Social Capital and Local Government Capacity

Local authorities vary considerably in their capacity for governance. The dimensions of this capacity can only be developed by drawing on local stocks of social capital. The seminal theories of social capital tend to conceive it as a community resource that is built up through a long tradition of civic engagement. We take issue with the laissez–faire implications of these theories, highlighting ways in which local governments can positively contribute to social capital formation by opening their 'political opportunity structure' and engaging voluntary organisations and community groups in trust–based partnership arrangements.     

政府创新：社会资本视角

社会资本理论是研究政府与公民、民主与信任等之间关系的一种新范式。布迪厄从微观层面上将社会资本概括为一种资源集合;科尔曼从中观层面上将社会资本概括为一种社会结构;帕特南从宏观层面上将社会资本概括为一种价值规范。从本质上讲,政府创新是一个政府与社会互动的过程,与社会资本之间存在内在的结构性关联。社会资本是政府创新的基本变量,其中的信任因素是政府创新合法性的重要来源,支持信念因素是政府创新的基本条件,参与网络因素是政府创新的重要基础。在社会资本视角下进行政府创新的途径在于加强社会制度建设,实现传统社会资本的现代转型;支持公民参与网络建设,培育公共精神和发展基层民主;培育第三部门力量,以转变政府职能和增强政府能力。     

论社会资本如何提高政府绩效

提高政府绩效是政府的重要目标之一,社会资本作为一种具有巨大潜在功能的生产性社会资源,在政府绩效的提高中扮演着重要角色。文章在对社会资本及政府绩效的概念进行界定的基础上,从五个方面对社会资本对政府绩效的作用进行了分析。     

Social Capital and the Dynamics of Trust in Government

It is well understood that trust in government responds to the performance of the president, Congress, and the economy. Despite improved government performance, however, trust has never returned to the levels witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s. Social capital may be the force that has kept trust low. If so, we need to assess the relative contributions of both government performance and social capital at the macro level. Using macrolevel data, the analysis, here, is designed to capture the variation over time in both social capital and government performance and let them compete to explain the macro variation in trust. The empirical results demonstrate that both government performance and social capital matter, but that social capital appears to be the force which accounts for the decline in trust over the last 40 years.     

Love Thy Neighbour: A Social Capital Approach to Local Government Partnerships

While controversy surrounds compulsory consolidation as a means of improving the operational efficiency of local government, the literature suggests that gains can accrue to groups of local councils which form voluntary alliances as platforms for shared service delivery. However, real‐world experience has demonstrated that voluntary alliances in local government are difficult to establish and do not always endure in the longer term. After reviewing the limited extant scholarly literature on shared services and local council voluntary alliances, as well as applications of the social capital approach to inter‐organisational endeavour, such as the Weber and Weber (2010) venture capital model, this article argues that the social capital approach can offer insights into local council cooperative alliance and shared service models.     

社会资本理论与社会公正问题

社会资本理论的兴起为社会公正实现的研究提供了新思路。社会资本与社会公正之间存在着结构性依赖和制约的关系。目前,我国的社会资本存在诸多缺陷,制约着社会公正的普遍形成。为此,通过转变政府职能、界定政府权力,加强制度整合、推动法治化进程,培育公民社会的公民意识和公共精神以及促进民间组织的健康发展,进而实现社会资本从传统到现代的转型,是实现社会公正的重要前提和题中应有之义。     

Social Capital and Public Policy – The Current Challenge Facing the Victorian Government

Social capital, since Putnam's 1993 work, has captured the imagination of policy‐makers the world over, and Australia is no exception. In 2005 the Department of Victorian Communities launched its Actions for Community Strengthening policy statement, which draws heavily on social capital theory. This article explores the theoretical underpinnings of the government's policy and critiques its failure to deal adequately with the causal relationship between social capital and its supposed community benefits. The article then seeks to isolate the missing factors through a look at recent research on volunteerism and argues that the institution of collaborative/interactive governance needs to be underpinned by sound socio‐economic reform.     

Social Identity and Social Capital: The Collective Self at Work

Organizational scholars and institutional theorists have shown a great deal of interest in the concept of social capital. To a large extent, this interest has been fueled by accumulating evidence that social capital plays a vital role in the development of more cooperative, productive, and stable relationships within organizations and institutions. Recognizing these benefits, a major focus of recent theoretical efforts has been explicating the antecedents of social capital. Drawing on concepts from social identity theory and related theories of the self, this paper develops a framework for conceptualizing how individuals' psychological identification with a collective enhances their willingness to engage in behaviors that contribute to the creation and maintenance of social capital. The paper reviews empirical evidence in favor of the framework and draws out some of its theoretical and applied implications.     

The Link Between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: Differences Between Public and Private Sector Employees

ABSTRACT

Employees in the public and private sectors experience different working conditions and employment relationships. Therefore, it can be assumed that their attitudes toward their job and organizations, and relationships between them, are different. The existing literature has identified the relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction as interesting in this context. The present field study examines the satisfaction–commitment link with respect to differences between private and public sector employees. A sample of 617 Greek employees (257 from the private sector and 360 from the public sector) completed standardized questionnaires. Results confirmed the hypothesized relationship differences: Extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction are more strongly related to affective commitment and normative commitment for public sector employees than for private sector ones. The results are discussed, limitations are considered, and directions for future research are proposed.     

