Maria Cucciniello
Biographic Data
| ID | 1739945 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Cucciniello |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Cucciniello |
| SIGNATURE | CUCCINIELLO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bocconi University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8942-0412 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 7 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Designing response networks in turbulent times
Despite agreement among crisis and emergency management scholars on the need to establish networks to address crises, there is no consensus on which network structures foster high-performance responses. Here, we fill empirical gaps in the literature through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the COVID-19 vaccination networks activated by the 20 Italian Regions, demonstrating that there is no Holy-Grail structure that can ensure a high-performa…
Citizen‐Centered Public Service Design in Agile Digital Transformation
The aim of this study is to highlight the critical role of human‐centered design approach as a foundational element in the agile digital transformation of public service design. Grounded in service‐design principles and public‐service logic, it analyses how agencies adopt agile practices and involve stakeholders in co‐design of disrupted municipal public mobility services during Covid 19. Combining a citizen survey, co‐design workshops with offic…
When rationality and pragmatism combine into robust models. The case of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Lombardy
Robustness has emerged as a paradigm for addressing turbulence through a pragmatic, decentralized and flexible model of action. Recent research, however, has indicated that even a model echoing more the characteristics of a rational rather than a pragmatist approach can be effective, thus presenting a puzzling scenario. This study aims to address this puzzle by examining the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the Italian region of Lombardy. Our fin…
How to organize in turbulence
Robustness has recently taken center stage as an emerging paradigm to cope with turbulence and “build back better” toward new normalcy. Existing literature has shown how robust governance, with its mix of flexible adaptation and proactive innovation, is well-suited to addressing turbulence. However, there remains a gap in understanding the empirical variations within robust governance arrangements. In this article, we address three questions: how…
A systematic literature review of city competitiveness
This article synthesizes the cross-disciplinary literature on city competitiveness published in the past three decades to bring attention to competitiveness as a key topic for public administration and local government performance. We systematically reviewed research regarding city competitiveness, its measurement, and its antecendents. Subsequently, to explore the link between local governments and competitiveness, we articulated multiple perspe…
Evaluating and extending public service logic – introduction to the special issue
This special issue of Public Management Review, Public Service Logic – Evaluation and Development, seeks both to evaluate the current body of Public Service Logic (PSL) knowledge and to further dev
Experimental evidence on the determinants of citizens' expectations toward public services
We conducted three randomized experiments to investigate whether and to what extent citizens' expectations toward waiting times for public service delivery are influenced by reference points, either in the form of social or numerical references. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, our results provide convergent evidence of reference dependence. Specifically, informing citizens that waiting times are longer (shorter) relative to a social…
The power of framing
Whistleblowing policies are seldom effective in inducing civil servants to report misconduct. While current literature focusses more upon the identification of the chief factors that prevent witnesses from reporting, it overlooks potentially effective strategies to stimulate active behavior. In particular, it neglects the framing and impact of information provision. According to the prospect theory, information that frames the consequences of non…
The (Missing?) Role of Institutions in Behavioral Public Administration
Editor’s note. In this roundtable, the contributors discuss the role of institutions (or lack thereof) in behavioral public administration (BPA). In a multidisciplinary discourse, the contributors touch on the many tensions that exist between institutional and behavioral perspectives of public administration. This roundtable is intended to spark additional discourse on the role of institutions in how they parameterize behaviors within or how indi…
The role of organizational capacity to foster digital transformation in local governments
Organizational capacity is required to explain what it takes for local governments to succeed in their digital transformation. However, the current literature largely ignores how local governments are adapting their organizational dynamics in order to change. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how local governments enhance their organizational capacity to achieve digital transformation. We conduct a comparative case study that …
One, none, and a hundred thousand” recipes for a robust response to turbulence
Turbulence appears to be a “new normal” in current societies, and public organizations need to learn how to react and adapt to it. Scholars agree on the need for robust actions to respond to turbulence. Through a qualitative comparative analysis performed on the vaccination campaigns of all 20 Italian regions, our paper explores whether different and alternative models of robustness may exist to cope with turbulence. Results shed light on three a…
Altruism and vaccination intentions
