The impact of state governance structures on management and performance of public organizations: A study of higher education institutions

Legislative statutes are passed by political majorities which support structures that insulate the implementing agency from its political opponents over time. Political actors also respond to different constituencies. Depending on the broad or narrow base of these constituencies, actors favor different kinds of governance structures. We apply this theoretical framework to the question of whether the state governance structures of boards of higher education affect the way university managers allocate resources, develop sources of revenue, and promote research and undergraduate education. Over the past two decades state governments have given considerable attention to state governance issues, resulting in many universities operating in a more regulated setting today. This paper develops a classification of higher education structures and shows the effects of differences in these structures on university management and performance using a data set that covers the period from 1987 to 1998. The analysis suggests that, for most of the measures, productivity and resources are higher at universities with a statewide board that is more decentralized and has fewer regulatory powers. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

State university boards of trustees: A principal-agent perspective

This paper extends the economic theory of organizations by examining the structure of boards of trustees in public university settings. A major implication of the analysis is that the structure of the board of trustees reflects the costs to politicians of allowing internal agent shirking. Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis and indicates that a system method of governing versus individual board governance of universities is linked to the influence of educators in the political process.     

Top Management Turnover: The Role of Governing Board Structures

The convergence of performance accountability policies, a graying bureaucracy, and shorter executive tenures highlights the timeliness of investigating executive turnover. Prior public administration research has examined pull and push factors linked to these departures, but it has yet to fully explore the influence of governing board structures and political pressures that stem from such structures. Using data on 123 public four‐year research universities in the United States from 1993 to 2012, this article finds that governing board structures play a pivotal role in predicting the departure decisions of university presidents. While the size of the board increases the risk of departure, boards overseeing multiple institutions and boards with a faculty or student representative lower the risk of departure. Additional evidence suggests that both the share of gubernatorial and legislative appointees on the board and the party division of the legislature have a direct influence on departure.     

A typology of board design for highly effective monitoring in intergovernmental organizations under the United Nations system

The United Nations (UN) system comprises several intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that were established to contribute to the functioning of the overall transnational system of delivering global public goods. However, many IGOs under the UN system are criticized for their failure to accomplish their mandates. Research argues that IGO boards serve as a governance mechanism that should be designed in order to effectively perform the monitoring function to ensure fulfillment of IGO mandates. Thus, using an inductive fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this study explores 13 IGO boards under the UN system to identify the board designs that are associated with highly effective monitoring. Our findings reveal a board design typology reflecting the interplay of the level of organizational complexity and the extent of the distribution problem in IGOs. This research contributes to our understanding of IGO governance by underscoring the relationship between board designs and highly effective monitoring to help researchers and practitioners improve IGO performance.     

Does restricting choice in referenda enable governments to spend more?

If school boards represent the preferences of the median voter, referendums to approve school expenditures should not constrain school expenditures. If school boards would choose expenditures larger than the median voter’s preference, referendums that restrict voters to approving or disapproving a school board’s recommended expenditure level will result in expenditures larger than the median voter would prefer. However, Florida used a unique referendum system which guaranteed the median voter’s most preferred outcome. Using Florida education expenditures as a benchmark, the evidence suggests that spending was slightly higher in restricted choice referendum states than in Florida.     

Business Experts on Public Sector Boards: What Do They Contribute?

Although public management reforms around the world have given business experts an enhanced role in the governance of public sector organizations, the impact of this change is poorly understood. Drawing from the literature on board human capital as a theoretical framework and focusing on the case of hospital boards in the English National Health Service, this concern is addressed by investigating whether increasing the presence of individuals with business expertise has any significant relationship with organizational performance. The findings show that while business expertise appears to have no influence on service quality, it does have a positive effect on financial performance. However, this only applies to governing boards that are less experienced in terms of their collective tenure. The findings lend partial support to board capital theory but also show that in certain conditions generic business expertise can be a valuable asset for public sector organizations.     

高校本科生教育国际化模式探索

全球经济一体化,使得高等教育国际化成为教育发展的必然趋势。我国高等学校目前的国际化办学形式主要分为与国外高水平大学合作,本硕连读、联合办学等9种不同的形式。中国矿业大学在本科生教育国际化的进程中,基本形成了交互融合模式、“三明治”模式、链式对接模式、本硕连读模式、教学与学术渗透五种模式。在本科生教育国际化的实践过程中,总结出选择国外高水平大学进行合作,开展各种教育国际化模式等多种办学经验,对促进我国高校开展本科生教育国际化合作具有借鉴作用。     

