Positive Public Administration (PPA) encourages scholars to examine governance success. The appreciation of successes, however, is not new. During previous decades, awards were bestowed for exceptional performance. We analyse whether two important awards in the Netherlands and Flanders are an expression of PPA. Firstly, we find that successes are interpreted differently: in the Netherlands, one-off, trendy performances are rewarded, while in Flanders the focus is on consolidated results of long-term change processes. Secondly, we see that ‘clean’ success criteria promote a suggestion of ‘control’, whilst public settings are ambiguous and unpredictable. Finally, we conclude that prizes are primarily celebrations; little evidence is found of systematic knowledge exchange, learning and professionalisation.

Reflection and debate initiates academically inspired discussions on issues that are on the current policy agenda.

Professional services such as educational services, are increasingly managed and optimized in order to improve performances. Performances of students, teachers and school (boards) are measured and evaluated. Increasingly, rules and systems focus on outputs and control. Consequently, the ‘freedom’ of professionals such as teachers is reduced, or is perceived and felt to be reduced. There have been growing debates on the problematic effects of performance pressures. Often, public professionals are seen as ‘defenseless victims’ of systems and pressures – they are ‘professionals under pressure’. In this paper, we introduce a more positive way of understanding professionals and professional action in changing contexts. We see professionals such as teachers as ‘active agents’ who can develop and regain control over their own situation. Professionals can deliver quality, in spite of bureaucratic burdens and managerial intrusions. We call this ability professional capability: ‘the ability to proactively deal with work-related expectations, tasks and burdens in dynamic stakeholder environments’. This paper combines research on public administration, organizational sociology and occupational psychology, to generate a more productive understanding of proactive coping of professionals in public domains. We define and operationalize professional capacity, we explore sources and effects, and we develop hypotheses for further research.

There are many practical and academic concerns about public professionals and the pressures and burdens they experience. Professional autonomies and skills are reduced, it is argued, as a result of businesslike new public management, in order to control service results. The solution is clear: organizational logics must be weakened, professional autonomies must be enlarged and professional ways of working must be ‘rescued’. In this paper we re-interpret this presumed problem by analyzing: the interaction between organizational and professional logics, by relating these to a broader institutional logic and by tracing the contribution of individual professional motivations. Professionals, it is shown, can be motivated by broader ambitions to serve society. Such public service motivation consists of three types of motives: rational/instrumental, affective and normative. Our results show that employees in different public professional services show different patterns of motives, which we mainly explain by relating their motivations to the nature of the services they render – whether they render people-changing or people-processing services. These institutional dimensions imply that professional work can be managed, not so much by businesslike ‘market logic’ but by strengthening the meaning of the work professionals do. Professional pressures against organizations do not have to be suppressed – they can be productively used.

The lessons learned from the financial crisis are not necessarily limited to the financial sector. Both the financial sector and the public sector have to deal with perverse effects. The effects can be related to a reduction of complexity and plurality through introducing (oversimplified and one dimensional) models and financial incentives. However, in doing this, complexity and plurality are often lost: the neglect of multiple interests, goal replacement and too much focus on short term results. As a consequence perverse effects arise.
Public sectors and organizations face internal and external pressure to act as they do. At the level of organizations or groups this may involve groupthink; at institutional level uniformity is promoted by the dynamics of isomorphism. This article is a critique on simplification and a plea for the (re)introduction of plurality. More specifically, we stress the importance of individual moral responsibility as a resource for and a way to preserve plurality. Not because that is the only option, but because it is an option that we believe deserves more attention. Other options such as changing regulations and changing the structure of supervision are already broadly discussed. We want to draw attention to the individual as parts of multiple organizations and systems. Individuals are therefore a natural carrier of multiplicity and plurality. Taking moral responsibility serious is not an easy task, but a meaningful step towards awareness of perverse effects due to reduction of complexity and plurality.

A surprising difference between the Netherlands and Flanders is that a Flemish minister may appoint more than 20 advisors, while Dutch ministers can appoint only one or two ‘political assistants’. However, this difference was hardly studied before, although it is a relevant and actual theme. This article analyzes the differences in role and position of Flemish ministerial advisors and Dutch political assistants. We show that there exist large differences between both types of advisors and we discuss the reasons for and consequences of this difference. The institutional context in which both actors work determines a lot their role. Differences in political culture and administrative organization in particular seem to be important explanatory factors.

'Demand-based organising' has become popular throughout public domains, sometimes complementing, sometimes working against 'fact-based' and 'market-based' organising. This raises critical questions, about ways in which 'customer' and client demands are and can be known, and how multiple demands can be aggregated. In addition, it is difficult to link demand-based strategies to public service contexts, full of professional practices. How do public managers cope with such contradictory conditions? How can they organise in demand-based ways, amidst contradictory demands? This article, firstly, explores how demand-based rhetoric and instruments have been introduced. Secondly, it explores how public managers really (can) work in demand-based settings. Thirdly, it explores how demand-based practices can be organised, so that public service contexts can be managed 'professionally'. This leads to a paradoxical conclusion. Professional public managers organise in demand-based ways by not handing-over or 'outsourcing' content to customers and clients, but by substantiating demands themselves.

In local government, traditions and styles of working are under pressure. Local administrators try to find new methods to address urban matters in a business-like manner, to direct networks and to activate stakeholders. In that way, they strive for better performance, and for 'new' politics. In order to succeed, not only new methods are introduced, but cultures are changed as well and new traditions of governance are established. Existing styles of working and regular procedures are seen as outdated and considered to be barriers that have to be eliminated. This 'violence of renewal', as we call it, is based on several assumptions. First, new methods are seen as crucial for modernizing local governance. Second, the effects of new methods depend on the manner in which modernization takes place. Third, effective introductions of new methods do not happen straightforwardly; cultural change is required. In this article we will argue that these assumptions have to be put into perspective and, especially, that the idea of 'making' of cultures in order to effectively implement new methods is illusory. We show, based on research in four municipalities, that interventions in local governance as such are culturally biased, and that local traditions, styles and customs influence how modernization takes place.