Dialogue and the Administrator-Mediator

Abstract

Conflict resolution is a widespread challenge in organizational life. Many common sense ideas about conflict fail to take into account communication behavior in a psychosocial context. Instead, they focus on “moves” and established techniques as the way to solve problems. This article presents a deeper conceptualization of conflict, mediation, and peacemaking that focuses upon psychosocial and existential issues embedded in both conflict and peacemaking. The central theme is that a host of human developmental variables interfere with “authentic dialogue.” These are the key for constructive and lasting dispute resolution.     

Terrorism and piracy: A legal view

Abstract

Terrorist attacks on persons or property on the high seas or in the newly designated “exclusive economic zones” bear analogy closer to the traditional international law of “piracy” than most observers suspect. In traditional practice “private ends” in the usual sense was not an essential element of the offense; the label and its legal results were attached to unrecognized belligerents too. The latest codifications of the international law relating to piracy, principally those deriving from the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas, are patently defective. A new formulation is proposed, with a commentary that, among other things, points out how international criminal law and universal jurisdiction can be coordinated with the generally accepted international law of armed conflict to clarify what is currently a chaotic legal situation.     

Federal set-asides policy and minority business contracting: understanding the adarand decision

In Adarand Constructors v. Pena ⁽¹⁾, the Supreme Court ruled that federal affirmative action preference programs must undergo the “strict scrutiny” standard. A program subject to strict scrutiny is one that cannot pass muster under the Constitution's “equal protection” mandate unless there is a “compelling government interest” in its objectives and the program is “narrowly tailored” to meet the objectives. This paper reviews the Adarand decision and discusses the implications of the decision for minority business federal contracting.     

“I Teach Them Correct Principles and They Govern Themselves”: The Leadership Genius of the Mormon Prophet Abstract

Abstract

In an age characterized by “strong-man” or “leader-centered” leadership styles, Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, set himself apart by leadership behaviors that centered in the conviction that the world of human interaction is governed by interpersonal and moral laws in just the same sense that the physical world is governed by the laws of nature. If one could identify these correct or “fixed principles,” and live in harmony with them, one would thereby gain leadership power and influence. From this belief grew his leadership dictum, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” Specifically, we note Smith's emphasis on integrity as a foundation for leadership interaction, both in truth-telling and in living in harmony with the correct principles one knows. In addition, Smith underscored the importance of unleashing the creative talent of followers by trusting them with sizeable responsibilities (empowerment, in today's terms), in demonstrating love for followers, and in having the courage to think and act independently of mainstream thought and practice. His chief concerns in selecting a leadership team included his focus on character, building an organizational structure which would institutionalize over time the principles he taught, and then motivating followers in pursuit of challenging goals.     

“They cut my son’s head,legs and hands before me”: pre- and post-terror experiences among returnee victims of Boko Haram in Orlu,Imo State

ABSTRACT

This research note offers first-hand accounts of the plight of “non-indigenes” who became victims of Boko Haram terrorism in the North, and their resettlement back in their “homeland” in Orlu (Imo State). As “strangers” in various towns of the North, they were victimized by Boko Haram and had to develop various strategies to survive. Many of them, however, returned to their “homeland” only to become victims of new forms of social exclusion, as “strangers in their own land.”     

From Promiscuity to Living Together to Making the Decision to Break Up or Make a Lasting Commitment

Abstract

Although public administration was “born” and “reared” as a child of politics and constitutional democracy, the coherence of its central purposes later eroded into disparate fragments in a set of “promiscuous” relationships. But now the field has become accustomed to a casual mode in which a loose collection of sub-fields and competing worldviews “live together.” This invites leaving behind our intellectual origins and easy flirting with passing trends and alternative partners. Even while maintaining multiple external ties, the field should now seek to advance to an “adult” form of lasting commitment to a reaffirmed set of core values.     

Social Responsibility in the Concept of the Social Enterprise as a Cognitive System

Abstract

The new concept of social responsibility is strongly linked to the idea of the social enterprise as a living system, that is, a system capable of regenerating itself by producing “knowledge” and “trust” resources. Nevertheless, these resources can only spring from a tight relationship with the reference environment in which the enterprise operates. This paper aims at making some first considerations on the relationship between social responsibility and the environment, and upon how the environment may develop in symbiosis with the “living company.”     

