Inefficiency in public organizations

Theories of market and government failure provide resources for diagnosing intra-organizational inefficiency in public organizations and for identifying possible solutions. Public goods, externalities, information asymmetries, monopolies, uncertainty, inappropriate reward systems, and interest group behavior create inefficiencies within organizations just as they do in the larger economy. Associated with many of these problems are generic solutions that can usefully inform leaders in their efforts to improve efficiency within their public organizations.     

Loan delinquency in community lending organizations: Case studies of neighborworks organizations

Abstract

This article reports on qualitative data gathered through interviews conducted in 1996 with key leadership and staff from 13 community lending organizations. Loan servicing and collection procedures within the organizations were examined. Findings suggest that several organizational factors of nonprofit lenders are related to their loan delinquency rates: social networks, business culture, funding sources, composition of the board and loan committees, staff structure, loan intake, and collection tools.

The study also finds that the nonprofit sector's institutional environment and its partnership with the private sector in a mutually beneficial process influence the loan delinquency rate. More specifically, active participation of local bankers in NeighborWorks¹ loan committees, diverse funding sources (from both the public and private sectors), and a diffusion of business practices through dense social networks are related to NeighborWorks’ loan servicing and collection policy and procedures. These factors in turn influence NeighborWorks’ rehabilitation loan delinquency rates.     

Continuous development in organizations Romanian model

This paper presents the results of an experimental study applied on an average level company, sales/distribution profile, from Mutes County, Romania. The study analyzes the role of formative intervention in the development of a positive organizational environment in an organization. Following the results of this experiment and especially the results that confirm the importance of formative intervention in the development of human resources, the improvement of communication and professional motivation, a nonrefundable financed phare project has been initiated and implemented within the organization-the center of developing and training the human resources from selling-it＇s goal being the development of an ensemble of training services for the company＇s personnel and the development of a human resource consultancy network for other similar companies. The last part of this paper briefly describes the main activities and results of this project. All the elements that we have deciphered during the implementation of the project and also the conclusions of the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experiment＇s results, determine us to support continuous professional development in organizations, which, as proved, can improve communication in the organization, maintain the personnel on a high level of motivation, increase professional and personal performance and efficiency, also can lead to self-awareness and auto-implication, satisfaction with the accomplished work.     

基层组织与乡村治理

农村冲突的不断升级以及组织化程度的提高 ,使得中国农村面临着形势严峻的治理危机。农村冲突主要针对基层政权和乡村干部 ,反映了基层组织既没有发展成为代表乡村社会利益的自治组织 ,而且也没有发展成为代表国家政权利益的代理组织。基层组织与乡村社会以及国家政权的利益之所以分离 ,是因为授权来源的变化 ,自身的优势地位以及生存危机的驱使。治理和善治乡村社会 ,必须依靠乡村自治运动和国家政权建设 ,必须再造基层组织体系特别是乡镇政府 ,必须建立农民利益的政治表达机制和建立农民协会。     

More on moral hazard in organizations: Reply

The paper by Thomas Hammond and Gary Miller is an insightful comment on the relevance of budget-breaking incentive schemes to real world organizations. They have made a valuable contribution in considering this line of research within a broader context. Nonetheless, they have not established the invalidity of my theoretical arguments. Therefore, my basic point still holds: that is, theoretically it is possible to show that a bonus-penalty incentive scheme of the sort proposed by Holmström is feasible, despite the principal's incentive to cheat. Regardless, all of this debate may beg the question, since compensation arrangements observed in the real world are rarely of the bonus-penalty type. Linear incentives are far more common, and many compensation schemes do not appear to incorporate optimal incentives. At this point we need more empirical research on the determinants of incentives in organizations. In order to make further advances in this area, a better understanding of the incentive mechanisms actually used in organizations is required.Thanks are due to Richard Frank for helpful comments. The usual caveat applies.     

透视现代行政组织中的圈子现象

本文针对当前各政府部门大量存在的圈子这种恶性非正式组织 ,从分析其与一般非正式组织的区别入手 ,阐述了圈子的五大主要特点 ;并论述了圈子形成的制度文化因素 ,人格因素和具体过程 ;还对圈子的危害进行了概括 ,包括容易造成近亲繁殖、贪污腐败、影响行政决策和行政执行、阻碍改革等 ;最后提出了铲除圈子的大致方向和要求     

Decentralized enforcement in organizations: An experimental approach

Social enforcement, the decentralized action by organizational actors of monitoring, identifying, and reporting legal violations, is widely recognized as a key factor in ensuring good governance. This article reports on an experimental survey conducted in the US and Israel examining the behavior of individuals when confronting workplace unlawful conduct. The study provides novel insights into the relationships between state based, organization based, and employee based enforcement. It finds that the likelihood and the manner of reporting will vary depending on the type of illegality and are strongly correlated to perceptions of legitimacy, job security, and voice within the workplace. Comparing illegalities, employees prefer to report clear violations by rank and file employees rather than violations by managers. At the same time, external reporting to government or media entities is most likely when violations involve the organization as a whole or implicate top management. The study also finds cultural and gender differences in reporting patterns. Finally, the study provides support for the understanding that social norms are more predictive of social enforcement than expected organizational costs.     

