to address is the following: how do Mayors use emotions and rationality in public communication? Our main research hypothesis is that the drivers of public leadership have moved from the use of messages based on a technical-administrative rationality towards the use of emotional messages driven by the peculiarities of the social media logic. In particular, the paper analyzes through the use of sentiment analysis the speeches and official statements by the Mayor of Lugano Attorney Marco Borradori in the period 2013–2018 and identifies the different types of emotions used. Results are complemented with several interviews conducted with key collaborators of Onorevole Marco Borradori. Abstrakt Im Rahmen dieses Beitrags werden die Rolle von Führung in der Kommunalpolitik und der Einsatz von Emotionen und Rationalität in der politischen Kommunikation anhand der Fallstudie von Marco Borradori untersucht. Beteiligung und zum Ausdruck gebrachte Empfindungen der Bürgerinnen und Bürger aller politischen Gruppierungen nach dessen Tod machen aus Onorevole Borradori eine spannende Figur zur Erforschung der Rolle von Emotionen in der politischen Führung auf lokaler Ebene. Die Studie befasst sich vor allem mit dieser Forschungsfrage: Wie werden Emotionen und Rationalität von Bürgermeisterinnen und Bürgermeister in der politischen Kommunikation verwendet? Unsere primäre Forschungshypothese ist, dass sich die Hauptakteure des öffentlichen Leaderships von der Verwendung von Aussagen, die auf einer technisch-administrativen Denkweise beruhen, hin zur Verwendung von emotionalen Botschaften bewegt haben. Dies beeinflusst durch die Besonderheiten der Funktionsweise der sozialen Medien. Insbesondere analysiert der Beitrag anhand der Sentimentanalyse die Reden und offiziellen Erklärungen die der Bürgermeister von Lugano, Marco Borradori, im Zeitraum 2013–2018 abgegeben hat, und zeigt die verschiedenen Arten von Emotionen auf die darin verwendet wurden. Die Erkenntnisse wurden durch mehrere Interviews, die mit wichtigen Mitarbeitern von Onorevole Marco Borradori geführt wurden, ergänzt. Abstraite L’objectif de cet article est d’étudier le rôle du leadership politique local et l’utilisation des émotions et de la rationalité dans la communication publique en se concentrant sur l’étude de cas de Marco Borradori. La participation et les émotions populaires manifestées par les citoyens de tout positionnement politique après la mort d’Onorevole Borradori en font un personnage intéressant pour étudier le rôle des émotions dans le leadership politique local. La question de recherche à laquelle cet article tente de répondre est la suivante : comment les maires utilisent-ils les émotions et la rationalité dans la communication publique ? Notre principale hypothèse de recherche est que les moteurs du leadership public sont passés de l’utilisation de messages basés sur une rationalité technico-administrative à l’utilisation de messages émotionnels motivés par les particularités de la logique des médias sociaux. En particulier, l’article analyse par le biais de l’analyse des sentiments les discours et les déclarations officielles du Maire de Lugano Avocat Marco Borradori dans la période 2013–2018 et identifie les différents types d’émotions utilisées. Les résultats sont complétés par plusieurs entretiens réalisés avec des collaborateurs clés de l’Onorevole Marco Borradori. Schlüsselwörter: öffentliche Führung; Emotionen; lokale Regierungsführung; Bürgermeister; Stimmungsanalyse Mots clés: leadership public; émotions; gouvernance locale; maire; analyse des sentiments

In this introductory article to our PPA special issue we argue that the relation between wicked problems and collaborative governance is fraught with difficulties. Doing so, we take four steps: we maintain that wicked problems are better understood as wicked actor constellations; we delve into the collaborative governance-approach and posit that it is mainly concerned with wicked problems; we then argue that collaborative governance might not be the most feasible response to wicked problems; and after that we argue that an assumption instead of actors being engaged in actor positioning processes allows a clearer understanding of policy processes in wicked actor constellations. Following this discussion, we introduce the articles featured in the special issue and discuss implications for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]