Information Technology and Organizational Morphology: The Case of the Korean Central Government

This study explores the effects of information technology (IT) in terms of longitudinal changes in organizational structures at the central government level. Interestingly, although IT has increased the ratio of middle managers to subordinates, the number of middle managers has not changed radically and, in some cases, has steadily increased, while the proportion of lower‐level employees has decreased. Contrary to the belief in a pyramid structure, the actual form of an agency looks like a rocket. The analysis shows that IT effects on the agency’s morphology differ according to the core technology of the agency. However, these effects seem to be constrained by the rigidity of the Korean government in terms of organizational management. This article proposes that agency autonomy in fitting the organizational structure to the real work situation is a necessary condition for seeing the full effects of e‐government.     

Managing Disasters: The Role of Local Government

In major disasters, local communities are often on their own for several hours or days. Local governments can play a key role in taking the initiative to protect their citizens. This essay compares the experience of New Orleans before, during, and after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina with the performance of Qinglong County, China, during the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. Qinglong County exemplifies local government taking initiative in risk assessment, decision making, operations, information sharing, and communications.     

Variations in Organizational Participation in Government: The Case of Denmark*

The main purpose of this article is to refine, modify, and elaborate some central propositions and assumptions in the scholarly debate on corporatism or corporate pluralism. The empirical base is a data archive containing information on practically all interest groups in Denmark. Hypotheses are formulated and tested concerning variations in direct representation and participation of interest groups in public policy-making across (a) types of interest groups, (b) organizational resources, (c) organizational structures, and{d) political issue areas. Contrary to prevailing propositions in the literature on corporatism, the Danish case shows that corporate structures and practices go hand in hand with a system of interest groups characterized by myriads of interest groups, and an overall, rather decentralized structure.     

论社会资本视野下的政府职能转变

从社会资本角度看,政府职能应是公民社会的培育与服务,政府职能的运行机制应该是多元化的,政府职能实现途径应该是制度和规则这一公共物品的提供。     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

电子政府在社会信息化中的地位和作用

信息化是当今世界经济和社会发展的大趋势。深刻认识电子政府在社会信息化进程中的地位和作用,对于促进我国的电子政府建设、推进社会信息化具有重大意义。     

Work-Family Balance and Job Satisfaction: The Impact of Family-Friendly Policies on Attitudes of Federal Government Employees

We use the 1991 Survey of Federal Government Employees to test a theoretical framework regarding the relationships between work and family demands, family-friendly policies, satisfaction with work-family balance, and job satisfaction for diverse groups of employees with different personal and family needs. We find that a variety of policies widely presumed to be "family friendly" were used to varying degrees by disparate groups of federal employees. The use of such policies had very diverse effects on both employee satisfaction with work-family balance and job satisfaction, within and across various groups of similarly situated employees. The assumptions underlying the provision of family-friendly policies and implications for the organization are examined.     

地方政府组织结构的优化进路

信息化给当前社会带来巨大变革,需要地方政府根据新的时代背景和公共需求主动变革,建立更加高效、协作、开放的组织结构。优化地方政府组织结构,一是需要重构纵向层级,理顺管理关系,在纵向结构上精简层级、打破同构、下放权力;二是需要优化横向职能划分,建立多元协作关系,推行大部门、协同化、整体性的改革;三是需要发挥信息技术的支持作用,保障变革实施,破除信息壁垒,建立政务平台,开放数据信息。     

Why Public Employees Rebel: Guerrilla Government in the Public Sector

Employee recalcitrance and employer reprisal are ever-present conditions in public service. Yet we have limited knowledge of the forces that move administrators away from acquiescence and toward antagonism. The authors follow the theoretical thrust of behavioral public administration to better understand administrative behavior by targeting the determinants of guerrilla government actions. They do so by presenting the results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey of federal bureaucrats. Findings show that decisions to pursue guerrilla activities are conditional on a multitude of factors—namely, the bureaucrat's personal views of the directive as a policy solution, the compatibility of the directive with the bureaucrat's ethical framework, the status of the person issuing the directive, and the probability that the directive might cause harm to others. Notably, these decisions generally are not affected by the probability of retribution or the expected type thereof. However, they are affected by the magnitude of harm that may ensue if orders are obeyed and not resisted.     

资源依赖、关系合同与组织能力——政府购买公共服务中的社会组织发展研究

对于社会组织而言,组织能力的重要性并不亚于组织自主。随着政府购买公共服务的兴起,社会组织对政府的资源依赖程度正日渐加深。这种资源依赖对社会组织的组织能力产生非线性影响,关系合同在二者之间起到中间变量的作用,能够化解因资源依赖而设立的正式监控带来的一些负面影响。通过多案例的比较分析,发现两个结论:一是在资源依赖的背景下社会组织能力发展可能会出现两种异化现象,要么过度强调非正式关系,要么过度强调合同指标;二是关系合同的建立有助于减少正式监控的弊端,但并不一定能促进组织能力的提升。