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Bureaucratic Reputation Theory: Micro-Level Theoretical Extensions

Jürgen Willems et al.

Perspectives on Public Management & Governance2025https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaf004article
AJG 2
Weight
0.52

What the paper says

Bureaucratic Reputation Theory (BRT) focuses on the role of public agencies’ reputation as an asset in socio-political dynamics. Agencies aim to manage their reputation for different audiences to have higher levels of (publicly legitimized) strategic independence, autonomy, and discretion. Considering that reputations form because of shared reputational beliefs among individuals, we study bureaucratic reputation from a dialogic perspective between agencies and the individual stakeholders in their audiences. First, we make a case that such socio-cognitive elements are relevant for a broad range of public-serving organizations, pinpointing the broader relevance of BRT beyond public agencies. Second, building on interdisciplinary insights on the formation and evolution of individual perceptions, as well as the social network interactions within and between audiences, we derive 10 micro-level theoretical propositions in three related themes: (1) distinct information sources for reputational beliefs, (2) the episodic nature of agency-audience interactions, and (3) the reputation spillovers between structurally related units.

7 citations

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaf004

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@article{jürgen2025,
  title        = {{Bureaucratic Reputation Theory: Micro-Level Theoretical Extensions}},
  author       = {Jürgen Willems et al.},
  journal      = {Perspectives on Public Management & Governance},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvaf004},
}

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Bureaucratic Reputation Theory: Micro-Level Theoretical Extensions

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Evidence weight

0.52

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.47 × 0.4 = 0.19
M · momentum0.68 × 0.15 = 0.10
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.