Institutional Memory as Storytelling: How Networked Government RemembersHow do bureaucracies remember? The conventional view is that institutional memory is static and singular, the sum of recorded files and learned procedures. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests contemporary bureaucracies are failing at this core task. This Element argues that this diagnosis misses that memories are essentially dynamic stories. They reside with people and are thus dispersed across the array of actors that make up the differentiated polity. Drawing on four policy examples from four sectors (housing, energy, family violence and justice) in three countries (the UK, Australia and New Zealand), this Element argues that treating the way institutions remember as storytelling is both empirically salient and normatively desirable. It is concluded that the current conceptualisation of institutional memory needs to be recalibrated to fit the types of policy learning practices required by modern collaborative governance. |
Contents
| 1999 | |
WholeofGovernment Processes and the Creation | 2013 |
What Happens with Iterative Conversations in Cases | |
The Case of the UKs Zero | |
The Case of the New Zealand | |
Conclusion | |
References | |
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Common terms and phrases
actors Advanced Metering Infrastructure agencies Alviss AMI programme archives Australia BedZED building collaboration create Department documents dynamic forms dynamic memories electricity meters Element embedded empirical example Family Violence Action files forms of institutional forms of memory historical institutionalism implementation individual industry insights institutional amnesia institutional memory institutionalised Interview involved iterative conversations Jack Corbett jurisdictions knowledge leadership lessons Linde living memory metaphor narrative negative Operationalised organisations past pipeline plurality of voices policy areas policy failure policy learning policy process policymaking political Pollitt private sector Public Administration public and nonprofit public management public sector public servants remembering replicated Rhodes Rodney Scott role roll-out Section shared understandings smart meters stakeholders stories storytelling studies success task force technical University of Southampton University of Tasmania University Press Victorian Violence Action Plan Westminster system whole-of whole-of-government wicked problems Zealand justice sector Zealand Police Zero Carbon Homes Zero Carbon Hub