Vaccine hesitancy has been on the rise throughout the past two decades, especially in high income countries where existing pro-vaccination public health communication strategies have proven ineffective. We argue that appealing to other-regarding preferences is one way of improving the effectiveness of public health communication strategies. To test this argument, we assess how vaccination intentions are influenced by the presence of people who ca…
Sustainable futures
Digital governance in Mongolia and Taiwan
The objective of this country report is to apply a gender lens to examine the development of digital governance in two democratic countries in the Asia-Pacific: Mongolia and Taiwan. By studying various contextual factors and presenting interpretations associated with gender and the process of digital transformation in these two countries, this research underscores the gender-based differences in ICT usage based on the available data from governme…
Gender difference in the continuance intention to e-file income tax returns in Pakistan
This paper investigates the continuous usage intention of an e-government service from the digital divide perspective, particularly the gender differences. To find out whether the gender difference exists, the case of income tax e-filing service of Pakistan was taken, and the data was collected by means of an online survey from citizens who have previously used tax e-filing service (N = 401). The collected data was analyzed using Welch’s t-test i…
Introduction to the special issue on digital government and gender
While the literature on the digital divide has widely addressed the digital gender gap, its potential implications for electronic government (e-government) / digital government research and practice have hardly been studied. In this Special Issue of Information Polity experts characterize the current state of understanding of the issues surrounding digital government and gender and present an agenda for future research. \nThis Special Issue prese…
Thanks, but No Thanks
Over the last decades, one of the most significant changes in the workplaces of government agencies around the world has been the introduction of telework. The relatively scant public administration research on this innovation and on its semantic or substantive variations such as telecommuting, home-work, remote work, and smart work has examined its effects on teleworkers and only recently on non-teleworkers. However, scholars have overlooked the…
A critical analysis of the study of gender and technology in government
Research at the intersection of feminist organizational theory and techno-science scholarship notes the importance of gender in technology design, adoption, implementation, and use within organizations and how technology in the workplace shapes and is shaped by gender. While governments are committed to advancing gender equity in the workplace, feminist theory is rarely applied to the analysis of the use, adoption, and implementation of technolog…
Gendering the digital divide
Electronic government (e-gov), a means of providing online public services, has the potential to greatly benefit all members of society. However, its advantages are often out of the reach of citizens who are digitally excluded. Drawing on socioeconomic and demographic ICT survey data, researchers have explored the digital divide and have concluded that gender is an important determinant of inequality. If we are to provide e-gov services that are …
The gendered digital turn
Women continue to occupy lesser positions of power at all political levels in Canada, although scholars still argue on the accessibility of municipal politics to women. However, no previous study has systematically examined the gender ratio of mayors across Canada, as well as their (active) use of social media platforms in a professional capacity. Using novel data, this study examines the variation in social media adoption and active use by gende…
Accounting for citizens when explaining open government effectiveness
Only hearing what they want to hear
While performance information is often used to communicate the importance of public policies and stimulate civic engagement, we know little about the processes that connect the two. This study proposes a conceptual model that links performance information to a specific form of public engagement: coproduction. Drawing on insights from information aversion theory, we argue that the effect of performance information on engagement in coproduction dep…
Translating policy transparency into policy understanding and policy support
While transparency is viewed as a means of improving citizen understanding of public policies and eliciting policy support, there are few empirical assessments of these relationships. We address this gap in the literature using an experimental design. We predict that exposure to less detailed policy information improves policy understanding, and that this effect varies according to presentation format. Further, we predict that policy understandin…
Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens
Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors ar…
Years of Transparency Research
This article synthesizes the cross‐disciplinary literature on government transparency. It systematically reviews research addressing the topic of government transparency published between 1990 and 2015. The review uses 187 studies to address three questions: (1) What forms of transparency has the literature identified? (2) What outcomes does the literature attribute to transparency? and (3) How successful is transparency in achieving those goals?…
Translating policy transparency into policy understanding and policy support
While transparency is viewed as a means of improving citizen understanding of public policies and eliciting policy support, there are few empirical assessments of these relationships. We address this gap in the literature using an experimental design. We predict that exposure to less detailed policy information improves policy understanding, and that this effect varies according to presentation format. Further, we predict that policy understandin…
