Boards of trustees,agency problems,and university output

The analysis and empirical evidence in this paper indicate that the structure of the boards of trustees of state universities influences the provision of higher education. The structure of the boards is important because it helps to define the constraints on the board members and on the internal agents of the universities. An implication of this study is that public universities can be made to function more like private ones by placing them under separate governing boards.These results are especially interesting when examining the trends regarding board structures. The trend over this century across the states has been toward increasing the number of universities under the jurisdiction of a single board. This analysis suggests that the trend is a response to political pressure from educators, not from taxpayers and consumers of higher education.     

Policy Congruence and Style of Representation: Party Voters and Political Parties

This article focuses on whether styles of representation influence policy congruence. Style of representation is defined at the party level as the proportion of representatives within parties who are partisans, delegates or trustees. Policy congruence refers to how close on the left–right scale the mean position of a party as placed by its candidates is compared to that of party voters. The article concludes that where there are higher proportions of trustees within parties, there is a greater degree of policy congruence, whereas a higher proportion of partisans results in less policy congruence. The proportion of delegates has no significant impact on congruence after taking account of other party and country measures. This indicates that party constraints on representatives are applied at the cost of congruence with voters, and that when representatives enjoy more flexibility to follow their own opinions, the party displays greater congruence with its own voters.     

Local Governments' Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform

The devolution of the social safety net means that local governments must increasingly respond to the needs of their citizens, particularly those who are coming off the welfare rolls and making the transition to work. Based on our findings from a statewide, randomized experiment, this article describes how welfare reforms have affected the well-being of current and former welfare recipients. We look specifically at how those leaving welfare in Indiana are using the township trustee system, the state's general assistance program providing poor relief, to meet basic needs, as well as how the trustees have responded to welfare reform.     

Why International Trusteeship Fails: The Politics of External Authority in Areas of Limited Statehood

International trusteeship is widely touted as a solution to the problem of failed states, an extreme form of limited statehood. Current theories of legitimacy and statebuilding suggest that trusteeships should produce more capable states. These theories, however, fail to take into account the self‐interest and political strategies available to trustees and politicians within new states. We pose a more political model of statebuilding by the international community, the trustee, and national politicians that predicts that trusteeship will fail to produce states with greater capacity. We test for the effects of trusteeship on state capacity, measured by service provision, by creating a matched sample of countries. We find that there is no evidence that states under trusteeship develop greater capacity leading to better provision of public goods than comparable states not under trusteeship. Would‐be statebuilders must be more aware of the political incentives of all parties involved in the process.     

Doing Things Right: Effectiveness in Local Nonprofit Organizations, A Panel Study

This study investigates whether nonprofit organizational effectiveness is judged consistently by differing constituencies and whether changes in board effectiveness and overall organizational effectiveness (judged by differing constituencies) are the result of changes in the use of practices regarded as the "right way" to manage. The results show that different constituencies judged the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations differently, at both periods; that a change in the use of correct board practices over time, controlling for board effectiveness at time 1, was not related to board effectiveness at time 2; and that a change in the use of correct management practices, controlling for organizational effectiveness at time 1, was not related to organizational effectiveness at time 2, except for board members. Implications of the results are considered. Claims about best practices for nonprofit boards and organizations must be evaluated more critically. Finding the right fit among practices is more important than doing things the "right way.     

Why Be Accountable? Exploring Voluntary Accountability of Australian Private Ancillary Funds

The aim of this paper is to consider why Private Ancillary Funds (PAFs), endowed philanthropic foundations with no public reporting requirements, engage in accountability in its various forms. This exploratory, qualitative study reports on perspectives on accountability from 10 semi‐structured interviews with PAF managers and/or trustees from three Australian states. Through the lens of March and Olsen's (2011) logics of action and Karsten's (2015) typology of motivational forms for voluntary accountability, findings show that although logics of appropriateness and consequentiality explain many reasons why PAFs engage in voluntary accountability, some reasons do not fit comfortably within either logic. The findings challenge conceptions embedded in much non‐profit accountability literature that motivations for and purposes of accountability are linked with sustainability and survival. By examining this subset of non‐profit organisations subject to limited regulatory accountability, a clearer understanding of motivations for voluntary accountability is achieved.     

对各国非营利组织理事会绩效评价研究的分析与评述

理事会是非营利组织的管理、决策及监督机构,也是非营利组织的核心资源,理论和实践表明,理事会绩效与非营利组织绩效存在正相关关系,非营利组织理事会绩效的评价有助于理事会的开发和组织治理水平的提高。本文以绩效评价的四个核心内容：绩效内容与范围的界定、绩效指标设计、绩效数据收集与分析、绩效评价结论为线索,对各国非营利组织理事会绩效评价研究进行综述,以期为同行及社会各界的研究提供参考。本文对绩效指标的具体测量与计算方法未予展开,也没有论及非营利组织理事会绩效评价的局限性。     

Guidelines for social services grants

Guidelines for spending federal grants to the states for social services changed repeatedly between 1962 and 1975. The process of preparing guidelines changed, and so did their content. These changes are described and explained. Guidelines at all stages failed to provide intelligible and useful instructions to federal and state administrators. In part this was because the contextual supports that normally help to give effect to grant-in-aid guidelines—explicit antecedents in the law, and implicit understandings among administrators at different levels of the federal system—were lacking or seriously defective. Beyond that, in each of their different phases the guidelines proved untenable because of dysfunctions that may have been peculiar to the respective processes by which they were prepared.The trustees, officers, and other staff members of The Brookings Institution have no responsibility for the contents of this paper.     

