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Institutional Memory as Storytelling: How Networked Government Remembers
book
posted on 2023-05-22, 08:00 authored by Corbett, J, Grube, DC, Heather LovellHeather Lovell, Scott, RJHow 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.
Funding
The Australia and New Zealand School of Government
History
Series
Cambridge Elements: Elements in Public and Nonprofit AdministrationPagination
78ISBN
978-1-108-74800-1Department/School
School of Social SciencesPublisher
Cambridge University PressPlace of publication
United KingdomRights statement
Copyright 2020 the authorsRepository Status
- Restricted