The charitable activities of terrorist organizations

Violent groups sometimes invest significant resources in social work, notably in the form of charities and NGOs. The present paper models a terrorist group's charities as a means to advertise its cause in order to raise popular support. The analysis explains how different types of organizations arise in equilibrium, depending on government policies. Then, the interaction between a purely terrorist group and an independent local NGO is examined. It is shown that a purely terrorist group always invests in more attacks than an integrated terrorist-charity organization. Furthermore, the latter may have more NGO activity than a separate local NGO.     

Fragmented control: Governing contentious labor organizations in China

How does an authoritarian state govern contentious civil society and what are the effects on grassroots mobilization? This article theorizes the relationship between repression and mobilization by examining the case of informal labor organizations in South China that threaten social stability. Findings based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork inside these organizations suggest that the central state's mandate to maintain social stability is refracted through the interests and capabilities of local agencies. This results in “fragmented control”: divergent, even conflicting, forms of state governance over civil society. Local authorities work at cross‐purposes by simultaneously repressing, co‐opting, and neglecting underground organizing. Fragmented control generates political uncertainty on the part of activists and induces them to engage in “censored entrepreneurialism”—a set of tactical adaptations characterized by a mixture of self‐censorship and entrepreneurial experimentation.     

Managers,workers, and organizations

He is author of numerous books and articles. His most recent book is Integrating the Individual and the Organization,published by Transaction.     

Explaining the political use of evaluation in international organizations

Policy Sciences - Despite a growing literature on the politics of evaluation in international organizations (IOs) and beyond, little is known about whether political or administrative stakeholders...     

Youth organizations as a Battlefield in the Cold War

In the late 1960s it was revealed that ever since 1952 the CIA had financed and was still financing, by way of a whole series of ‘screen’ foundations, the overwhelming majority of youth and student organizations, not only in the United States, but throughout the free world. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as respectable as the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY), Pax Romana and the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) had benefited, at various times in their history, from the generosity and ‘liberalism’ of the CIA. The key to understanding this paradoxical American involvement in leftist organizations lies in the Soviet Union's policy of systematically infiltrating Western civil society and international organizations. Its constant aim, relentlessly pursued and never openly avowed, was to control Western opinion and further the goals of Soviet foreign policy. By 1950 the communists had succeeded in effectively controlling all the international mass organizations. This study deals with the crucial Berlin Youth Festival of 1951 and the East-West struggle for dominance in the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) and the International Union of Students (IUS).     

Accountability infrastructures: Pragmatic compliance inside organizations

We trace the pragmatic turn in regulatory governance from the level of the state and civil society to the coalface of the regulated organization. Since the 1980s, an array of new regulatory models has emerged. These models, while distinct, are unified in two related tendencies. First, they support the devolution of responsibility for standard setting, program design, and enforcement to the regulated organization. This delegation of governance to the organization itself has catalyzed the creation of accountability infrastructures within organizations, a network of offices, roles, programs, and procedures dedicated to aligning the organization's operations with external standards, codes of conduct, ethical and normative expectations, and regulations. Second, the diverse regulatory models depend, often implicitly, on organizational accountability infrastructures that incorporate the tenets of pragmatist philosophy: inquiry through narration, adaptation to context, and problem-solving through experimentation. Reviewing the empirical literature on organizational compliance, we find ample evidence of inquiry through narration at the organizational coalface. However, we find limited evidence of narrating plurality in the organization and narrating experimentation as problem-solving, as these activities create tensions with internal and external parties who expect singular, stable representations of governance. These tensions reveal an important incongruity between pragmatic governance across organizations and pragmatic governance within organizations. We contribute to the regulatory governance literature by documenting this important shift in the locus of governance to the organizational coalface and by charting a new research agenda. We argue that examinations of regulatory governance should be retraced in three ways. First, attention should shift to the organizational coalface, recognizing and analyzing accountability infrastructures as the central contemporary mechanism of governance. Second, the long-standing focus in regulatory studies on why parties comply should shift to understanding how regulated parties manage themselves to achieve compliance. Third, analyses of compliance should examine the tensions in narrating adaptation and experimentation, and the implications of such tensions for the achievement of prosocial outcomes.