Bureaucratic corruption in africa: causes,consequences and remedies

One of the critical policy issues in African management today is bureaucratic corruption. This problem has in some countries reached such proportions as to frustrate good policy intentions and to parayze management operations. The study examines the extent of bureaucratic corruption in selected African countries, analyzes their potential causes. Critically asesses their consequences on the pattern of political. socio-economic and administrative development, and reviews the effectivenes of remedies proposed or actually tried.     

Functional Reforms in Italian Employment Policies: Institutional Impact at the Macro and Micro Level

This article explores the institutional impact of Italy’s administrative decentralization of employment policies since the mid-1990s, by focusing on the Lombardy region. These reforms have produced significant shifts in terms of transfer of responsibilities from the national to the regional level, liberalization, and participation of private actors. By relying on two case studies—the regional public agency in charge of coordination of employment policies and a private provider of employment services—the reforms’ implications in terms of reorganization and stakeholder participation are explored. The results point to a required shift in terms of strategy, organization, and operations for both institutions.     

The impact of high‐quality workplace relationships in public organizations

Research has long found that high‐quality workplace relationships have a beneficial impact on employees and organizations. Although these studies have developed elaborate models to examine high‐quality workplace relationships, none were found to explore the association between high‐quality workplace relationships and job stress/exhaustion, commitment, and social impact. To fill this void in the literature, models were developed to explain the expected association that these employee attitudes have with one another. These models were then tested on full‐time, public employees. Several important findings emerged. First, high‐quality workplace relationships were positively related to social impact. Next, social impact was found to positively mediate the relationship between high‐quality workplace relationships and commitment. Finally, social impact was found to positively mediate the relationship between high‐quality workplace relationships and job stress/exhaustion. This latter finding was contrary to expectations.     

Ethiopian federalism: autonomy versus control in the Somali region

This study examines the relationship between Ethiopia's federal and regional authorities since the Tigray led regime came to power in 1991. The redivision of Ethiopia into ethnic regions was aimed to effect two changes: to abolish certain ethnic domination of the state; and to enable various communities to govern their local affairs. Using material from the Somali Region, this article evaluates whether ethnic‐based regional authorities have sufficient autonomy from the centre to be accountable to local populations. The ability of local people to elect their leaders is central to undoing past ethnic injustices. Although communities have gained from the new order, however, the federal ruling party tightly controls regional political authorities. Federal domination of regional governance is partly the result of the ineptness of local elite. This arrangement creates formal ethnic regions without significantly altering power relations in Ethiopia. Consequently, the spirit of the 1991 change is lost as local communities lack leeway while a new ethnic group reigns supreme at the federal level.     

Fertility and the household's economic status: A natural experiment using Indian micro data

We model fertility as endogenous to the family's economic status because poor households choose to have large families in the absence of adequate social insurance. Because of a strong son preference in India, having two girls first can proxy an exogenous increase in fertility, and is therefore a good instrument for fertility in determining poverty of rural households. The 1993–1994 Indian Quinquennial Survey data shows that even though poverty rates are comparable, 74 per cent of two-girl families have a third child compared to 63 per cent of other families. Fertility significantly positively affects poverty when treated as exogenous, but vanishes once endogenised. These results are robust to omitting states with skewed sex ratios and to proxying economic status by expenditures.     

Control versus consent in long-term care case management programs: implications for public policy

Case management programs for long-term care include the dual public policy goals of providing access to services and ensuring the efficient and effective application of public funds. We will use a paradigm for social policy development that proposes a conflict between control and consent motives of social policy makers. Illustrations of the limitations and positive elements of control versus consent as applied to case management will be presented.

We will discuss how the tension between these approaches can be used to develop policy that balances the goals of access and cost-effectiveness.     

Self-efficacy and substance use outcomes for women in single gender versus mixed-gender group treatment

OBJECTIVE: This study examined baseline self-efficacy as a moderator of outcomes comparing women receiving either the Women's Recovery Group (WRG), a new manualized group treatment for substance use disorders combining single-gender group composition and women-focused content, or Group Drug Counseling (GDC), an empirically supported mixed-gender group treatment. METHODS: To understand the relationship of baseline scores of abstinence self-efficacy measured by the Drug-Taking Confidence Questionnaire (DTCQ) to outcome, we included the interaction of group by phase by continuous DTCQ scores in the outcome analyses. Women were split into groups of high versus low abstinence self-efficacy based on the clinical cutoff score of 80 on DTCQ. RESULTS: We found a significant 3-way interaction effect of treatment condition, time, and baseline DTCQ scores on drinking days and days of any substance use per month. Women in WRG had greater reduction in substance use from baseline to post-treatment than women in GDC, and women in WRG with low self-efficacy had the best outcomes overall. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that women with low self-efficacy may have enhanced treatment outcomes in a single-gender substance use treatment group.     

The effectiveness of rural versus urban nonprofit organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country with high natural resources, but it has suffered from decades of civil wars and social turmoil, being heavily aid-dependent. In the DRC, several Nonprofit Organisations (NPOs) are major players in fighting poverty and enhancing welfare. This research aims to analyse the effectiveness of small NPOs in improving poor peoples’ lives through health, education, and economic activities. Two NPOs working in the DRC, one in a rural and the other in an urban area, are compared by researching the aid sites and surveying 201 households (aid beneficiaries). Our case observations and the survey results facilitate analysing the mission accomplishment, effectiveness, and accountability of the NPOs although we admit that the DRC conditions make exact measurements difficult. Multivariate analyses are used to study the differences in aid impacts. There are significant differences in the beneficiaries’ perception of the NPO effectiveness in improving health while no significant differences in education impact were found. This is probably because both case NPOs have succeeded in getting a large proportion of the children of their area registered in the education centres created by the NPOs. Differences were observed in the accountability and reporting style of the NPOs.     

Migration trends in Central Eurasia: Politics versus economics

The post-Soviet ethnic migration wave was quickly followed by the contraction of population territorial mobility. The growing role of socioeconomic factors in defining the character and intensity of migration flows, including the expansion of temporary, labor and undocumented migration, has been especially pronounced.These changes indicate the evolving relationship between migration and conflicts developing in Central Eurasia. Initially as an indicator of ethnic tensions and discrimination of minorities, migration is becoming a mechanism of market transition, providing for the economic survival of population under crisis conditions. With the depletion of the number of ethnic Russian migrants, the influx of ethnic aliens, moving primarily from Central Asia and the Transcaucasus to Russia, is increasing in importance.The present paper discusses the impact of new migration flows on the economies, welfare mechanisms, financial systems, labor markets, and societies of Central Eurasia. Special attention is given to the governmental response to migration phenomenon—from labor migration criminalization to attempts to stimulate the flow of specific migrant groups.