Zoe Radnor, Aston University

David Walker, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

For this theme issue we are looking for disciplinary eclecticism. We seek contributions that bring together insights from several disciplines, including law, social sciences, public management and the study of politics. Traditionally public management has not engaged in 'constitutional' conversations. However, the rise of what has been identified within the political landscape as 'populism' calls for a cross-disciplinary perspective to understand whether, and how, it is impacting public management and administration.

Populism can be described as a movement rather than a single ideology adopted by any political doctrine, and it often presents complex problems in simple terms, offering direct solutions. In recent times, populism has seen a rise in politicians from the left (for example Julius Malema in South Africa, Lee Jae Myung in South Korea) and the right of the political landscape (for example Donald Trump in the USA, Javier Milei in Argentina and Nigel Farage in the UK).

For this PMM theme issue we are seeking both conceptual and case examples to address the questions raised. Understanding how public managers and administrators are navigating the current context is key to supporting public services and the public good. In addition to research articles, we are also seeking debate and new development pieces to shape the thinking and agenda for further consideration. We would like to understand the implications for both policy and practice.

Potential topics

• Are we facing the limits of traditional thinking in public management? Do public managers have a 'moral personality' with value commitment to liberal democracy and/or state continuity, hence a duty, moral or legal, to protect them?
• Does populism create a challenge for public managers to abide by good governance principles (for example, in the UK, the Nolan Principles of Public Life)?
• Are public managers obliged to defend the state from attack, rhetorical or actual; if so, by what means?
• Have public managers traditionally lacked 'voice' within the political–administrative interface and what challenges do they face with the rise of populism?
• Is there a problem, incipient or actual, facing public managers if they are becoming answerable to politicians with a value set that is antagonistic to the values of public management?
• How anachronistic are those Weberian doctrines of 'responsiveness', i.e. the idea that the primary duty of public managers is to obey political mandates as the sole source of legitimacy?
• What is 'extremism'/populism? Can extremism and populism be defined (proscribed) ex ante?
• Do public managers observe/answer to a code that protects them against orders (short of law-breaking)? Are such codes robust?
• How far do existing doctrines of accountability accommodate answerability for extremist policies?
• Do public managers including civil servants and military personnel have a 'moral' personality and/or ethical commitments that equip them/require them to resist political directives that might subvert existing conventions or constitutional order?
• What lessons could public managers learn from international and comparative perspectives from the rise of populism in different political systems and architectures?

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Hybrid symposium for potential contributors
• January 31, 2027: Submission deadline for research articles and new development pieces
• March 31, 2027: Submission deadline for debate pieces

Carmine Bianchi, University of Palermo

Greta Nasi, Bocconi University

Bin Chen, Baruch College

Gabriela Lotta, FGV-São Paulo School of Business Administration

Governments today face increasingly complex challenges in public service delivery, including social inequality, climate change, public health crises, and rapid digital transformation. Traditional models of public management often fall short in addressing wicked problems due to their standardized and inflexible nature. A linear and static approach remains widespread in strategic planning across both public sector and business organizations, though the limits and risks of this approach have long been discussed in the literature.

Developing a 'memory of the future' – the ability to elicit mental models and use scenario planning to prepare for change – has been viewed as a foundational capability for strategic foresight. Related work emphasizes learning processes that support organizational evolution by design, based on feedforward rather than solely feedback-driven reasoning. Recent contributions increasingly argue for framing public strategic planning and goal formation as a design process, suggesting that planning should aim not only to anticipate the future but to help create it, recognizing that organizations and their surrounding ecosystems evolve together.

This special issue focuses on how organizations – when facing dynamic and wicked problems – can design the future by fostering place-based value creation. Such an approach supports the development of shared strategic resources and enhances sustainable and place-responsive outcomes. Wicked problems are inherently place-based, shaped by local socio-economic, cultural, and environmental conditions that require context-sensitive responses. Traditional models of public management – typically centralized, linear, and standardized – frequently fail to respond effectively to such complexity. There is growing recognition of the need for dynamic, adaptive, and pluralistic frameworks that embed governance within specific local contexts and engage multiple stakeholders across levels and sectors.

