Employing Reinvention of Government to Regain Citizen Trust in Public Service : The Need for Theory-Grounded Practice

Public administration seriously harms itself by delivering conflicting messages regarding its receptivity to reinvention of government. As a result, the profession encourages the very citizen frustration and cynicism it seeks to avoid. A major contributor to this unsettling state of affairs is the divergent viewpoints that divide the profession over reinvention’s managerial principles—particularly separating the world of theory from practice. That is, many theoretical academic works reject reinvention as being ideologically incompatible with safeguarded values, principally, democratic participation and social equity. Yet, there are numerous empirical works that amply attest to reinvention’s affirmation of those values in practice. The paper examines the differences between the two positions. It illustrates that many of the arguments employed to dispel reinvention often misrepresent it. The paper concludes that the conflicting views need to be resolved by focusing research attention on theory-grounded practice—as a precursor to building citizen trust in public service.