The human side of managing organizations at a time of change: the russian perspective

Theories concerning social developments are considered to be only partially universal. To a degree, they are culture-specific. Nevertheless, experience and theoretical knowledge gained from exploring social phenomena in one society can provide valuable insights for the analysis of a different formation. This paper outlines the major changes that make up the present-day Russian reality, and discusses the resulting situation in the area of the management of Russian public organizations. Certain possible strategies of revising the old practices are formulated in the light of existing American theories of management and administration. The paper analyzes two alternative policies for improving the performance of Russian public organizations through restructuring the general mode of organizing and through enhanced supervisor-employee relations.     

Membership in voluntary organizations and democratic performance: European post-Communist countries in comparative perspective

The article challenges the hypothesis that there is cohabitation of civic engagement and democratic institutions and practices. While valid at a general level, the relationship is not confirmed once it is scrutinized thoroughly and heterogeneous categories are disaggregated. For the European post-Communist cases, the pattern of the relationship between the regime type and the propensity to associate closely resembles the one in Latin mature democracies and non-authoritarian countries, provided that voluntary associations are chosen as measurements of vitality of social capital and robustness of civil society. A possible consequence of this provocative finding would be re-evaluating the well-established concepts in social sciences.     

Suicidology: a victimology perspective

In this brief essay, I have tried to show that the discipline of victimology, when applied to suicidal behavior, suggests new questions for researchers to address, including survivor surveys to identify who the survivors really are and what is the role of the survivor in the suicide-survivor interpersonal dynamic.     

Decision-making in organizations: the new paradigm

Decision-making is ever present in all forms of organized human activity. Decisions range from the simple to the complex within large organizations, whether in the nonprofit, public or private sectors. Throughout human history, man has sought to control the results of his decisions, to quantify them, to increase their predictability and to reduce their risks. Three current areas of decision making: risk assessment, chaos theory and strategic management are analyzed in this article. Their interconnectedness and potential as a “new paradigm” is its focus.     

Organization design and effectiveness: a study of anti-crime organizations in Hong Kong

There are various methods of designing organizations to adjust to the needs of the circumstances, clients and administrators. The literature on organizations highlighted various aspects as it developed and the emphasis shifted over time. Different approaches were tried in two cases in Hong Kong where organizations were designed to deal with specific problems of corruption and organized crime. While the social approach appeared to be more sensitive to the needs of the target group, the institutional approach emerged as a more effective option. In designing organizations, it is necessary to consider the social and psychological aspects, but the nature of structure, stability of environment and regularity of procedures have a profound impact on the effectiveness.     

Innovations in performance measurement systems: a comparative perspective

The common emphasis in recent performance measurement systems is that they focus on achieving results by changing the incentives for managers and organizational cultures across the entire public sector or some segment of it. This is done by introducing quasi-market mechanisms and incentives similar to those found in the private sector. This paper examines some of the theoretical and other influences that have shaped the design of performance measurement systems across cultures.     

Public organizations: A value-conflict view

That values are at the core of public administration is a notion that has gained popularity and credibility in recent years. From this perspective, public administrators have become inextricably involved in both adjusting to and promoting institutionalized values. Certain values shaping public organizations may, however, be distinctive in quality and magnitude from those of private organizations. Our purpose in this essay is to suggest criteria for identifying the distinctive values of public organizations, to propose and define three such values, to briefly examine the dynamics of change engendered by value conflicts and dilemmas, and to speculate on the theoretical and practical implications of our proposed values framework. In the process an inchoate perspective is outlined in which values occupy the centerpiece of inquiry in public administration.     

Barnard and morality in organizations

Since Chester I. Barnard wrote The Functions of the Executive in 1938 numerous authors have cited his many ideas about organizational and individual behavior. Barnard believed that an individual's willingness to cooperate and function within an organization related to his or her “zone of indifference,” and the amount of authority the individual was willing to grant to a superior. Barnard's ideas concerning the zone of indifference are related in this article to “Stages of Moral Development” as measured by protocols developed by Lawrence Kohlberg.     

Minorities and the public service: a future perspective

This paper analyzes the future prospects of blacks and other minorities in the public service. It examines studies on race/role expectations of minority administrators, tokenism and marginality to discern trends in interethnic relations. It also discusses future demographic projections and their implications for majority/minority relations. Finally, the essay explains why public service careers are particularly significant for blacks and other minorities.     