Out with the Old and … In with the Old? A Critical Review of the Financial War on Terrorism on the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to critically consider the effectiveness of the “Financial War on Terrorism” on the funding streams of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). The article begins by identifying that the origins of the “Financial War on Terrorism” can be found in the international efforts to tackle money laundering. It then moves on to consider if the “Financial War on Terrorism” is able to tackle the funding streams of ISIL. The article concludes that the “Financial War on Terrorism” is no longer fit for the purpose to tackle the funding streams of ISIL.     

Public contracting,policy preferences and minority business enterprises

About three years ago a Special Issue of the International Journal of Public Administration focused on the topic “Government Set-Asides, Minority Business Development, and Publi Contracting.”^(l) Much of the discussion in the issue addressed race conscious government set-aside programs in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. ⁽²⁾ The decision declared unconstitutional a local government minority business set-aside provision designed to help minority business enterprises (MBEs) obtain government contracts. At the time, the decision was applicable only to state and local governmental jurisdictions.⁽³⁾ Government set-asides involve the practice of providing minority contractors and subcontracting a certain percentage of a public jurisdiction's contract dollars.

In 1995 the Supreme Court in Adarand v. Pena ⁽⁴⁾ extended the Croson ruling to include set-aside programs in federal agencies. This Special Issues examines and discusses the Adarand decision and the developments that have followed. The first article by Mitchell F. Rice, “Federal Set-Asides Policy and Minority Business Contracting: Understanding the Adarand Decision,” reviews the Adarand decision and discusses the implications of the decision for minority business development. The next article by Audrey L. Mathews and Mitchell F. Rice, “Adarand v. Pena: Turning Challenges Into Opportunities,” uses a case study of two public preference programs to suggest how Adarand requirements may be successfully utilized to maintain set-aside preference programs.

The third article by Shelton Rhodes, “Mirmative Action Review ‘Report’ to the Presidents: Implications of Military Affirmative Actions Programs to Current and New Millennium Affirmative Action Programs,” reviews the Affirmative Action Review: Report to the President which was ordered by President Clinton soon after the Adarand decision. Rhodes considers the implications of the possible applicability of the successes of affirmative action and equal opportunity in the military, which is highlighted in the Report, to other public and private organizations. The final article by Wilbur C., Rich, “Presidents and Minority Set-Aside Policy: Race, Gender and Small Opportunities,” analyzes the impact of presidential leadership on minority set-asides policy and shows how politicians use set-asides to facilitate exchanges and cooperation with the business elites.     

The Determinants of Collective Coproduction: The Case of Secondary Schools in Russia

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on parents’ participation in their children’s education via self-organizing through non-profit organizations (NPOs). The aim of this article is to uncover the factors which have an impact on Russian parenting organizations participating in collective coproduction in schooling. Quantitative analysis revealed three groups of explanatory variables: a) the “economic” variables, namely GRP per capita and poverty rate; b) a “high status” of a school; and c) variables capturing the “federal district effect” on the probability of collective coproduction. Results of the quantitative analysis highlight the significant discrepancies in regional conditions for emerging NPOs in coproduction in schooling.     

Social Policy in Hard Times: Crisis-Coping Strategies in Europe from 1976 to 2013

ABSTRACT

Scholarly contributions linking welfare state and crisis management literature still lack a consistent conceptualization of the central matter of interest. To remedy this shortcoming, this article provides a classification of four potential crisis-coping strategies and analyzes the policy outputs of 11 European countries from 1976 to 2013 on the basis of an innovative dataset. The analysis shows that strong deviations from the status quo ante are the rule rather than the exception in times of economic hardship. Furthermore, it reveals a clear shift from the crisis-coping strategy of “Social Protectionism” over “Muddling Through” and “Welfare State Restructuring” to “Austerity” over time.     

Come,Let Us Pray! or,Modern Public Administration Has Failed

Abstract

By turning inwards and not using our collective expertise to become advocate “Cassandras” and “Jeremiahs,” who voice strongly and collectively that our society is in trouble in both the short and long run, our field of public administration has failed in its overall mission and has lost faith with the early public administrationists who were action-oriented rather than ivory-tower-oriented and who still managed to do a fair amount of publishing.     

Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

SEEKING TALENT AT THE VOTING BOOTH: ELECTIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF CAMPAIGNING IN THE LATE QING AND EARLY REPUBLIC

Abstract

Early twentieth-century Chinese governments experimented with competitive elections for legislative office. In the hundred years since these elections, historians and others have argued over whether they are best understood as “failures” for producing weak, easily manipulated government or as “successes” that heralded the potential for Chinese democracy. An examination of print media discourse from the time of these elections, however, reveals a profound discomfort with voting that was independent of, and prior to, the seating of any elected government. In particular, the repeated condemnation of election “campaigning” pointed to a series of philosophical and intellectual problems presented by elections as a form of selection. By analyzing complaints about “campaigning” as a discourse with a particular resonance within the political culture of the late Qing and early Republic, I push beyond considerations of “success” or “failure” to analyze the tensions between expectations for, and the actuality of, early twentieth-century elections.     

"A Dime Store of Words": Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press

Abstract

The essay posits the question of the end of May Fourth as a properly political sequence. If we consider May Fourth as a political movement, asking how it ends implies asking what kind of political subjects and political organizations were active then and ceased to be active at a certain point in time. Asking when and how the May Fourth movement ended implies, therefore, asking what ended. The essay analyzes a series of statements and actions signaling the “end” or the “defeat” of May Fourth in order to question whether there were collective practices, locations, and categories proper to the May Fourth period and how they got exhausted. Two elements appear to be crucial: the organizational structure of the xuehui and the category of “student.”     

Building the Capacity of the Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: Challenges of Theory and Practice

Abstract

As voluntary and community organizations in the UK (VCOs) expand their role in the provision of public services, they are under increasing pressure from governmental funders to improve their management and organizational systems - to “build their capacity.” This paper considers the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the idea of “capacity building.” It also looks at the challenges for VCOs of meeting the capacity building agenda while simultaneously retaining organizational distinctiveness and independence. Action research is proposed as a means to meet the challenges.     

Online as the New Frontline: Affect,Gender, and ISIS-Take-Down on Social Media

ABSTRACT

Using a dataset of more than 80 accounts during 2015, this article explores the gendered ways in which self-proclaiming Twitter Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) supporters construct community around “suspension.” The article argues that suspension is an integral event in the online lives of ISIS supporters, which is reproduced in online identities. The highly gendered roles of ISIS males and females frame responses to suspension, enforcing norms that benefit the group: the shaming of men into battle and policing of women into modesty. Both male and female members of “Wilayat Twitter” regard online as a frontline, with suspension an act of war against the “baqiya family.” The findings have implications for broader repressive measures against ISIS online.     

Is the shining path the “New Khmer rouge”?

This article assesses the claim that Peru's Shining Path insurgency is the “new Khmer Rouge,” a reincarnation of the brutal communist movement responsible for the death of more than one million Cambodians during the 1975–1979 “Democratic Kampuchea” era. Although Shining Path is unlikely to seize power in Peru the analogy is still worth evaluating, given its prominence in public debates over the nature of the insurgency. On the basis of Foreign Broadcast Information Service reports, party statements, and other primary and secondary sources, two major characteristics of these organizations are compared: ideology and prerevolution behavior in their respective “liberated zones.” While acknowledging that the Shining Path and the Khmer Rouge share a number of important features, the article concludes that a Shining Path regime would be less extreme than Democratic Kampuchea, and that it is an overstatement to call the insurgency the new Khmer Rouge.     

PLACING CHINA IN THE COLONIAL WORLD ORDER: TRAVELOGUES IN THE CHENBAO FUKAN, 1921–1926

Abstract

Highlighting four themes in travelogues in an influential daily newspaper supplement in the 1920s, this article argues that Chinese travelers to the West and Japan at that time had mixed and conflicting impulses. Their observations of and reflections upon what they saw and experienced helped form and inform Chinese discourses of the time to construct or confirm, or sometimes destabilize, such notions as “the Chinese nation,” “national character,” “colonized people,” “civilization,” and “progress.” The discourse exhibited a Chinese internalization of the mega-narrative on modernity and Western superiority, even though alternative views were also voiced at times. What these travelogues signified was a Chinese subjectivity deeply conditioned by that historical moment. The said subjectivity cannot be easily categorized as colonial or anti-colonial or post-colonial consciousness, but rather an uneasy and ambiguous mixture of multiple, often conflicting, normative and cognitive subjectivities. The mixture itself reflected the colonial world order of the early twentieth century in which China was situated.