Abstract
In this chapter, we examine how agencies build organizational political capacities (OPC) for reputation management, where capacity building is treated as a challenge underpinned by the learning relationships that exist between key governance actors. This challenge requires the development of four types of OPC: absorptive capacity (ACAP); administrative capacity (ADCAP); analytical capacity (ANCAP) and communicative capacity (COMCAP). Analytically, we link each of these capacities to one particular type of policy learning—reflexive learning—which characterizes politicized situations where an agency’s reputation is under threat and citizens are the main governance partners. Empirically, we demonstrate how agencies learn to develop these OPCs with governance partners using the case of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which increasingly aims to engage citizens in a dialogue to combat the negative images attached to health and safety regulation. We conclude by asking what a learning approach tells us about how agencies can develop OPC.
Reprinted from Policy and Society, 34(3–4), Claire A. Dunlop, Organizational political capacity as learning, 259–270, 2015, with permission from Elsevier.
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Acknowledgements
The empirical research for this chapter was funded by the University of Exeter’s Link Fund scheme, and conceptual work by the European Research Council (ERC) project Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance (ALREG: grant number 230,267). Previous versions were presented at the ‘Policy Capacity for Innovative Governance’ Workshop, 22–23 May 2014, Hangzhou, China and submitted to the UK Political Studies Association (PSA) annual conference in Sheffield, 30 March–3 April 2015. I am grateful to the workshop participants, two anonymous referees and the special issue editors for their insightful comments on previous draft of the work. This research has benefited from the input of many people at the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and I extend thanks to them all. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Dunlop, C.A. (2018). Building Organizational Political Capacity Through Policy Learning: Communicating with Citizens on Health and Safety in the UK. In: Wu, X., Howlett, M., Ramesh, M. (eds) Policy Capacity and Governance. Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54675-9_12
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