TOWARDS WORLD-BEST PRACTICE IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Abstract: As Australia struggles to become technologically competitive and to raise its productivity to international standards, several reports have suggested that such productivity depends critically on the existence of an appropriately structured and trained engineering workforce. As a result, engineering education at all levels has come under close scrutiny and rapid change in the period 1987–92. The scrutiny has come from governments, industry and from the engineering profession itself. Some of the changes are consequent to wider administrative changes in education; others are inspired by industry training needs; still others have been brought about by the engineering education community in order to attract more high-quality students. The binary system of higher education has given way to a unified system. The state-controlled TAFE colleges are being brought under national standards. In engineering education a new three-year BTech degree is being promoted to fill the gap between two-year associate diplomas from TAFE colleges and four-year professional degrees from the universities, because of a serious shortage of para-professional engineers in Australian industry. Recent reviews and reports on engineering education have called for rapid expansion at all levels and a greater variety of courses. The use of competency standards is spreading from the trade levels into the professions, including engineering, threatening some traditional concepts of university education. The government has funded three Advanced Engineering Centres, modelled on institutes in other countries. Quality in higher education is under discussion, bringing the concepts of total quality management and world-best practice to teaching in the universities. Continuing professional education is being rapidly expanded by the Institution of Engineers, Australia. Many more women are now entering the engineering profession, attracted by the humanisation of engineering courses. Environmental engineering and combined degree courses are proving very popular. The level of technological awareness is being improved by bringing engineering students to assist in classes in primary and secondary schools. Cooperative education programs between universities and industry are proving attractive and effective.     

The Effect of the Reform of Canadian State-Owned Enterprises on Major Corporate Governance Mechanisms

Corporate governance is nowadays one of the most discussed topics by academics, practitioners and regulators. Most of the discussion is targeted at publicly held corporations. The present research deals with the issue of governance in the public sector and more specifically in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). We investigate the effect of the reform of Canadian SOEs on the characteristics of boards and board committees.
Our results seem to confirm the presence of significant adjustments in board characteristics following two major events in the reform: commercialisation and privatisation. In both cases, boards have on average evolved towards a set of structures and mechanisms that have the potential to improve independence and governance. This study sheds new lights on the process of adjusting corporate governance mechanisms to new strategies and to new environments.     

Doing Things Right: Effectiveness in Local Nonprofit Organizations, A Panel Study

This study investigates whether nonprofit organizational effectiveness is judged consistently by differing constituencies and whether changes in board effectiveness and overall organizational effectiveness (judged by differing constituencies) are the result of changes in the use of practices regarded as the "right way" to manage. The results show that different constituencies judged the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations differently, at both periods; that a change in the use of correct board practices over time, controlling for board effectiveness at time 1, was not related to board effectiveness at time 2; and that a change in the use of correct management practices, controlling for organizational effectiveness at time 1, was not related to organizational effectiveness at time 2, except for board members. Implications of the results are considered. Claims about best practices for nonprofit boards and organizations must be evaluated more critically. Finding the right fit among practices is more important than doing things the "right way.     

立法促进大学知识产业化的作用透视——发达国家的实践与经验借鉴

20世纪80年代以来,国际高等教育政策发生了显著变化,高等教育学术性得到加强的同时市场化程度加快、知识产业化凸显,大学正成为产业科技创新的合作伙伴,在经济发展中发挥着越来越重要的作用.大学知识产业化一方面是大学自身发展的要求,同时也是国家政策驱力所致.产业化过程中各国都采取了相应的立法或政策措施鼓励大学科研走出象牙塔,与产业密切结合.美国政府通过科技立法制定灵活的创新政策激励大学知识产业化;英国政府积极推动多元化的产学合作政策方案,建立产学间交流渠道.鼓励大学成为地方经济发展的动力;日本政府一贯致力于产学合作各项法律制度的完善,为产学合作发展建立良好的法制环境.发达国家制定的促进大学知识产业化的相关立法取得了良好绩效,为我国大学知识产业化专门立法提供可资借鉴的经验.     

加强学科在高校研究生培养中的作用

随着研究生招生规模的扩大,出现了研究生培养质量下降的现象,本文针对目前我国高校研究生扩招的现状,分析了目前高校研究培养存在的主要问题,并从学科发展趋势及特性出发,分析了学科在研究生培养中的作用,认为加强学科对导师和研究生的培养、管理和监督,有利于保证和提高研究生培养的水平和质量。     

Appointments to boards and committees via lottery,a pathway to fairness and diversity

• Public appointments for committees or boards can be controversial due to cronyism or pandering to demands of noisy or powerful interest groups. One relatively unexplored method for selecting committee or board members is random selection which has advantages beyond interrupting cronyism. This paper canvasses the strengths and weaknesses of an unusual selection method and makes a case for the use of a lottery as a robust process that will lend legitimacy and credibility to committee or board governance.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working with boards: The experiences of Australian managers in performing arts organisations

Corporate governance has long been a feature of the arts and cultural sector and is a requirement for all cultural organisations seeking public funding, regardless of their size. However, despite the ubiquity of corporate governance in the arts and cultural sector, there is little research addressing the experiences of managers. This study examines the experiences of managers in performing arts organisations in working with their boards, based on data collected across 20 performing arts organisations in Australia using a stakeholder salience lens. Our results indicate that while the board is seen as a key organisational stakeholder, managers have a range of concerns about the governance role of boards, and in particular their limited effectiveness on the dimensions of legitimacy and urgency. We find that arts managers often must wrestle with competing agendas around creative autonomy and the low‐risk appetite of their management boards. Our findings highlight the need to re‐align, particularly in small‐ and medium‐sized organisations, the organisational needs of arts managers with corporate governance arrangements, without detracting from creative endeavours.     