Coercive versus cooperative policies: Comparing intergovernmental mandate performance

Cooperative policies hold out promise of an improvement over coercive mandates as ways to enhance implementation of intergovernmental programs. By treating subordinate governments as regulatory trustees and emphasizing substantive compliance, the cooperative mandates avoid the onerous aspects of heavy-handed regulatory federalism. Our comparison of state hazard-mitigation policy in Florida and in New South Wales, Australia addresses procedural and substantive compliance under the two forms of intergovernmental policies. When local governments are not committed to state policy objectives, the coercive policy produces better results as evidenced by higher rates of procedural compliance and greater effort by local governments to achieve policy objectives. When local government commitment exists, the cooperative policy produces substantive results that are at least the equivalent to the coercive policy. Moreover, over the long run cooperative policies may have greater promise in sustaining local government commitment. The dilemma is to figure out how to motivate lagging jurisdictions that seem to require a coercive policy, while not straightjacketing leading jurisdictions that are capable of thriving under a cooperative regime.     

Attitudes toward integration among black and white school board members: Public comparisons and etiological factors

Comparisons of school board members' attitudes toward integration (derived from nationwide surveys of black and white school board members) with public attitudes toward integration indicate that (1) elites (school board members) appeared more liberal than the public for both races; (2) this gap between elites and the public was less distinct for blacks than whites; and (3) black school board members evidenced more liberal attitudes toward integration than white school board members.Multiple regression analyses for school board members indicated that (1) race and education were the main factors determining board members' attitudes toward racial integration; (2) political participation showed a positive association with liberal attitudes toward integration; and (3) initial method of selection (elected or appointed) apparently bears no relationship to attitudes toward integration.     

Does government funding alter nonprofit governance? Evidence from New York City nonprofit contractors

Government contracting has raised a collection of issues with respect to adequate oversight and accountability. This paper explores one avenue through which contracting agencies may achieve these tasks: through the governance practices of the contractor's board. Oversight and monitoring are a board's key responsibilities, and influencing a board's practices is one way a governmental agency can help to insure quality performance. Agencies could thus use both their selection process and their post‐contracting power to influence board practice. Using a new, rich data set on the nonprofit contractors of New York City, a series of hypotheses were tested on the relationship between government funding and board practices. Significant differences were found to exist in board practices as a function of government funding levels, differences that mark a shift of energy away from some activities (i.e., traditional board functions, such as fund‐raising) towards others (financial monitoring and advocacy). This suggests that government agencies may indeed use their contracting choices with an eye to particular governance practices. This increased emphasis on such activities appears to crowd out other activities, and is not unambiguously to the benefit of nonprofit board governance. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

House money effects on trust and reciprocity

In a typical laboratory “Investment Game” experiment, participants’ endowments are provided by the experimenter; thus, the worst case for the investor is that she loses all of her “found” money. By contrast, in naturally occurring environments, investment decisions can often lead to a loss of one’s own money. This paper investigates whether “trust” found in one-shot anonymous laboratory interaction is robust to “own money” environments. Our results show that, consistent with previous investment game results, most investors send a positive amount, and most trustees return at least the transfer amount, regardless of whether the investors purchase or are gifted their endowment. However, investments are on average lower when participants use their own money, and the fraction of maximum investments (the most “risky” investment decision) is only half as large under “own money” as it is under gifted endowments. Our results explain why one should exercise caution in placing trust in any government’s ability to spend other people’s money prudently.     

Board diversity and strategic orientation: Evidence from India

This study leverages the upper echelons theory to investigate the effect of board diversity (gender, age, education, and tenure) on the strategic orientation of a firm in terms of its exploration- exploitation. It also investigates the moderating role of the technological intensity of the industry for analyzing the relationship between board diversity and exploration–exploitation of the firm. The technological intensity of the industry is classified as high-tech and low-tech. This study brings to light the role of the contingency factors in influencing the board's strategic choice. The study is based on panel data set of Indian Top-200 companies listed on the National Stock Exchange for the period between 2010 and 2015. The present study's findings indicate that an increase in board diversity leads to more exploration than exploitation. Further, the effect of board diversity is more pronounced in high-tech than the low-tech industries.     