Altruism and vaccination intentions
Vaccine hesitancy has been on the rise throughout the past two decades, especially in high income countries where existing pro-vaccination public health communication strategies have proven ineffective. We argue that appealing to other-regarding preferences is one way of improving the effectiveness of public health communication strategies. To test this argument, we assess how vaccination intentions are influenced by the presence of people who ca…
Thanks, but No Thanks
Over the last decades, one of the most significant changes in the workplaces of government agencies around the world has been the introduction of telework. The relatively scant public administration research on this innovation and on its semantic or substantive variations such as telecommuting, home-work, remote work, and smart work has examined its effects on teleworkers and only recently on non-teleworkers. However, scholars have overlooked the…
Gendering the digital divide
Electronic government (e-gov), a means of providing online public services, has the potential to greatly benefit all members of society. However, its advantages are often out of the reach of citizens who are digitally excluded. Drawing on socioeconomic and demographic ICT survey data, researchers have explored the digital divide and have concluded that gender is an important determinant of inequality. If we are to provide e-gov services that are …
Only hearing what they want to hear
While performance information is often used to communicate the importance of public policies and stimulate civic engagement, we know little about the processes that connect the two. This study proposes a conceptual model that links performance information to a specific form of public engagement: coproduction. Drawing on insights from information aversion theory, we argue that the effect of performance information on engagement in coproduction dep…
The role of organizational capacity to foster digital transformation in local governments
Organizational capacity is required to explain what it takes for local governments to succeed in their digital transformation. However, the current literature largely ignores how local governments are adapting their organizational dynamics in order to change. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how local governments enhance their organizational capacity to achieve digital transformation. We conduct a comparative case study that …
One, none, and a hundred thousand” recipes for a robust response to turbulence
Turbulence appears to be a “new normal” in current societies, and public organizations need to learn how to react and adapt to it. Scholars agree on the need for robust actions to respond to turbulence. Through a qualitative comparative analysis performed on the vaccination campaigns of all 20 Italian regions, our paper explores whether different and alternative models of robustness may exist to cope with turbulence. Results shed light on three a…
The gendered digital turn
Women continue to occupy lesser positions of power at all political levels in Canada, although scholars still argue on the accessibility of municipal politics to women. However, no previous study has systematically examined the gender ratio of mayors across Canada, as well as their (active) use of social media platforms in a professional capacity. Using novel data, this study examines the variation in social media adoption and active use by gende…
Accounting for citizens when explaining open government effectiveness
Assessing Public Preferences and the Level of Transparency in Government Using an Exploratory Approach
Any information disclosed by governments should serve the purpose it is meant to fulfill. This is an underlying pillar of transparency. Our article assesses whether the information citizens consider to be most relevant for interaction with the authorities is actually disclosed. Our research was conducted on the population of the 117 Italian provincial capitals. A sample of 500 Italian citizens were interviewed with the purpose of understanding wh…
A critical analysis of the study of gender and technology in government
Research at the intersection of feminist organizational theory and techno-science scholarship notes the importance of gender in technology design, adoption, implementation, and use within organizations and how technology in the workplace shapes and is shaped by gender. While governments are committed to advancing gender equity in the workplace, feminist theory is rarely applied to the analysis of the use, adoption, and implementation of technolog…
How to organize in turbulence
Robustness has recently taken center stage as an emerging paradigm to cope with turbulence and “build back better” toward new normalcy. Existing literature has shown how robust governance, with its mix of flexible adaptation and proactive innovation, is well-suited to addressing turbulence. However, there remains a gap in understanding the empirical variations within robust governance arrangements. In this article, we address three questions: how…
Introduction to the special issue on digital government and gender
While the literature on the digital divide has widely addressed the digital gender gap, its potential implications for electronic government (e-government) / digital government research and practice have hardly been studied. In this Special Issue of Information Polity experts characterize the current state of understanding of the issues surrounding digital government and gender and present an agenda for future research. \nThis Special Issue prese…
Experimental evidence on the determinants of citizens' expectations toward public services
We conducted three randomized experiments to investigate whether and to what extent citizens' expectations toward waiting times for public service delivery are influenced by reference points, either in the form of social or numerical references. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, our results provide convergent evidence of reference dependence. Specifically, informing citizens that waiting times are longer (shorter) relative to a social…
