Operating Performance of Privatized Firms in Europe: Organizational and Environmental Factors

This article analyzes the role of organizational changes and contextual factors in explaining the operating performance of European privatized firms. We find that smaller and non-regulated firms and companies privatized by public offer perform better than bigger, regulated, and privatized by private sale companies. Also, privatized Eastern European companies are less profitable than privatized companies from other European countries. Our findings suggest that organizational changes are more difficult to introduce in privatizations by private sale and in bigger and regulated companies. They also suggest that less developed institutional contexts limit performance improvements after privatizations.     

The Politics of Subversion in Development Practice: An Exploration of Microfinance in Nepal and Vietnam

This paper considers the ways in which beneficiaries of microfinance programmes in two Asian countries routinely transgress programme protocols and regulations, and fail to conform to the entrepreneurial subjectivities the programmes seek to promote. It aims to develop an interpretive framework for these practices. Specifically, we take up Abu-Lughod's injunction to ‘use resistance as a diagnostic of power’ in order to explore the political rationalities and governmental technologies of microfinance, as well as the cultural ideologies and material conditions in particular locales. We then consider the difficult question of political agency by drawing on prevailing theories of resistance to develop a typology that distinguishes among three overlapping kinds of transgressive practices. The objective ultimately is to explore how this interpretive framework might contribute to imagining more politically engaged and responsive models of development, as well as to critiquing the market-oriented foundation of existing models.     

Productivity growth of East Asia economies' manufacturing: A decomposition analysis

Applying a stochastic production frontier to sector-level data within manufacturing, this paper examines total factor productivity (TFP) growth for seven East Asian economies during 1963–98, using both single country and cross-country regressions. The analysis focuses on the trend in technological progress (TP) and technical efficiency change (TEC), and the role of productivity change in economic growth. The empirical results reveal that although input factor accumulation is still the main source for East Asian economies' growth, TFP growth is accounting for an increasing and important proportion of output growth, among which the improved TEC plays a crucial role in productivity growth.     

Wage Differentials in Brazil: Theory and Evidence

The investigation of wage determination and wage differentials in developing countries has concentrated on the effects of human capital and different sources of segmentation associated with institutional arrangements and structural characteristics on earnings. In this article, we use micro-data for Brazil for the 1980s and 1990s to test several competitive theories, and models with segmentation explained by efficiency wages. We find that unmeasured abilities and efficiency wage models seem to play a role in wage determination, while compensating differentials and transitory difference theories were found to be irrelevant to wages formation.     

Authoritarian Abdication: Bargaining Power and the Role of Firms in Migrant Welfare

Throughout the Arabian Gulf, the immigration law known as the kafala formally delegates to firms and other “sponsors” control over migrants’ mobility, housing, and general welfare. These states have abdicated almost any responsibility over migrants, giving firms nearly unchecked power over their workers’ daily lives. In this paper, I consider the welfare implications of this system and explore the conditions under which migrants can extract concessions from firms. Drawing on a nationally representative survey from Qatar, I show that migrant satisfaction, workplace difficulties, and overall quality of life varies widely across camps and firms. In explaining this variation, I argue that welfare crucially depends on an individual’s bargaining power. Migrants with a contract or credible exit options hold greater bargaining power, which strongly associates with improved perceptions of welfare. All told, contracts and exit options appear to provide even the most vulnerable workers a means of protection within authoritarian states.     

Deconstructing invisibility: race and politics of visual culture in Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss race relations and power-building in Brazil. It is well known that the Iberian colonizers developed special ways of imposing their supremacy, dissimulating the skin color standards to provoke some type of beliefs about shade stratification among African descendents, indigenous and mixed-race people. For the first time in South America there are deconstructive projects of that colonial paradigm still alive and strongly embedded in the media landscape. However, new identity politics and attitudes have been emerging amidst this old social cognition. This paper will discuss some speculative thoughts and power-building scenarios on new representations and struggles derived from these lived forms that are emerging in the new racial formations in Latin America. The question is: what will nation-building in the midst of this changing imagery be like? This paper proposes that a civic pedagogy is the only answer to rendering this phenomenon visible.     