The Impact of New Public Management Reforms on Public Servants' Ethics: Towards a Theory

Recent years have witnessed an increasing concern about the impact of New Public Management (NPM) reforms on public servants' ethics. The academic literature about this topic is still characterized by considerable confusion and the article proposes a falsifiable theory as a way out of this. Specifically, it demonstrates that, when all the claims in the literature are translated into the proposed conceptual framework, they amount to an integrated set of propositions (that is, a theory) about the causal relationship between organizational processes (as changed by NPM-reforms) and public servants' ethics. Such an integrated theory is possible because, although the normative positions taken by the authors are clearly rival ones, their empirical claims are complementary. With the diverse claims thus integrated into one theory, the article provides a basis for empirical research and for the NPM-ethics debate to proceed in a more explicit and systematic way.     

Tracing experiences of NHS change in England: a process philosophy perspective

For over three decades public services have been the subject of unprecedented change. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the English National Health Service (NHS) where despite the effort expended on change there is growing evidence that such restructuring is largely ineffective. Drawing on a study of culture modification in the English NHS, this paper utilizes Chia's (1999) account of the metaphysics of processual change to consider why attempts to restructure public services are not always successful. The paper contributes to our understanding of public management reform by considering how an ontology of becoming, and a loosening of control, might alter how we approach reforming. Further, the paper offers a theoretical justification for the use of standard research methods for novel processual ends. The paper concludes with a reflection on the implications of a processual perspective for the future management, organization and study of change in public administration.     

Informating policy and administration a comparative perspective on terrorism

The cliche that ‘one man's terroirist is another man' freedom fighter’ represents the major dilemma of anti-terrorism policymakers and administrators. The conceptual confusion is further complicated by the ideological orientations and policy interests of the observers. The comparative study of terrorism, however, has provided a conceptual underpinning and does provide the tools for sorting out the biases. This article compares the six principal models of political terrorism and suggests that each in fact describes a distinct form of political violence depending upon the perspective of the observer. Each of the forms of terrorism, moreover, may require a unique set of remedies. Using the widely publicized TWA bijacking during the summer of 1985 as an example, the analysis examines the differences in the American, Israeli, and Lebanese government perspectives and how those differences influenced policymaking.     

Government regulations and FDI: a historical perspective of mexico

This article analyzes the development of foreign investment regulations and their impact on FDI flows in Mexico. The study covers the evolution of sectoral and aggregate investment patterns from the independence period to the 1994 Peso crisis and its aftermath. The pattern followed by FDI in Mexico has paralleled the transformation of the Mexican economy itself, focusing initially on the extractive and agricultural sectors, then on manufacturing activities, and recently on the services sector. Mexico has continuously reformed and modernized its regulatory system in order to adapt to internal political changes and changes in the world economic environment. Recent economic reforms and liberalization of FDI regulations have had a major positive impact on capital inflows, but more needs to be done, especially in the area of financial services in order to achieve a higher level of economic efficiency and to prevent financial breakdowns like the one experienced in 1994.     

Looking toward 2000, and beyond: Some developmental tendencies in organizations

Based on our combined readings of partially overlapping literatures, and spiced by our consulting experience and instructional work with employees at all levels, this essay identifies 14 developmental tendencies that seem to have a reasonable chance of becoming dominant features of our exploring organizational landscapes. The effort can be labelled “future scan,” with the focal length varying from tendencies that are already observable in numbers of cases to those that seem noteworthy despite their rarity.     

The Russian proto-parties and the national republics: Integrative organizations in a disintegrating world?

This article examines the nomination choices of the major Russian political parties for the single-member districts in the ethnic republics for the December 1993 and December 1995 State Duma elections. Using western-based theories on party behavior in multi-ethnic societies, this article tests several hypotheses relating to the factors which affect where parties were active and examines the different recruitment strategies of individual parties. In general, it was found that the Russian proto-parties tended to be most active in urban and predominantly Russian areas of the republics. However, there were differences between the parties, with notable parties more likely to recruit non-Russian elites to their banners as opposed to program parties. Moreover, when comparing across time, the party which most increased its recruitment of non-Russian elites from 1993 to 1995 was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF).