Enhancing responsiveness and consistency: Comparing the collective use of discretion and discretionary room at inspectorates in England and the Netherlands

Discretion used to be considered a feature of individuals, but growing literature shows that it has collective features as well. To develop an understanding of the individual and cooperative work of inspectors in using discretion and the discretionary room granted to them, we compared two inspectorates: the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England and the Joint Inspectorate for Youth (JIY) in the Netherlands. Our analysis reveals that inspectors engage with colleagues, managers, and stakeholders to include other perspectives, gain mandate, and broaden their repertoire. At the CQC, inspectors use their discretion collectively; on their own initiative, they involve others in balancing and interpreting rules to reach judgments. At the JIY, teamwork is central and regulatory teams are granted collective discretionary room. We argue that collective work permits both responsiveness and consistency. In studying the judgments of inspectors and other street‐level bureaucrats, it is vital to look at collective work and how it combines consistency and responsiveness.     

Better the Devil: A Response to Gus O'Donnell's ‘Better Government’

Gus O'Donnell's vision of ‘better government’ is presented as a critique of party politics, most specifically the short‐termism, selfishness and incompetence of elected politicians. There are few people better placed than O'Donnell to form such judgements. However, O'Donnell goes much further, by calling into question the legitimacy of the democratic system which gives rise to party politics. His article outlines several mechanisms by which the exercise of power by elected ministers could be constrained by a managerialist accountability framework, without addressing the question of who determines the appropriate framework for ministerial performance. The House of Commons is condemned as ‘too politicised’. O'Donnell also offers substantial praise for apparently ‘depoliticised’ policy‐making processes, overlooking the inherently political constitution of such processes. In doing so, O'Donnell claims to be challenging party politics on behalf of voters/taxpayers, but instead seeks to dismantle any possibility of the public expressing a collective will via the ballot box that might challenge the immutability of the market economy.     

Does Disclosure of Performance Information Influence Street‐level Bureaucrats’ Enforcement Style?

Governments use different regulatory instruments to ensure that businesses owners or “inspectees” comply with rules and regulations. One tool that is increasingly applied is disclosing inspectees’ performance information to other stakeholders. Disclosing performance information has consequences for street‐level bureaucrats because it increases the visibility of their day‐to‐day work. Using a survey (n = 507) among Dutch inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, this article shows that the disclosure of performance information has an impact on enforcement style at the street level. Findings show that perceived disclosed performance information positively enhances all three dimensions of street‐level bureaucrats’ enforcement style (legal, facilitation, and accommodation). This effect is strongest for facilitation and accommodation and weakest for the legal style. Perceived resistance by inspectees partly explains this effect. Contrary to expectations, more perceived disclosure does not result in more but in less perceived resistance of inspectees by street‐level bureaucrats.     

Managing in the Regulatory Thicket: Regulation Legitimacy and Expertise

Although the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This article investigates how the understanding of and attitudes toward government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for‐profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy—views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates—positively affect service quality. Subgroup analysis suggests that managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for‐profit organizations but not in public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise—better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for‐profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process.     

Mandated justice: The potential promise and possible pitfalls of mandating procedural justice in the workplace

This study addresses the question of whether and how legal authorities ought to intervene in work organizations in order to most effectively regulate the behavior of employees. This question is examined empirically, by exploring whether the association between the level of fairness employees experience in procedures regarding pay and benefits, and their adherence to workplace rules, differs depending upon whether those procedures are enacted by companies voluntarily or mandated by law. This question was addressed using both a survey of a representative sample of employees in Israel, as well as their reactions to an experimental vignette. The results generally suggest that evaluations of the procedural justice of performance appraisal hearings more strongly influenced judgments of overall workplace fairness, perceptions of management legitimacy, and employee rule‐adherence behavior when employees believed fairer workplace procedures were required by law.     

Using Data to Manage for Performance at Public Universities

As performance‐oriented reforms have become more commonplace in recent years, questions about the factors that drive organizational adoption and use of performance systems for internal management are of central importance. This article uses data taken from a survey of presidents at public universities to advance our understanding about the use of data and performance management strategies within public organizations. The central research question is, why do public administrators choose to employ performance management strategies? In addition, the author also explores variation in the extent to which public universities use performance management strategies for three tasks that are central to public management: (1) strategic planning, (2) evaluating employees, and (3) interacting with external stakeholders. Findings indicate that public universities often use performance data to help manage, but many of the causal factors that lead to data use vary across management functions.     

Leeds on trial: soap opera,performativity and the racialization of sports-related violence

ABSTRACT

Several recent court cases involving the ‘off-field’ activities of professional sportsmen have revealed the ways in which the public performance, media representation and regulation of ‘crime’ is played out in the public imagination. Blackshaw and Crabbe explore how notions of ‘race’ are performatively staged and consumed through the spectacles of celebrity, and discuss the significance of the CCTV evidence used in such cases. In doing so they highlight the ways in which ‘race’ operates discursively to undermine the position of the racialized Other.     