Public value creation produces outcomes that enhance a community's shared, place-based strategic resources. These outcomes typically emerge from collaborative policymaking involving both public and private actors, aimed at advancing core democratic values such as equity, accountability, transparency, trust, and social cohesion. Public value creation may require critically reassessing prevailing societal norms, enabling value shifts that support sustainable, context-sensitive collective well-being. Building on recent contributions, value in public services is created within complex, nested ecosystems shaped by both spatial ('locus') and cultural/social ('habitus') dimensions of place, where locus emphasizes the significance of physical, spatial, and geographic conditions, and habitus refers to the ingrained habits, dispositions, and modes of perception that individuals develop through their social experiences. In a place, both locus and habitus are dynamically interconnected.

Place-based strategy involves designing public service interventions that are contextually grounded in the characteristics of a specific area. It requires understanding the spatial, cultural, and institutional dimensions of a context, engaging local stakeholders, leveraging place-based strategic resources, and dynamically adapting strategies to the evolving needs of the community to enhance pervasive and sustainable value creation. Strategy is no longer a top-down prescription, but rather a co-creative, iterative process sensitive to local diversity and complexity. This approach may benefit from a dual perspective on value creation, framed as the interplay between 'inside-out' and 'outside-in' strategies. The inside-out perspective emphasizes strategy design driven from within public service organizations, prioritizing internal capabilities and goals, while the outside-in perspective places emphasis on the external context – social, territorial, and institutional – in which organizations are embedded.

While both inside-out and outside-in approaches to strategy design have been explored independently in the literature, a gap remains in understanding how their integration can produce deeper insights into public service value creation. Inside-out approaches risk overlooking the complex, evolving needs of the broader ecosystem, while outside-in strategies may underappreciate the organizational capabilities and constraints that shape public service delivery. Integrating these perspectives may allow for a richer understanding of how internal strategic intent, external societal demands, and territorial attributes interact, align, or conflict – enabling the design of more context-sensitive, adaptive, and democratically grounded public services.

Adopting an outside-in orientation supports the development of collaborative platforms as facilitative mechanisms of systemic, place-based value co-creation. These platforms foster theme-focused service ecosystems – such as those dedicated to sustainable mobility, urban design, or eco-innovation – which operate as meta-governance structures that allow distributed yet coordinated decision-making. These modular ecosystems support scalable and resilient development processes even when decisions occur outside traditional institutional frameworks. The design and implementation of collaborative platforms requires a deliberate and often iterative approach to governance and orchestration.

Value is not always created in public service ecosystems; poor design or delivery can lead to value destruction – a risk particularly salient in place-based settings. Understanding the dynamics of value-in-use (benefits realized during service use), value-in-context (value shaped by local circumstances), and value-in-society (societal-level outcomes) becomes crucial. A place-based approach emphasizes how these types of value are interpreted and experienced differently across communities, reinforcing the need for adaptive, participatory performance management systems.

Potential topics

• Frameworks for place-sensitive strategic planning in public services
• How public value (or dis-value) emerges within complex, nested ecosystems shaped by spatial ('locus') and cultural/social ('habitus') dimensions of place, including their role in strategy adoption and success
• Methods for enhancing collaborative policy design and implementation to address the inherent complexity of place-based ecosystems
• The role of local knowledge, culture, and beliefs in shaping strategy
• Interactions between 'inside-out' (organizational) and 'outside-in' (contextual) strategy perspectives, including if and how their integration may offer more comprehensive insights into value creation than when applied in isolation
• Synergies and tensions between internal capabilities and external demands in the co-design of public service strategies
• Adaptive and 'intelligent' performance management systems
• Indicators and metrics for value-in-context and value-in-society
• The role of citizen perception in evaluating public service outcomes
• How collaborative policymaking can generate value outcomes aligned with equity, accountability, transparency, trust, and social cohesion, and support shifts toward sustainable, context-sensitive collective well-being
• The dynamics of value destruction in public service ecosystems, including how poor service design, implementation, or governance may undermine place-based value creation and community culture, as well as strategies to prevent or mitigate such outcomes
• Collaborative platforms for cross-sector governance
• Orchestration of theme-focused ecosystems for modular place development
• Meta-governance and boundary-spanning leadership
• Governance responses to turbulence (e.g., COVID-19 case studies)
• Building robust, place-based public services through learning-oriented systems
• Interplay of formal/informal knowledge in ecosystem adaptation
• Digital platforms enabling citizen engagement and real-time data use
• Role of AI and digital twins in place-based ecosystem visualization
• Evaluating digital interventions for ecosystem development

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Special issue publication
• May 31, 2026: Deadline for abstract proposals
• December 1, 2026: Feedback from guest editors
• April 30, 2027: Full paper submission deadline

