Short-CV

Ines Mergel is Professor of Public Administration & Digital Governance at the University of Konstanz since 2016 and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (USA). Since 2023 she is Principal Investigator of the Centre for Human | Data | Society. She holds a professional degree of the University of Cooperative Education, a bachelor’s diploma in Business Administrations (thesis: Activity-Based Costing in Service Companies) and a master’s diploma in Business Economics (thesis: Incentive Reward Systems for Knowledge Management in Consulting Companies) from the University of Kassel. In 2005, she received a doctorate of Business Administration (thesis: The Influence of Multiplex Network Ties on the Adoption of eLearning Practices: A Social Network Analysis) from the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). She served as a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from 2002-2008 and was then appointed Assistant and later on Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs (with tenure) at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University (USA) (2008-2016). Professor Mergel currently serves as a Steering Committee Member of the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA), as well as Special Interest Group organizer (Agile and digital transformation of the public sector) and Member-at-Large on the board of directors of the International Research Society of Public Management. She also serves on the executive board of the National Centre for E-Government (Germany) and the supervisory board of the e-Governance Academy (Estonia). For her project “Teaching public service in the digital age” Professor Mergel was recently appointed a Schmidt Innovation Fellow. The open educational resource platform was awarded funding from Schmidt Futures, Bloomberg and the Ford Foundation. Ines Mergel has expert knowledge on digital and agile governance of public sector organizations. Her research currently focuses on organizational change and organizational design questions of digital service teams, motivational aspects, and the design of HR policies for attracting external IT talent, implementation and results of digital service projects, and new work practices, including agile or design thinking. She aims to understand how digital and agile leadership competencies need to be built up in order to be able to digitally transform the public sector. She is especially interested in how bureaucratic administrative routines can be changed in order to address large scale complex problems that society is facing during multiple crisis situations.

Research-related publications

• Mergel, I. (2022). Human Centricity in Digital Delivery: Enhancing Agile Governance. Report prepared for IBM - The Center for the Business of Government, Washington, D
• Mergel, I., Ganapati, S., & Whitford, A. B. (2021). Agile: A new way of governing. Public Administration Review, 81(1), 161-165. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13202
• Mergel, I., Edelmann, N., & Haug, N. (2019). Defining digital transformation: Results from expert interviews. Government information quarterly, 36(4), 101385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.06.002
• Mergel, I., Kleibrink, A., & Sörvik, J. (2018). Open data outcomes: US cities between product and process innovation. Government Information Quarterly, 35(4), 622-632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.09.004
• Mergel, I. (2016). Agile innovation management in government: A research agenda. Government Information Quarterly, 33(3), 516-523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2016.07.004
• Mergel, I. (2015). Open collaboration in the public sector: The case of social coding on GitHub. Government Information Quarterly, 32(4), 464-472. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2015.09.004
• Mergel, I. (2013). A framework for interpreting social media interactions in the public sector. Government information quarterly, 30(4), 327-334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2013.05.015
• Mergel, I. (2013). Social media adoption and resulting tactics in the US federal government. Government information quarterly, 30(2), 123-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.12.004
• Mergel, I., & Bretschneider, S. I. (2013). A three‐stage adoption process for social media use in government. Public administration review, 73(3), 390-400. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12021
• Mergel, I., & Desouza, K. C. (2013). Implementing open innovation in the public sector: The case of Challenge. gov. Public administration review, 73(6), 882-890. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12141
• Isett, K. R., Mergel, I. A., LeRoux, K., Mischen, P. A., & Rethemeyer, R. K. (2011). Networks in public administration scholarship: Understanding where we are and where we need to go. Journal of public administration research and theory, 21(suppl_1), i157-i173. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muq061