Collaborative planning is often mentioned as one of the most appropriate planning theories in relation to the network society owing to its focus on creating fair and inclusive institutional settings for deliberations among public and private stakeholders. Even though this theoretical framework discusses potential outcomes, the actual democratic effects of collaborative planning processes are notably overlooked in the literature. The central question raised in this article is: how can we assess the democratic effects of collaborative planning processes? The article presents a tentative evaluative framework for assessing the different stages (input, process and outcome) of collaborative planning processes deriving criteria from democratic theory, as well as from theories on collaborative planning, which can be deployed for empirical studies.How can the quality of democracy in collaborative processes be assessed? While the initial thoughts on collaborative planning considered the implication of these processes for democratic governance in a wider context only to a limited extent, we claim that there are now at least three good arguments for discussing the issue. First, within the current theoretical debate on collaborative planning, many of the arguments in favour of using collaborative thinking as a starting point go beyond the basic idea of collaborative planning, that is, mediating 145 Article

The emergence of Big Data has added a new aspect to conceptualizing the use of digital technologies in the delivery of public services and for realizing digital governance. This article explores, via the 'value-chain' approach, the evolution of digital governance research, and aligns it with current developments associated with data analytics, often referred to as 'Big Data'. In many ways, the current discourse around Big Data reiterates and repeats established commentaries within the eGovernment research community. This body of knowledge provides an opportunity to reflect on the 'promise' of Big Data, both in relation to service delivery and policy formulation. This includes, issues associated with the quality and reliability of data, from mixing public and private sector data, issues associated with the ownership of raw and manipulated data, and ethical issues concerning surveillance and privacy. These insights and the issues raised help assess the value of Big Data in government and smart city environments.

This study discusses the concept of employee resilience (ER), defined as the capability to use resources to continually adapt and flourish at work, even when faced with challenging circumstances. The concept is grounded in positive psychology and conservation of resources (COR) theory and complements other concepts such as coping which describe employees and managers adapting to challenge and change. This study validates a scale of ER and examines attributes and job factors associated with heightened ER in public sector line managers. Study results show that heightened ER is associated with public service motivation (PSM), employees’ pro-social skills and constructive leadership by supervisors. ER is also associated with a climate for innovation. Theoretical and practical implications for strengthening employees’ resilience in public organizations are discussed.

This article investigates the every-day street-level practice of green public procurement (GPP) in Sweden, a country with one of the most decentralised systems of public administration within the European Union (EU). The street-level procurement officers in Swedish local and regional government are in charge of purchases estimated to represent between 10 and 15 per cent of Sweden's GDP. This article examines the constraining and enabling factors behind the individual procurement officer's choice of green procurement in textiles and clothing through a combination of qualitative interviews and a review of documentary sources. The analysis shows that while indirect support through European and national soft regulation and policy advice is imperative for 'greening' procurement, the direct factors which influence the local outcome of GPP comprises factors on the local level: political commitment and environmental knowledge; the organisational structure of local government; and the local interpretation of the regulatory framework. This study shows that a decentralised structure has possibilities of furthering ambitions of buying green if there are committed politicians and public officials, an optimal level of internal centralisation and an external support structure of knowledge and enabling rules.

Previous studies have reported significant gains from adopting the adaptive harvest strategy under conditions of timber price uncertainty. For the final harvest decision in even-aged stand management, the adaptive strategy typically means that a stand is harvested when the timber price is sufficiently high, whereas low prices are avoided by postponing the harvest. Such a harvest behavior may have significant impacts on the future price process, which in turn affects the landowner's profits. Moreover, it would certainly affect the timber-based industry and consumers. This paper assesses these impacts in a hypothetical timber market, using the Faustmann rule (FR) as a benchmark. The results show that changing from the FR to the reservation price strategy (RPS) reduces the supply of timber, thereby pushes up the price level. The RPS significantly reduces the short-run random variation of timber price. In the long run, both the mean and the variance of the timber price tend to stabilize. Depending on the anticipated price variation underlying the RPS, the expected timber price may be close to, or much higher than, the benchmark level, and the variance of price can be very large or very small. The welfare effect of the RPS is small if the anticipated variance of timber price used to ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.de/jfe 1104-6899/$ -see front matter (P. Gong). optimize the RPS is small. If the anticipated variance of price is large, then the RSP leads to significant increase in the landowners' profits and at the same time reduces the consumer surplus by a much larger amount.