Lorenzo Mizzau, University of Genoa

Leticia Labaronne, Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Katja Lindqvist, Lund University

Yeşim Tonga, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca

Cultural organizations, ranging from museums and heritage sites to festivals, theatres and media production houses, represent a vital component of the public sphere. Regardless of their ownership, legal status, and business model, many of these organizations pursue public missions: they produce, distribute, and safeguard cultural value, make accessible collective cultural resources, support participation and expression and sustain the creative ecosystems that enrich civic life. Cultural organizations can thereby be defined as public organizations, not only because they may receive public funding or other forms of governmental support, such as organizations that operate at arm's length, but also because culture is deemed a collective good, which makes these organizations interesting from a public management angle.

Cultural organizations are facing increasing pressure to rethink their organizational design, managerial systems, and relationships with their environment. Funding frameworks have become more volatile; governments are reconfiguring their financial engagement with culture through co-financing or project-based mechanisms; and expectations of accountability and demonstrable impact have grown. Meanwhile, digital transformation and AI-driven technologies are reshaping how culture is produced, mediated, and experienced. These shifts challenge traditional models of management, organization and governance of and for cultural organizations, raising critical questions about sustainability, legitimacy, and the evolving societal role of cultural organizations.

At the same time, cultural work itself is also changing. New collaborative models, hybrid careers, and digital production platforms demand adaptive organizational processes, new forms of coordination and control, a varied array of skills, learning needs and professional identities, and a leadership capable of balancing artistic freedom with social, environmental and economic sustainability. Cultural organizations thus provide a powerful lens for examining the changing relationship between cultural work and public commitment to culture, by analysing how managerial and organizational structures interact with public policy and governance frameworks.

This special issue explores how cultural organizations can sustain their public mission while navigating organizational, sustainability and technological transitions. Conceptual and empirical contributions are invited that investigate how it is possible to reimagine cultural organizations' managerial practices, organizational models, and governance frameworks in pursuit of their public mission.

Potential topics

• Managerial and organizational design, governance frameworks, and co-ordination in cultural organizations and cultural policy systems
• Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and enabling technologies in the organization and management of cultural organizations
• Careers and work in cultural organizations, including changing work conditions, hybrid and digital work models, and professional development
• Human resource management, leadership, and organizational culture in cultural organizations
• Organizational learning, knowledge management, and capability development in cultural institutions
• Managing change, innovation, and transitions in cultural organizations and institutions impacting them in response to societal and technological disruptions
• Evaluation, accountability, and performance management in the pursuit of cultural and public value
• Public finance models, policies and programs: debates, changes, and effects on cultural organizations
• Social, environmental and economic sustainability, resilience and strategic management in cultural organizations

Timeline

• October 12, 2026: Deadline for research articles
• December 31, 2026: Deadline for debate and new development pieces

Kathy Quick, University of Minnesota

Jean Hartley, The Open University

Eckhard Schroeter, German University of the Police

Nick Caveney, Hertfordshire Constabulary

This issue is open for debate articles offering distinctive, provocative and considered comments and arguments, perhaps from the world of practice. These articles are subject to review by the guest editors.

The audience for this themed issue is an interdisciplinary and broadly-defined community of academics and professionals who share an interest in the research of policing, law enforcement, and the provision of public safety from an organizational, managerial, governance and/or public policy analysis perspective.

Articles should explore questions of policing and public management, examining how political governance systems affect the provision of an effective, fair and accountable police service in both its ideal forms and practical manifestations. This includes analysis of how such systems affect the degree of police operational independence, comparative assessment of civilian scrutiny mechanisms, and governance structures of privately-provided police and security services.

Potential topics

• Legitimacy, equity, power, authority, governance and organizational performance in policing
• Organizational functions such as strategic planning, human resource management, budgeting and evaluation, coordination of operations, control and accountability of policing
• Cooperation with public and private partners
• Whether and how policing is value-creating or value-destroying in different settings and social environments
• Changing roles and expectations of police at points of political and societal change and/or stress and austerity
• Comparative analysis of policing values, operations, and consequences in or across different locales
• Political governance systems and their implications for effective, fair and accountable police service
• Police operational independence and comparative analysis of civilian scrutiny of police
• Governance mechanisms of private, non-governmentally provided police and security services

Timeline

• September 30, 2026: Manuscript deadline