An empirical investigation of determinants of corporate social performance using multi-dimensional panel data analysis

An assessment of the determinants of corporate social performance (CSP) in emerging economies is still too fractured. This article contributes to general management literature by developing an empirical model based on the existing theoretical models rooted in neo-institutional theory (legitimacy approach), stakeholders management theory, agency theory, the resource-based view of the firm, slack resources argument, and managerial control theory. A robust, multidimensional, unweighted disclosure index was used to measure CSP. This article provides a methodologically and empirically more rigorous assessment of determinants of CSP compared to previous studies by performing panel data regression analysis on 307 firms for 10 years. The results reveal that the presence of a legal framework, board attributes (board size, board diversity, board interlocking), women on board, ownership pattern, financial performance, firm attributes (size, age, leverage), and industry characteristics affect CSP significantly. These findings provide very important clues to design pragmatic strategies to improve CSP.     

Top Management Turnover: The Role of Governing Board Structures

The convergence of performance accountability policies, a graying bureaucracy, and shorter executive tenures highlights the timeliness of investigating executive turnover. Prior public administration research has examined pull and push factors linked to these departures, but it has yet to fully explore the influence of governing board structures and political pressures that stem from such structures. Using data on 123 public four‐year research universities in the United States from 1993 to 2012, this article finds that governing board structures play a pivotal role in predicting the departure decisions of university presidents. While the size of the board increases the risk of departure, boards overseeing multiple institutions and boards with a faculty or student representative lower the risk of departure. Additional evidence suggests that both the share of gubernatorial and legislative appointees on the board and the party division of the legislature have a direct influence on departure.     

Does corporate governance affect CEO compensation in Indian manufacturing firms?

This study examines the effects of (a) chief executive officers (CEO) pay dynamics, (b) corporate governance characteristics, and (c) the impact of environmental, social, and governance disclosure practices on CEO compensation. Data of 282 Indian manufacturing firms were collected from Bloomberg database from 2013–14 to 2018–19. This study uses Generalized Method of Moments estimation technique to assess the impact of corporate governance on CEO compensation. The empirical estimates reveal that increase in board size, board independence, women director in board, CEO duality, and institutional holdings reduced CEO compensation. Furthermore, the environmental, social, and governance disclosure confirmed that higher firm disclosures help to streamline CEO compensation. It has also been found that CEOs' current compensation is affected by their previous pay. This study corroborates the objectives of Companies Act 2013 to streamline the governance practices for optimizing CEO compensation.     

Racial Inequality in Democratic Accountability: Evidence from Retrospective Voting in Local Elections

One important and, to date, overlooked component of democratic accountability is the extent to which it might exacerbate existing societal inequalities if the outcomes for some groups of citizens are prioritized over others when voters evaluate governmental performance. We analyze a decade of California school board elections and find evidence that voters reward or punish incumbent board members based on the achievement of white students in their district, whereas outcomes for African American and Hispanic students receive comparatively little attention. We then examine public opinion data on the racial education achievement gap and report results from an original list experiment of California school board members that finds approximately 40% of incumbents detect no electoral pressure to address poor academic outcomes among racial minority students. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for several scholarly literatures, including retrospective voting, racial inequality in political influence, intergovernmental policymaking, and education politics.     

Size Matters: Toward a Contingency Theory of Diversity Effects on Performance

Abstract

This study examines the diversity-performance link by focusing on two types of diversity—gender and functional—in the context of governing boards of 24 quasi-government agencies in Korea over 16?years (2000–2015). Although public management scholarship contains evidence regarding the importance of diversity in public organizations, there is little consensus on what constitutes diversity and how it affects public sector performance. This study expands the scope of dialogues by highlighting multidimensional characteristics of diversity and the contingent nature of diversity effects. Multiplicative interaction models confirm that there are distinctive effects of different types of diversity on performance, and the relationship is moderated by the size of the group to which minorities belong. While the effect of board gender diversity is limited in our data, the effect of having a female chief executive is positively significant with decreasing marginal effect as the number of board members increases. On the other hand, the relationship of functional diversity in the boardroom to agency performance is negative, while the negative marginal effect decreases and becomes positive when board size rises above a critical number.     

The Effect of Limiting Participation in Special District Elections to Property Owners: A Research Note

Scholars have found significant policy differences between special districts governed by elected officials and those overseen by appointees. However, their research ignores U.S. Supreme Court rulings that allow many special districts to restrict electoral participation to property owners. This study finds that the presence of officials elected by property owners upon a district's governing board is related to a reduced reliance upon property taxes for revenues and a greater reliance upon service charges. Using Census data sets and a review of state statutes, the study demonstrates that board elections can be an effective means for property owners to influence policy.     

A typology of board design for highly effective monitoring in intergovernmental organizations under the United Nations system

The United Nations (UN) system comprises several intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that were established to contribute to the functioning of the overall transnational system of delivering global public goods. However, many IGOs under the UN system are criticized for their failure to accomplish their mandates. Research argues that IGO boards serve as a governance mechanism that should be designed in order to effectively perform the monitoring function to ensure fulfillment of IGO mandates. Thus, using an inductive fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this study explores 13 IGO boards under the UN system to identify the board designs that are associated with highly effective monitoring. Our findings reveal a board design typology reflecting the interplay of the level of organizational complexity and the extent of the distribution problem in IGOs. This research contributes to our understanding of IGO governance by underscoring the relationship between board designs and highly effective monitoring to help researchers and practitioners improve IGO performance.