P16 SIG Relational Public Management

Panel Chairs

Corresponding Chair

• Rob Wilson, Manchester Metropolitan University. Rob.Wilson@mmu.ac.uk

Review Chair

• Jonathan Wistow, University of Durham. Jonathan.Wistow@durham.ac.uk

Co-Chair

• Paula Rossi (Co-Chair) University of Vaasa. 
• Benedetta Trivellato (Co-Chair) University of Milano-Bicocca. 
• Dina von Heimburg (Co-Chair) NTNU. 
• Max French (Co-Chair) Northumbria University. 
• Hannah Hesselgreaves (Co-Chair) Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Panel Summary

This stream will explore the emerging field of Relational Public Management, emphasizing innovative, human 'intra-actional' approaches to organising public management that move beyond transactional models. It invites contributions that examine distributed, integrative, and collaborative organizational practices designed to address embedded societal challenges through relational and place-based strategies. The panel welcomes multidisciplinary research using diverse methods, including action research and participatory approaches, to investigate how relationality can enhance wellbeing, safety and security. In the teeth of the 'polycrisis' in the public management environment and service delivery, global agencies, policy makers, public servants and citizens are demanding significant reform in provision whilst in parallel government and public service organizations strive to respond to local and community-based needs and engagement with relational community assets/challenges.

An alternative potentially lies in an emerging approach which seeks to explore ideas of innovative forms of management, capable of responding to 'wicked' social issues through a distributed and relational approach rather than focusing on efficiencies, with generalist approach to work rather than specialism, measuring rather measurement, bespoke rather industrial and, perhaps above all, designed around human scale of relationships rather than bureaucratic interactions or market approaches (Bartels and Turnbull 2018, French et al 2023, Wilson et al 2024, Bartels et al 2024, Smith et al 2025, Wilson et al 2025). This emerging set of loosely coupled organisational and management practices including participatory and action research are fundamental to Relational Public Management. The literature has started to produce a wide variety of relational alternatives to the existing orthodoxies and conditioning, for instance Human Learning Systems framework (Lowe et al 2021, French et al 2023), the ‘Liberated Method’ (Smith et al 2025) and boundary spanning literature (Van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, 2018) which indicate new innovations in which we can mobilise public services to address a range of wicked problems areas such as the issues of those with multiple complex needs which can have far reaching effects on the wellbeing of citizens, communities and services.

Proposals we are seeking

We welcome proposals for empirical and conceptual submissions (including longer workshop or cross-stream panels) exploring relational public service approaches and boundary-spanning public service roles. Papers/Workshop/Sub-Stream themes may address, but are not limited to:

• What constitutes the ‘dark side’ of relationality and boundary-spanning, and how might this be mitigated?
• What academic PA concepts and theories can develop, elaborate or challenge existing theory in these areas?
• How do national and sub-national institutional traditions (for instance in the Scandinavian 'salutogenic' wellbeing approach) shape the emergence and expression of relationality in public services?
• How can relational practice co-exist with institutional regimes for commissioning, accountability and inspection?
• How should relational public services and boundary-spanning roles be resourced and sustained over the long-term?