Organizational reputation in executive politics: Citizen-oriented units in the German federal bureaucracy
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221132228 |
| Author | Julia Fleischer,Andree Pruin |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Organizational reputation
in executive politics:
Citizen-oriented units in
the German federal
bureaucracy
Julia Fleischer
University of Potsdam, Germany
Andree Pruin
University of Potsdam, Germany
Abstract
In recent years, governments have increased their efforts tostrengthen the citizen-orien-
tation in policy design. They have established temporary arenas as well as permanent units
inside the machinery of government to integrate citizens into policy formulation, leading
to a “laboratorization”of central government organizations. We argue that the evolution
and role of these units herald new dynamics in the importance of organizational reputa-
tion for executive politics. These actors deviate from the classic palette of organizational
units inside the machinery ofgovernment and thus require their own reputation vis-à-vis
various audiences within and outside their parent organization. Based on a comparative
case study of two of these units inside the German federal bureaucracy, we show how
ambiguous expectations of their audiences challenge their organizational reputation.
Both units resolve these tensions by balancing their weaker professional and procedural
reputation with a stronger performative and moral reputation. We conclude that govern-
ment units aiming to improve citizen orientation in policy design may benefitfrom
engaging with citizens as their external audience to compensate for a weaker reputation
in the eyes of their audiences inside the government organization.
Corresponding author:
Full Professor and Chair in German Politics and Government, University of Potsdam,August-Bebel-Straße 89,
14482 Potsdam, Germany
Email: fleischer@uni-potsdam.de
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 100–115
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221132228
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
Points for practitioners
•Many governments have introduced novel means to strengthen citizen-centered policy
design, which has led to an emergence of novel units inside central government that
differ from traditional bureaucratic structures and procedures.
•This study analyzes how these new units may build their organizational reputation vis-
à-vis internal and external actors in government policymaking.
•We show that such units assert themselves primarily based on their performative and
moral reputation.
Keywords
citizen participation, government policymaking, organizational reputation
Introduction
In recent years, governments have aimed toward strengthening their collaboration with
citizens in policy design, therefore readjusting procedures of policy formulation
(Tõnurist et al., 2017; Romero Frías and Machado, 2018; McGann et al., 2018, 2021;
Olejniczak et al., 2020). Next to new methods and instruments in policy formulation,
these efforts have also brought novel units inside ministerial bureaucracies. They come
under different names and differ from other units inside the bureaucratic organization,
and employ unconventional tools such as, e.g., pilots, experiments, nudging, and data
analytics (Olejniczak et al., 2020; Mergel, 2019; Fleischer and Carstens, 2021; Evans
and Cheng, 2021). As a result, a ‘laboratization’of central government has begun,
which may enable novel forms of collaboration toward external actors such as citizens
but also challenge interactions between government entities.
As many others, the German federal government has committed itself to more
citizen-oriented policy design to enable “new ways of (not only digital) collaboration,
e.g., across sectors or authorities”(BKAmt, 2019: 18–19; see Kernaghan, 2005). New
units have been established to innovate the citizen orientation in policy formulation
that deviate from the existing palette of formal structures, also in their methods and
ways of working. Whereas some of these novel citizen-oriented units address specific
policy challenges, others have a more generic mandate for improving the means of gov-
ernment policymaking, yet oftentimes focused on digital tools (Williamson, 2015;
Mergel, 2019).
This paper addresses the organizational reputation of these novel units and asks how it
contributes to their role in executive politics. As these units depart from pre-existing
formal structures, mandates, and working methods inside ministerial bureaucracies,
they require their own and distinctive organizational reputation. Organizational reputa-
tion refers to the relationships that organizational actors establish with the various “audi-
ences”in their environment (Carpenter, 2001). We argue that novel units inside a
government organization are particularly interested in establishing and maintaining
Fleischer and Pruin101
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