Jacob Torfing – författare

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’.

One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions.

This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’.

One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions.

This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

As the practices of public governance are rapidly changing, so must the theoretical frameworks for understanding the creation of efficient, effective and democratic governance solutions.

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics journal, this book explores the role of strategic management, digitalisation and generative platforms in encouraging the co-creation of innovative public value outcomes. It considers why we must transform the public sector to drive co-creation and the importance of integrating different theoretical strands when studying processes, barriers and outcomes.

This book lays out important stepping-stones for the development of new research into the ongoing transition to co-creation as a mode of governance.

As the practices of public governance are rapidly changing, so must the theoretical frameworks for understanding the creation of efficient, effective and democratic governance solutions.

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics journal, this book explores the role of strategic management, digitalisation and generative platforms in encouraging the co-creation of innovative public value outcomes. It considers why we must transform the public sector to drive co-creation and the importance of integrating different theoretical strands when studying processes, barriers and outcomes.

This book lays out important stepping-stones for the development of new research into the ongoing transition to co-creation as a mode of governance.

Governments worldwide struggle to remove policy deadlocks and enact much-needed reforms in organizational structure and public services. In this book, Jacob Torfing explores collaborative innovation as a way for public and private stakeholders to break the impasse. These network-based collaborations promise to multiply the skills, ideas, energy, and resources between government and its partners across agency boundaries and in the nonprofit and private sectors.

Torfing draws on his own pioneering work in Europe as well as examples from the United States and Australia to construct a cross-disciplinary framework for studying collaborative innovation. His analysis explores its complex and interactive processes as he looks at how drivers and barriers may enhance or impede the collaborative approach. He also reflects on the roles institutional design, public management, and governance reform play in spurring collaboration for public sector innovation. The result is a theoretically and empirically informed book that carefully demonstrates how multi-actor collaboration can enhance public innovation in the face of fiscal constraint, the proliferation of wicked problems, and the presence of unsatisfied social needs.

The handbook advances a deeper theoretical understanding of governance processes while illuminating the interdisciplinary foundations of the field. By reviewing key theoretical concepts, the handbook provides a basic conceptual toolkit for analyzing contemporary governance and offers important insights into how governance research contributes to social science theory development. By canvassing the different forms of governance, the chapters also reveal the diversity of contemporary governing practices. An epilogue identifies common themes across the chapters and points to opportunities for future research.

In our increasingly complex, fragmented and dynamic society, this Handbook is a key resource for those who seek to deepen or broaden their theoretical understanding of governance. It will be a powerful aid for scholars, students and practitioners who wish to gauge the theoretical depth and breadth of governance studies.

Contributors include: C. Ansell, I. Bache, I. Bartle, P. Blomqvist, J.N. Brass, J.M. Bryson, G. Bullock, J. de Fine Licht, J. Edelenbos, M. Egeberg, L. Ericksson, M. Flinders, A. Gash, S. Geertman, A.K. Gerlak, L. Gerrits, R. Glennon, Å. Gornitzka, S. Griggs, J. Hartley, T. Hartmann, M. Haugaard, M. Haubrich-Seco, T. Heikkila, R. Holahan, D. Howarth, M. Isailovic, B. Jessop, S.I. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, R. Keast, P. Kenis, A. Klinke, C. Koliba, M. Lubell, W. Mattli, R. Mayntz, J.W. Meek, D. Naurin, K. Nielsen, P.O. Öberg, S. Osborne, D. Panke, Y. Papadopoulos, P. Pattberg, B.G. Peters, J. Pierre, K.S. Quick, Z. Radnor, O. Renn, M.L. Rhodes, K. Sahlin, J. Seddon, E. Sørensen, T. Steelman, K. Stephenson, S. Talesh, L. Taylor, J. Torfing, P. Triantafillou, J. Trondal, N. Turnbull, I. van Meerkerk, J. Yasuda