Good Governance Practices in Professional Associations for Public Employees: Evidence of a Public Service Ethos?

Professional associations and occupational societies play an important role in educating and credentialing public employees. Very little research has attempted to connect, empirically, a public service ethos to the professional memberships that public employees carry. Nowhere is that potential influence more likely to be seen than in the governing boards of these nonprofit associations, whose behavior is subject to strong normative and mimetic influences as a result of the public's expectations for good governance. This article uses a large generalizable sample of boards of directors, controlling for many organizational characteristics known to influence board behavior, to compare the governance practices of professional and trade associations serving public employees with those serving the private sector. The results suggest that governance practices are shaped by many forces but that public employees do indeed carry their public values into the associations they join, and these values, in turn, are positively related to board behavior.     

Higher Education and Democratic Public Life

ABSTRACT

It is time to reclaim the egalitarian democratic purposes of public universities. Public universities and colleges play a crucial political and public role in a democratic society. Yet much of the higher education literature looks at higher education through an economic framework. This paper argues that a healthy and broadly accessible higher education system serves the democratic public interest in a democratic polity such as the United States. It concludes by arguing that public universities could serve the public interest more effectively with an expansive view of who the “public” is and of their role as anchor institutions for democracy.     

Organizational Characteristics and Funding Environments: A Study of a Population of United Way–Affiliated Nonprofits

This study examines a population of United Way–affiliated nonprofit organizations in Massachusetts (1) to test hypotheses generated by previous research on relationships between government funding and specific nonprofit organizational characteristics, (2) to compare differences in organizational characteristics between nonprofits receiving higher percentages of revenues from the United Way and from government sources, and (3) to explore associations between government funding and United Way and underexamined characteristics, including use of commercial income and racial diversity of organizational membership. The study supports previous research on the relationship between government funding and nonprofit characteristics, with one notable exception—less administrative complexity was associated with higher percentages of government funding. The study also finds differences in organizational characteristics between nonprofits with higher proportions of government funding and those with higher percentages of United Way funding, including organization size, number of board members, administrative complexity, use of volunteers, and the racial diversity of boards, staff, and volunteers.     

Independent regulatory agencies in Turkey: are they really autonomous?

This article examines the autonomy of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in Turkey. It explores, first, the different factors that have led to the creation of IRAs and second, the legislative basis of their formal or de jure autonomy. Thereafter, the article assesses the extent to which this formal autonomy is really put in practice and how it is perceived by board members. The enquiry was conducted through a survey comprising interviews and a questionnaire applied to the same. It concludes that although formal autonomy is satisfactorily provided for by law, government tends to limit this autonomy through secondary legislation. Consequently, there are some constraints on the actual use of autonomy. Concerning de facto autonomy, survey findings show that boards are exposed to external and internal pressures and interference in their deliberations. Thus, the assumption that ‘the greater the autonomy the more efficient the management’ is questioned. The main sources of pressure on board members are from the regulated sectors themselves. These findings have an important bearing on democracy and the political–administrative interface, as it is confronted by market forces. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

落实科学发展观推进高校共青团工作

共青团工作在高校教育事业中处于基础性战略性的重要地位，本文结合科学发展观的内涵，阐述了新形势下高校共青团工作必须转化理念，树立服务意识，加强大学生的校园文化建设与社会实践，提高共青团干部的素质修养，不断丰富科学发展观的具体内容，树立共青团事业全面、协调、可持续的科学发展观，进一步推动高校共青团工作的发展。     

The Future of Leadership in Public Universities: Is Shared Leadership the Answer?

Leadership of public universities has come under fire—from scandals, from funding, from students, from every direction. Top‐down leadership of institutions of higher education has been described as a “disease.” Shared governance—a mechanism of faculty representation in the leadership and decision‐making processes—a seeming alternative, has been described as “a recipe for paralysis.” In this article, the authors proffer shared leadership as a potential elixir for leading public institutions of higher learning, unleashing creative potential, focusing on pressing strategic imperatives, and enabling sustainable systems that leverage true talent to maximum effect. It is time to move beyond the moribund myth of top‐down heroic leadership and beyond the bureaucratic, political quagmire of the current state of affairs in shared governance. Is shared leadership the answer?