Ines Mergel

Professor Dr. Ines Mergel is Full Professor of Public Administration at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. From 2008 to 2016, Professor Mergel served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, in Syracuse, NY.  She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Program of Networked Governance, and at the National Center for Digital Government. Professor Mergel teaches courses on innovation management and especially new technology management in the public sector. Her research interest focuses on the adoption and affordance of new technologies in the public sector.

A native of Germany, Professor Mergel received a BA and MBA equivalent in business economics from the University of Kassel, Germany. She received a Doctor of Business Administration in information management from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and spent six years as pre- and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she conducted research on public managers’ informal social networks and their use of technology to share knowledge.

Professor Mergel’s work has been published in, among others, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Public Affairs Education, International Public Management Journal and Government Information Quarterly. She serves as Associate Editor of Government Information Quarterly.

Her books, Social Media in the Public Sector: A Guide to Participation, Transparency and Collaboration in the Networked World and Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide: Designing and Implementing Strategies and Policies, were published in 2012 with Jossey-Bass/Wiley. The IBM Center has published four previous reports by Dr. Mergel: Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government, Using Wikis in Government: A Guide for Public Managers, A Manager’s Guide to Assessing the Impact of Government Social Media Interactions, and The Social Intranet: Insights on Managing and Sharing Knowledge Internally.