The Effect of More Demanding Public Services Quality Standards on the Organization of Service Providers

ABSTRACT

This research aims to investigate the effects that more demanding quality standards have on the organization of public service providers. A hypothetical research model showing the relationship between the quality of public service and the organization of public service providers was tested through a survey carried out with managers of water companies located in Italy. Results show that the new regulations impact on the organization in terms of resources and the performance management system, while the degree of centralization (i.e., the hierarchy of authority and degree of participation in decision-making) is not significantly related to the more demanding quality standards.     

What Causes Unethical Behavior? A Meta‐Analysis to Set an Agenda for Public Administration Research

This article uses meta‐analysis to synthesize 137 experiments in 73 articles on the causes of unethical behavior. Results show that exposure to in‐group members who misbehave or to others who benefit from unethical actions, greed, egocentrism, self‐justification, exposure to incremental dishonesty, loss aversion, challenging performance goals, or time pressure increase unethical behavior. In contrast, monitoring of employees, moral reminders, and individuals’ willingness to maintain a positive self‐view decrease unethical conduct. Findings on the effect of self‐control depletion on unethical behavior are mixed. Results also present subgroup analyses and several measures of study heterogeneity and likelihood of publication bias. The implications are of interest to both scholars and practitioners. The article concludes by discussing which of the factors analyzed should gain prominence in public administration research and uncovering several unexplored causes of unethical behavior.     

Overreaching In Registered Land Law

Beneficial interests under a trust were not intended to be overriding interests under section 70(1)(g) of the Land Registration Act 1925. The position was altered by Williams & Glyn's Bank Ltd v Boland , which determined that an interest under a trust for sale would bind a purchaser if the beneficiary were in actual occupation. The decision raised the question whether such interests could be overreached once the beneficiary was in occupation of the trust property. City of London Building Society v Flegg held that the relevant beneficial interest had been overreached. Both decisions assume that overreaching in registered conveyancing takes effect as it does in unregistered land. Yet there is considerable evidence that the Land Registration Act contains its own overreaching machinery. The House of Lords applied the wrong overreaching provisions in Boland and Flegg and there is no legal basis on which to recognise that trust interests can override a subsequent disposition under section 70(1)(g).     

The sacred may not be the same as the religious: Angela Carter's ‘Impressions: The Wrightsman Magdalene’ and ‘Black Venus’

John Everett Millais's painting The Bridesmaid (1851) depicts a young woman, on the evening of a wedding, attempting to conjure up a vision of her own future husband. This work has been linked to a number of others by Millais dealing with marriage, and has been seen as an articulation of 'matrimonial ideology'. Brown sets the picture in the context of the widespread, though clandestine, practice of fortune-telling, through which women in particular attempted to foreknow, and thus control, the central event of their lives. One of the most frequent questions asked of fortune-tellers was 'whom shall I marry?', the question the girl in the painting has herself asked. However, drawing on recent critical work on 'proposal composition' pictures, Bown argues that men, too, faced great uncertainty on the brink of marriage, and that artists repeatedly explored this uncertainty through attempts to represent a complex female subjectivity in their works. In The Bridesmaid Millais (who was thinking about marriage in the early 1850s) depicts a woman telling her fortune, but he also seeks to represent her as full of thoughts and feelings. The artist, and the viewer of the painting, then, engages in an act of divination in which he tries to discover the mysterious secrets of female subjectivity.     

Let's Argue about Migration: advancing a right(s) discourse via communicative opportunities

The emerging global governance of migration is dominated by two discourses which shape policy approaches: 1) migration management and 2) the migration–development nexus. With large numbers of labour migrants being marginalised, migrant rights organisations have formed global alliances to argue for the centrality of a third discourse, the rights-based approach to migration. The question is how to inject this into the global debate which has sidelined migrant rights issues. Despite having hardly any bargaining power and restricted space for direct access vis-à-vis global governing institutions, migrant rights organisations are employing a number of strategies to overcome this marginalisation. We analyse these efforts by drawing on social movement studies and International Relations research on communicative action. Empirically this article draws on observations made during two major global fora: the negotiations in connection with the new Convention on ‘Decent Work for Domestic Workers’ at the International Labour Conference (ilc) and civil society participation in the Global Forum on Migration and Development (gfmd).