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In recent years, collaborative innovation of public services has become a growing research field. However, how collaborative arrangements lead to innovation remains quite unclear. We propose that collaborative innovation is dependent on processes of divergence and convergence, which are enhanced by four conditions of collaborative innovation: diversity of ideas and perspectives, learning through interaction, consensus building, and implementation commitment. The combination of these conditions is explored through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in 19 European eHealth partnerships. The results suggest a combined effect of these conditions on service innovativeness, which rejects contemporary views on the dichotomous nature of divergence and convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Question‐order bias is a well‐known weakness of surveys commonly used in public administration research. However, most research on question‐order bias uses question‐order experiments that are relatively small, performed in one context, and rarely replicated. We carry out six question‐order experiments in six large‐scale Belgian surveys conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic. All experiments vary whether the respondents see questions regarding the effectiveness of pandemic governance or trust in different actors first. Results show that question‐order effects are real and reasonably consistent across the high‐powered replications, despite the changing political context of the pandemic. However, the direction of the effects largely changes when we flip the order of the trust outcome questions in the last three experiments, which sheds light on an underappreciated point: question‐order bias also seems to exist within batteries of seemingly similar outcome questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, social, economic, and political developments have forced public organizations to continuously adapt to changing circumstances, casting them in ongoing cycles of organizational change. The continuous introduction of various types of change in an employee's work environment may generate substantial levels of role ambiguity, which in turn could hamper performance and satisfaction. Given the increasing degree of change complexity in the public sector, it is surprising that no research has investigated whether more complex change is associated with greater reductions in role clarity. To gain a better understanding of how change complexity impacts organizations and their employees, we analyze survey data from the Australian Public Service Employee Census using propensity score matching. Results indicate that increasing levels of change complexity results in greater reductions of role clarity, suggesting that change trajectories sometimes exceed employees' capability to adapt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]