Outward Orientation,Investment and Finance Constraints: A Study of Indian Firms

We investigate the presence of finance constraints on firms' investment behaviour using Indian manufacturing as a case study. This question becomes particularly interesting in the post-1991 period when substantial market oriented reforms were undertaken. We argue that in the Indian institutional context (especially, the underdeveloped state of bankruptcy laws and restrictive exit procedures) outward orientation rather than size is the relevant criteria for distinguishing firms that may be 'finance-constrained' from those that are not. Using panel data for 718 Indian manufacturing firms for the period 1993-98, we find that exporting firms are less constrained in financial markets than firms which sell primarily to domestic markets.     

MNE Affiliation,Firm Size and Exports Revisited: A Study of Information Technology Firms in India

In this study we argue that the export performance of affiliates of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing countries is determined differently from that of licensees of foreign firms or of domestic firms. Our empirical results for the information technology sector in India show that exports of MNE affiliates are greater when they have larger foreign equity stakes that bring more tacit knowledge transfer and complementary FDI advantages and when they import more explicit technology from the purchase of licences. Standard export determinants such as firm size and capital intensity do not matter for MNE affiliates, but they do for licensees and domestic firms.     

Promising Performance: The Overestimation and Underestimation of Performance Targets

This study examines goal setting in the federally funded, state-implemented Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). Specifically, using federally determined criteria that states are supposed to use to set expected performance targets, I model the predicted performance targets and compare them against the observed performance targets. The purpose is to examine the determinants of performance target overestimation and underestimation in the WAP. The findings suggest that, where credible commitment to achieving performance targets is important (i.e., when grantees want to show top performance to attract grant money and federal partners), grantee governments are more likely to underestimate goals. However, where the aspirational nature of performance targets is more important than the credible commitment of achieving them (i.e., in an election year or partisan congruence with federal government), grantee governments are more likely to overestimate goals.     

Wage determination in Brazil: The growth of union bargaining power and informal employment

This article examines wage determination in Brazilian manufacturing during the 1980s and early 1990s. It presents evidence to show that the reduction in state regulation of collective bargaining has led to the development of a system of wage determination which is increasingly characterised by rent sharing and insider trade union bargaining power. Real wages appear increasingly inflexible with respect to movements in open unemployment, with a large informal sector disciplining formal sector wage bargaining and cushioning the impact of broader labour market conditions. An important consequence of this is that the employment costs of a successful counter‐inflationary strategy may be very severe.     

Partial Privatisation in Local Services Delivery: An Empirical Analysis of the Choice of Mixed Firms

Mixed public–private firms are increasingly used in several European countries. This paper makes use of survey data from Spanish municipalities to examine the motivations of local governments for engaging in partial privatisation of local service delivery of water distribution and solid waste collection. The empirical analysis indicates that mixed firms emerge as a pragmatic middle way between purely public and purely private production. Indeed, local governments make use of mixed firms when cost considerations, financial constraints and private interests exert contradictory pressures. Political and ideological factors play no significant role in that decision.     

The Politics of Environmental Licensing: Energy Projects of the Past and Future in Brazil

How do societies make complex choices about concrete energy alternatives? Can citizens play effective roles in balancing risks and benefits? This article proposes that energy choices can be best understood as the result of a balance of power between state-society coalitions that aim to either block or enable the project. Environmental licensing and financing decisions are two decision points where the coalitions face off—and where energy projects go forward or are stopped. The article demonstrates that environmental licensing has become an unexpectedly stringent process in Brazil, with both formal opportunities and historic practices increasing the influence of blocking coalitions. Yet case studies of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam and massive new petroleum reserves in the “pre-salt” region show that blocking coalitions emerge inconsistently in the same institutional context, illustrating the hazards of relying on public mobilization for addressing certain kinds of risk situations. An “anticipatory state” may also pre-empt mobilization by proactively responding to the concerns blocking coalitions are likely to raise.     