The power of framing
Whistleblowing policies are seldom effective in inducing civil servants to report misconduct. While current literature focusses more upon the identification of the chief factors that prevent witnesses from reporting, it overlooks potentially effective strategies to stimulate active behavior. In particular, it neglects the framing and impact of information provision. According to the prospect theory, information that frames the consequences of non…
Assessing Public Preferences and the Level of Transparency in Government Using an Exploratory Approach
Any information disclosed by governments should serve the purpose it is meant to fulfill. This is an underlying pillar of transparency. Our article assesses whether the information citizens consider to be most relevant for interaction with the authorities is actually disclosed. Our research was conducted on the population of the 117 Italian provincial capitals. A sample of 500 Italian citizens were interviewed with the purpose of understanding wh…
Years of Transparency Research
This article synthesizes the cross‐disciplinary literature on government transparency. It systematically reviews research addressing the topic of government transparency published between 1990 and 2015. The review uses 187 studies to address three questions: (1) What forms of transparency has the literature identified? (2) What outcomes does the literature attribute to transparency? and (3) How successful is transparency in achieving those goals?…
Translating policy transparency into policy understanding and policy support
While transparency is viewed as a means of improving citizen understanding of public policies and eliciting policy support, there are few empirical assessments of these relationships. We address this gap in the literature using an experimental design. We predict that exposure to less detailed policy information improves policy understanding, and that this effect varies according to presentation format. Further, we predict that policy understandin…
Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens
Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors ar…
Accounting for citizens when explaining open government effectiveness
Only hearing what they want to hear
While performance information is often used to communicate the importance of public policies and stimulate civic engagement, we know little about the processes that connect the two. This study proposes a conceptual model that links performance information to a specific form of public engagement: coproduction. Drawing on insights from information aversion theory, we argue that the effect of performance information on engagement in coproduction dep…
Sustainable futures
Digital governance in Mongolia and Taiwan
The objective of this country report is to apply a gender lens to examine the development of digital governance in two democratic countries in the Asia-Pacific: Mongolia and Taiwan. By studying various contextual factors and presenting interpretations associated with gender and the process of digital transformation in these two countries, this research underscores the gender-based differences in ICT usage based on the available data from governme…
Gender difference in the continuance intention to e-file income tax returns in Pakistan
This paper investigates the continuous usage intention of an e-government service from the digital divide perspective, particularly the gender differences. To find out whether the gender difference exists, the case of income tax e-filing service of Pakistan was taken, and the data was collected by means of an online survey from citizens who have previously used tax e-filing service (N = 401). The collected data was analyzed using Welch’s t-test i…
Introduction to the special issue on digital government and gender
While the literature on the digital divide has widely addressed the digital gender gap, its potential implications for electronic government (e-government) / digital government research and practice have hardly been studied. In this Special Issue of Information Polity experts characterize the current state of understanding of the issues surrounding digital government and gender and present an agenda for future research. \nThis Special Issue prese…
Thanks, but No Thanks
Over the last decades, one of the most significant changes in the workplaces of government agencies around the world has been the introduction of telework. The relatively scant public administration research on this innovation and on its semantic or substantive variations such as telecommuting, home-work, remote work, and smart work has examined its effects on teleworkers and only recently on non-teleworkers. However, scholars have overlooked the…
A critical analysis of the study of gender and technology in government
Research at the intersection of feminist organizational theory and techno-science scholarship notes the importance of gender in technology design, adoption, implementation, and use within organizations and how technology in the workplace shapes and is shaped by gender. While governments are committed to advancing gender equity in the workplace, feminist theory is rarely applied to the analysis of the use, adoption, and implementation of technolog…
Gendering the digital divide
Electronic government (e-gov), a means of providing online public services, has the potential to greatly benefit all members of society. However, its advantages are often out of the reach of citizens who are digitally excluded. Drawing on socioeconomic and demographic ICT survey data, researchers have explored the digital divide and have concluded that gender is an important determinant of inequality. If we are to provide e-gov services that are …
The gendered digital turn
Women continue to occupy lesser positions of power at all political levels in Canada, although scholars still argue on the accessibility of municipal politics to women. However, no previous study has systematically examined the gender ratio of mayors across Canada, as well as their (active) use of social media platforms in a professional capacity. Using novel data, this study examines the variation in social media adoption and active use by gende…
The (Missing?) Role of Institutions in Behavioral Public Administration
Editor’s note. In this roundtable, the contributors discuss the role of institutions (or lack thereof) in behavioral public administration (BPA). In a multidisciplinary discourse, the contributors touch on the many tensions that exist between institutional and behavioral perspectives of public administration. This roundtable is intended to spark additional discourse on the role of institutions in how they parameterize behaviors within or how indi…
The role of organizational capacity to foster digital transformation in local governments
Organizational capacity is required to explain what it takes for local governments to succeed in their digital transformation. However, the current literature largely ignores how local governments are adapting their organizational dynamics in order to change. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how local governments enhance their organizational capacity to achieve digital transformation. We conduct a comparative case study that …
One, none, and a hundred thousand” recipes for a robust response to turbulence
Turbulence appears to be a “new normal” in current societies, and public organizations need to learn how to react and adapt to it. Scholars agree on the need for robust actions to respond to turbulence. Through a qualitative comparative analysis performed on the vaccination campaigns of all 20 Italian regions, our paper explores whether different and alternative models of robustness may exist to cope with turbulence. Results shed light on three a…
Altruism and vaccination intentions
Vaccine hesitancy has been on the rise throughout the past two decades, especially in high income countries where existing pro-vaccination public health communication strategies have proven ineffective. We argue that appealing to other-regarding preferences is one way of improving the effectiveness of public health communication strategies. To test this argument, we assess how vaccination intentions are influenced by the presence of people who ca…
A systematic literature review of city competitiveness
This article synthesizes the cross-disciplinary literature on city competitiveness published in the past three decades to bring attention to competitiveness as a key topic for public administration and local government performance. We systematically reviewed research regarding city competitiveness, its measurement, and its antecendents. Subsequently, to explore the link between local governments and competitiveness, we articulated multiple perspe…
Evaluating and extending public service logic – introduction to the special issue
This special issue of Public Management Review, Public Service Logic – Evaluation and Development, seeks both to evaluate the current body of Public Service Logic (PSL) knowledge and to further dev
Experimental evidence on the determinants of citizens' expectations toward public services
We conducted three randomized experiments to investigate whether and to what extent citizens' expectations toward waiting times for public service delivery are influenced by reference points, either in the form of social or numerical references. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, our results provide convergent evidence of reference dependence. Specifically, informing citizens that waiting times are longer (shorter) relative to a social…
The power of framing
Whistleblowing policies are seldom effective in inducing civil servants to report misconduct. While current literature focusses more upon the identification of the chief factors that prevent witnesses from reporting, it overlooks potentially effective strategies to stimulate active behavior. In particular, it neglects the framing and impact of information provision. According to the prospect theory, information that frames the consequences of non…
When rationality and pragmatism combine into robust models. The case of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Lombardy
Robustness has emerged as a paradigm for addressing turbulence through a pragmatic, decentralized and flexible model of action. Recent research, however, has indicated that even a model echoing more the characteristics of a rational rather than a pragmatist approach can be effective, thus presenting a puzzling scenario. This study aims to address this puzzle by examining the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the Italian region of Lombardy. Our fin…
How to organize in turbulence
Robustness has recently taken center stage as an emerging paradigm to cope with turbulence and “build back better” toward new normalcy. Existing literature has shown how robust governance, with its mix of flexible adaptation and proactive innovation, is well-suited to addressing turbulence. However, there remains a gap in understanding the empirical variations within robust governance arrangements. In this article, we address three questions: how…
Designing response networks in turbulent times
Despite agreement among crisis and emergency management scholars on the need to establish networks to address crises, there is no consensus on which network structures foster high-performance responses. Here, we fill empirical gaps in the literature through a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the COVID-19 vaccination networks activated by the 20 Italian Regions, demonstrating that there is no Holy-Grail structure that can ensure a high-performa…
Political science (21 works) · Business (17 works) · Public relations (16 works) · E-Government and Public Services (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Government (linguistics (9 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works)