Performance Management Routines That Work? An Early Assessment of the GPRA Modernization Act

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 provided a well‐studied framework for U.S. federal performance management initiatives. In the aftermath of the update of GPRA in 2010 with the GPRA Modernization Act, the authors offer the first systematic scholarly assessment of the new legislation. Managerial use of performance data was an explicit goal of the Modernization Act, an objective that eluded prior federal reforms. The Modernization Act established a new series of performance routines to encourage performance information use. The analysis shows that as federal managers experience those routines, they are more likely to report using performance data to make decisions. Specifically, routines centered on the pursuit of cross‐agency priority goals, the prioritization of a small number of agency goals, and data‐driven reviews are all associated with higher rates of performance information use. The authors also find that managers in better‐run data‐driven reviews report greater use of performance data.     

Coordinating intermediaries: The prospects and limitations of professional associations in decentralized regulation

A key question in understanding regulation through independent intermediaries is the extent to which intermediary actions are either coordinated, thereby supporting consistency in regulatory application, or uncoordinated, leading to monitoring and enforcement disparities. This paper examines professional associations as one mechanism by which policy action may be coordinated in decentralized arrangements. Professional associations provide means and venues for members to interact, offer training and education that develops shared understanding of policy directives, are collective representation bodies for professional members, and may play an important role in establishing and enforcing collective standards for appropriate behavior. We examine these functions in the decentralized administration of United States organic food certification, focusing on two relevant professional associations – the Accredited Certifiers Association and the International Organic Inspectors Association. Drawing on multiple methods, including interviews and survey data, our findings indicate that professional organic certification associations provide valuable education and training, disseminate information, and facilitate knowledge sharing among administrative entities and with regulatory authorities. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects and limitations of professional associations for third‐party regulation, and how accounting for professional association functions can improve our understanding of regulatory intermediary coordination and conduct.     

Democratic Accountability and Retrospective Voting: A Laboratory Experiment

Understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior. I conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral selection or if they instead focus on electoral sanctioning. If voters are forward‐looking but uncertain about politicians’ unobservable characteristics, then it is rational to focus on selection. But doing so undermines democratic accountability because selection renders sanctioning an empty threat. In contrast to rational choice predictions, the experimental results indicate a strong behavioral tendency to use a retrospective voting rule. Additional experiments support the interpretation that retrospective voting is a simple heuristic that voters use to cope with a cognitively difficult inference and decision problem and, in addition, suggest that voters have a preference for accountability. The results pose a challenge for theories of electoral selection and voter learning and suggest new interpretations of empirical studies of economic and retrospective voting.     

浅论“双师型”教师队伍建设途径——以新建本科院校旅游管理专业为例

旅游管理专业的特殊性要求建立—支理论知识过硬、实践经验丰富的“双师型”教师队伍.新建本科院校囿于自身发展,关于该类教师队伍的建设存在诸多问题.通过观念转变、构建平台、动态管理、重视激励等途径,完善新建本科院校旅游管理专业“双师型”教师队伍的建设,提高应用型人才培养质量.     

Tackling the Performance Regime Paradox: A Problem-Solving Approach Engages Professional Goal-Based Learning

Public performance regimes are bedeviled by a paradox: they must engage the specialized knowledge of professionals who often perceive those very regimes as a threat to their autonomy. The authors use a mixed-method analysis of performance management in Danish hospitals, with separate data for managers and frontline professionals, to offer two insights into this challenge. First, the study shows that managerial behavior—in the form of performance information use—matters to the way frontline professionals engage in goal-based learning. Second, it shows that the way managers use performance data matters. When managers use data in ways that reinforce the perception of performance management as an externally imposed tool of control, professionals withdraw effort. However, when managers use data in ways that solve organizational problems, professionals engage in goal-based learning. The threat to professional values that performance regimes pose can therefore be mitigated by managers using data in ways that complements those values.     

The Impact of Sure Start

The first report from the national Sure Start evaluation team concludes that to date not only has the Sure Start programme not been a success, but for certain groups of disadvantaged families it has led to a worse outcome. The cost to date has been £3 billion.
This is simply the latest in a series of spectacular policy failures: for example, the Child Support Agency, family tax credits, truancy reduction, lack of literacy amongst many children, reductions in access to top universities from state schools.
Each has its own reasons for failure, but there are now so many examples in so many diverse areas that something more fundamental is going on. The problem is the increasingly complicated nature of the interventions of the social democratic state. These increase rather than reduce the probability of failure. Government still has an important role. But it should be as simple as possible.     

