The Handbook of Public Sector Communication

Vilma Luoma-aho, María José Canel, Vilma Luoma-aho, María José Canel

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119263173
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A multidisciplinary collection on global public entity strategic communication

Research into public sector communication investigates the interaction between public and governmental entities and citizens within their sphere of influence. Today's public sector organizations are operating in environments where people receive their information from multiple sources. Although modern research demonstrates the immense impact public entities have on democracy and societal welfare, communication in this context is often overlooked. Public sector organizations need to develop "communicative intelligence" in balancing their institutional agendas and aims of public engagement. The Handbook of Public Sector Communication is the first comprehensive volume to explore the field. This timely, innovative volume examines the societal role, environment, goals, practices, and development of public sector strategic communication.

International in scope, this handbook describes and analyzes the contexts, policies, issues, and questions that shape public sector communication. An interdisciplinary team of leading experts discusses diverse subjects of rising importance to public sector, government, and political communication. Topics include social exchange relationships, crisis communication, citizen expectations, measuring and evaluating media, diversity and inclusion, and more. Providing current research and global perspectives, this important resource:

• Addresses the questions public sector communicators face today
• Summarizes the current state of public sector communication worldwide
• Clarifies contemporary trends and practices including mediatization, citizen engagement, and change and expectation management
• Addresses global challenges and crises such as corruption and bureaucratic roadblocks
• Provides a framework for measuring communication effectiveness

Requiring minimal prior knowledge of the field, The Handbook of Public Sector Communication is a valuable tool for academics, students, and practitioners in areas of public administration, public management, political communication, strategic and organizational communication, and related fields such as political science, sociology, marketing, journalism, and globalization studies.

Part I
Public Sector Communication and Society

Michael X. Delli Carpini

Introduction

In his 1742 book, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, the Scottish philosopher David Hume reflected on “the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.” This despite the fact that “force is always on the side of the governed, [while] the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.” He concludes that it is “on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular” (p. 28).

One can debate how easily the many submit to the few, as well as whether force is always unequivocally on the side of the governed, though recent populist stirrings across the globe, and the variety of ways they have manifest themselves certainly suggest that Hume's observations remain relevant today. And the importance of “public opinion” for polities ranging from democratic to authoritarian is indisputable. These opinions can range from deep‐seated attitudes and beliefs about the ways in which the public sector operates—what might be called “procedural justice”—to more specific views on the tangible outcomes produced by this process, or “distributive justice” (Lind & Tyler 1988; Thibaut & Walker 1975).

If one accepts the importance of public opinion to governance, it follows that communication is equally important. This is true at several levels. At a minimum, those in power need to have some sense of what the prevailing and discordant opinions are, and who holds them. They often also need to respond to and/or influence public opinions in order to govern effectively, or at least stay in power. These are all forms of information exchange, and so are quintessentially communicative processes.

That said, how opinions matter, what opinions matter, whose opinions matter, when they matter, and why they matter can vary greatly, as can the role of communication in the expression, monitoring, influencing, and responding to citizens' opinions. These variations are ultimately determined by the structure of the public sector, and its relationship to the larger society in which it is embedded. And as Hume reminds us, this is true even when comparing systems that are nominally the same—for example, “advanced democracies”—let alone those that differ more dramatically in the rights and responsibilities granted to citizens.

The chapters in this section explore the relationship between the public sector and society, with a particular focus on the nature and implications of communication between citizens and the state. In the first chapter, I “unpack” key terms such as the public sector, the public sphere, public sector communication, and democracy, discuss the complex relationships among these concepts, and point to relatively recent efforts to experiment with more direct ways for citizens to be meaningfully involved in the public sector's authoritative allocation of goods, services, and values. In Chapter 2 Arild Waeraas moves us from the “meta‐level” of democratic theory to the “meso‐level” by focusing on the organizations that collectively constitute the public sector and how they are perceived by citizens. In his chapter, Waeraas distinguishes “organizational reputation” from “organizational legitimacy,” addresses the crucial and often underconsidered importance of the latter for the viability of public sector organizations, and makes the case that an overemphasis on communication designed to enhance an organization's reputation can ultimately hurt its legitimacy.

Chapter 3, authored by Nadine Raaphorst and Steven van de Walle, takes us yet deeper into the relationship between the public sector and society through a more “micro‐level” examination of public sector communication. They do so by focusing on the places where citizens and the state most frequently interact—the bureaucratic encounters where civil servants and citizens actually meet. In their chapter, they make the case that public sector communication is a particular type of ritualized interpersonal communication; one in which power relations are often unequal and information on one or both sides is often incomplete. As such, the “signals” sent through these interactions are ripe for misinterpretation, with serious consequences for citizens' trust in the public sector.

In Chapter 4, Katerina Tsetsura and Vilma Luoma‐aho return to the meso‐level by exploring transparency and corruption in public sector organizations. They argue that public sector nontransparency and corruption are deeply intertwined, with nontransparency providing the cover that allows for individual, intra‐organizational, and inter‐organizational corruption in the form of quid‐pro‐quo interactions designed primarily for personal or organizational gain rather than the public good. They also argue that both nontransparency and corruption are more common in nondemocratic and, to a lesser extent, emerging democratic regimes, and that they are most widespread and deeply embedded in organizations and systems where nontransparency and corruption go beyond isolated acts to being part of the larger societal and public sector culture. And in ways that connect to the chapter by Raaphorst and van de Walle, they argue that public mistrust is both an outcome of nontransparency and corruption, and a real and perceptual barrier to any efforts for reform.

Finally, in Chapter 5 Leanne Glenny takes us back to the meta‐level by exploring the complex and often problematic nature of public sector communication resulting from the need to simultaneously serve the needs of two “masters”—elected officials and citizens. This inherently political relationship can limit the ability of the public sector to meet its core goal: the making and implementation of policies designed to reflect and enhance the public good. She argues that understanding these challenges, and addressing them in ways that bring the public more meaningfully into the process, can limit the more corrosive and divisive effects of partisan politics, create a more autonomous public sector, and ultimately contribute to a more democratic system.

Taken together, several important themes emerge from these chapters. First is the role of communication in the complicated interconnection between performance and perception. As argued in Chapter 1, the state's central role is the authoritative allocation of goods, services and values, and, as Glenny notes, this allocation should be in service of the public good. But to be effective, policy both depends on and influences public opinion. In a well‐functioning society, this iterative process is a tight one; that is, policies reflect the priorities of the public, and public perceptions are based on a thoughtful and reasoned assessment of the effectiveness of policy. However, for a variety of reasons highlighted in these chapters—from organizations' focus on reputation over legitimacy, to miscommunications between public servants and the publics they serve, to outright corruption, to the problematic intersection of the policy process and politics—performance and perceptions can become decoupled, often with disastrous short and long‐term effects.

A second theme is the numerous moments in which citizens and the state can interact. The policy process runs from problem identification and prioritization to implementation and assessment, and while we often see the public as “client,” their role, especially though not exclusively in democracies, is much more than that. Citizens ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction to Public Sector Communication
• Part I: Public Sector Communication and Society
• Part II: Public Sector Communication, Organizations, Stakeholders, and Employees
• Part III: Public Sector Communication and Practices
• Part IV: Public Sector Communication and Citizens
• Part V: Public Sector Communication Measurement and Evaluation
• Part VI: Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement