About Jan Boon

Jan Boon (dr.) is a postdoctoral researcher within the research groups Politics & Public Governance (PPG, Departement of Political Sciences) and Computational Linguistics & Psycholinguistics (CLiPS, Departement of Linguistics). He holds a doctoral degree in the social sciences (political sciences), a masters' degree in political communication (University of Antwerp) and a supplementary masters' degree in corporate communication (University of Ghent). In 2019 he was awarded a senior postdoc grant from the Flemish Research Council for his proposal “Reputation and Structural Reforms of Public Organizations: Explaining Temporal Dynamics”. In 2021 he received an additional postdoc grant from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) for his proposal “Breaking the Cycle: On the dynamics between reputation and innovation in government organizations”.

His research concerns (the interplay of) three themes:

1. Perceptions of the public sector, reputation and trust: how do citizens and stakeholders perceive the public sector? Which expectations do they hold, which values do they deem important, and how do they evaluate public sector performance on difference dimensions? Why do certain public policies and organizations have a better reputation, or evoke more trust, and how can such perceptions be managed?
2. Reforms, change and innovations in public organizations: what are the causes, processes and effects of reforms/change/innovations in the public sector? How can public organizations reap the benefits (flexibility, adaptation to environmental demands) of change, while avoiding potential disadvantages (stress and uncertainty)? How do they deal with the tension between conflicting demands related to adaptation and stability?
3. Collaboration and participation: how can we understand (successful) collaboration among public organizations, and between public organizations and societal actors (stakeholders, citizens,…)? What are the dynamics between collaboration, stakeholder participation and (a) perceptions of the public sector, reputation and trust; and (b) processual and structural change and innovations?

Want to know more? https://www.janboon.eu

Department

• Department of Political Science

Statute & functions

Bijzonder academisch personeel

• FWO postdoc 1st renewal