Innovation,voice, and hierarchy in the public sector: Evidence from Ghana's civil service

Research on innovation in government often focuses on ideas introduced by senior leaders or managers, but ideas from public servants themselves are an important and underexplored channel for improving performance in government bureaucracies. We provide new evidence on the potential for bottom‐up work process innovation, using data from 744 individual and team innovation plans and 51 qualitative interviews in Ghana's civil service. In contrast to common negative stereotypes of developing country bureaucrats, most officials do have meaningful ideas for improving performance. However, the overwhelming constraint to voicing these ideas is hostility by supervisors to new ideas from their subordinates. We argue that this anecdotally common yet understudied behavior is consistent with theories of psychological attachment to hierarchy rather than alternative theories rooted in material, structural, or cultural resistance to employee voice and innovation. We discuss implications for bottom‐up work process innovation in government and interventions to promote it.     

Instability of collective decisions? Testing for cyclical majorities

The issues of cyclical majorities and instability of collective choices have been in the fore-front in the discussion of social choice mechanisms. Cycling, lack of equilibria, and so called chaos theorems have been prevalent in the public choice literature. Whether cycling actually occurs in processes that are decided by majority rule has been a long-standing question. However, cycling has not been made quantifiable nor has it been clear how one would determine empirically whether majorities are cyclical. In this paper, cycling has been given an empirical meaning. This paper provides a method to test for cyclical majorities and applies it to decisions made in the US Congress. The test results indicate stability and the presence of persistent winners and losers in Congress.     

Serving many masters: Public accountability in private policy implementation

In recent decades, the introduction of market principles has transformed public service delivery into a hybrid. However, little is known about how these changes are reflected in the attitudes of private implementing agents: The hybridization literature neglects individuals, and street‐level bureaucracy research has disregarded hybridization. This article extends Hupe and Hill's ( 2007 ) accountability regimes framework to introduce the market as an additional accountability regime alongside state, profession, and society. Using a configurational approach, the article explores how public and private food safety inspectors in Switzerland perceive the multiple norms for behavior stemming from their environment. Results suggest that the plural accountabilities of for‐profit street‐level bureaucrats can increase the dilemmas involved in their work. Under certain circumstances, for‐profit street‐level bureaucrats have particular difficulties reconciling rule pressure with market incentives and client demands. The extended accountability regimes framework fruitfully captures such dilemmas and helps identify suitable governance responses.     

Post‐Mao new poetry in the light of deconstruction

Post‐Mao Chinese new poetry may still be highly controversial in terms of its poetic experiments and the undecidablity of its position in literary history. However, its attempts to destabilise previous concepts and meanings of Chinese language have undoubtedly made a tremendous impact upon Chinese poetry, and indeed contemporary Chinese culture. In so far as the challenges to the stability of meaning are concerned, the poetic experiments of the new poets offer themselves as practical instances which in a way could be said to parallel deconstruction theory in the postmodern West This paper looks at the poetry of the Obscure poets and Third Generation poets from the perspective of the critique of conceptuality as advanced by Jacques Derrida. It examines specifically the intertextual relations which we can discover between a body of postmodern theory and the poetic practices of post‐Mao poets in contemporary China, and in so doing offers an insight into the reading of Chinese new poetry. The paper argues that such a perspective is far from spurious since a certain instability of meaning is at the heart of both movements. Of particular interest for the question of the relative instability introduced by the poetry of the Obscure and Third Generation poets is Derrida's central infra structural tool ‘Differance’. Differance and such other infrastructual devices as metaphoricity, the critique of structure, supplementarity, iterability and pharmakon will be used to support the main argument of the paper.     

Public‐private partnerships: consultation,cooperation and collusion

In late 2002, public‐private partnerships (PPP) rose to the attention of the New Zealand public and gained media attention due to what became known as the ‘Armstrong affair’. This paper provides an overview of the Armstrong affair and of the issues engendered by the affair for the formation of policy in relation to PPP. The most fundamental of these issues was the correct relationship between the public and private sectors. The Armstrong case illustrates the way in which the demarcation between the two sectors must be maintained—and seen to be maintained—in the conduct of public affairs. If it is not, the accusation may rightly be levelled that the processes of consultation and cooperation have crossed over into collusion. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

How can interactions among interdependent structures,institutions, and agents inform financial stability? What we have still to learn from global financial crisis

How national financial systems can avoid costly banking crises is a persistent and intriguing question for institutional scholars and policymakers worldwide. In this context, although considerable research has recently focused on structural, institutional, and agency-level factors in explaining the global financial crisis, it mostly offered each of these explanatory factors in isolation, thus leaving interactions among these interrelated factors incomplete. Building on a deviant case study on Australian exceptionalism examined in a comparative perspective, this paper introduces an integrative framework that views financial stability as a function of these interactions that reinforce prudent financial behavior. In doing so, it offers an insight into the previous research on institutional complementarity and how to guard against similar crises in the future. It suggests that financial stability (instability) is more likely when interactions among structural and institutional complementarities and agents reinforce conservative (opportunistic) banking.