The Formal Divide: Customary Rights and the Allocation of Credit to Agriculture in Tanzania

It is generally held that one mechanism to enable inclusive growth in Tanzania is enabling farmers to access credit to raise productivity and incomes. The formalisation of property rights in Tanzania is being undertaken by a multiplicity of actors at great expense to donors, individuals and the government. While there have been a variety of different justifications for allocating Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCROs) to farmers in Tanzania, perhaps the most prominent argument is that it will enable farmers to finally overcome the divide between ‘informal’ customary rights and the formal banking sector. CCROs would provide the collateral that would induce banks to lend money to small-scale farmers. As part of a six-year investigation in Manyara, Mbeya and Dodoma regions, our research team evaluated the impact of formalisation on farmers’ access to credit. The paper will present the results while pointing to the continuing institutional and market imperfections that perpetuate the formal divide.     

Fighting crime and maintaining order: shared worldviews of civilian and military elites in Brazil and Mexico

Abstract

Domestic internal security missions have become a centrepiece of Brazil and Mexico’s counter-narcotic efforts. Relying on a set of interviews, this article addresses narratives of elites engaged in the decision-making process and implementation of military operations to counter drug trafficking crimes in Rio de Janeiro and Tijuana. In spite of different levels of drug trafficking organisation and international ramification, this article points out the existence of shared narratives of growing insecurity and criminal strength in Brazil and Mexico, justifying state military reaction against a perceived national security threat. The article thus suggests the relevance of civil–military elites’ perception in defining public policies’ instruments and, ultimately, in upholding the militarisation of security in democratic regimes.     

The Struggle to Be Seen: Social Movements and the Public Sphere in Brazil

This paper analyzes how community movement activity in three popular neighborhoods in Belém, Brazil, shaped the dynamics of contention in the public sphere. Popular social forces, elite actors, and the state mutually influence each other across three moments of public interaction: it clarifying popular discourse, it the struggle to be seen, and routine politics. The article reverses the usual picture in movement research, which emphasizes movements as organizational outcomes to be explained, and instead builds on a body of research that explores how movements can contribute to broader processes of political change.     

Retaking the Middle Passage: glimpses of a modern African diaspora in Brazil

Abstract

Enticed by the various economic, academic and social promises offered by this new ‘metropole’, Africans have begun to form a new diaspora in Brazil, the country with the largest concentration of Afro descendentes outside of Africa. This paper aims to explore, through interviews, the various motivations and experiences of these Africans, as well as to examine the official attitude of the Brazilian authorities and that of the society at large to the new residents of this modern African diaspora.     

Performance Budgeting in American States: A Framework of Integrating Performance with Budgeting

The past 20 years have witnessed ongoing endeavors researching the factors that influence the implementation of performance budgeting. While various factors have been identified, the effort to build frameworks is still lacking. This research proposes a framework to study the nature of relationships among various political, economic, legal, and organizational factors with performance budgeting, as evidenced in US state governments. We found that the presence and the characteristics of the legal foundation, managing for performance, shared responsibilities with the legislature, and capacity building are the most important factors. The environmental factors, however, are not statistically significant.     

The Paradox of Small Hydropower: Local Government and Environmental Governance in China

Small Hydropower is regarded by the Chinese state as a method for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection in rural areas. This paper finds that local government officials develop an ‘environmentally bundled economic interests’ approach that simultaneously fulfills the central state’s new political mission and local economic development demand. The small hydropower plants however have paradoxically become the destroyer of the environment as local government at different levels develop the plants in an un-coordinated manner. We use the growth of small hydropower in Yunnan province as an exemplar to show the new tendency and problems of China’s environmental governance.     

Small Countries,Big Performers: In Search of Shared Strategic Public Sector HRM Practices in Successful Small Countries

This article compares strategic public sector HRM practices between 10 small countries that have consistently shown extraordinary economic, social, and governance performance. The fact that these small countries, which are traditionally considered to be disadvantaged, have become benchmarks of good government suggests they have uniquely maximized and leveraged their key resource: people. In search of novel lessons, we assess through secondary data how their public sectors have organized and institutionalized four key HRM activities: 1) selection, 2) appraisal, 3) training, and 4) compensation, and whether they engage in strategic, centralized efforts to architect and “bundle” these activities. Our exploratory case study findings show that these high performing countries employ various integrated efforts to attract the best and brightest into their public sectors, and train and reward them well, although they differ in terms of their centralization dynamics. We conclude our article with seven propositions for future research and implications for emerging small countries.