No news is good news? Press coverage and corporate public affairs management

• Being in the public eye puts pressure on an organization's Public Affairs (PA) function. This study finds that firms more closely covered by the press tend to be more forceful in promoting their own position on social issues (social buffering). Press coverage is not associated with greater corporate efforts to comply with societal expectation (social bridging). Overall, press coverage is weakly associated with lowered perceived corporate public affairs performance.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The lobbyist with ‘balls of iron and a spine of steel’: why Ireland needs lobbying reform

• In common with most other nations, Ireland currently has no statutory regulation of lobbying activities. Equally, and also in common with many countries, lobbying regulation is becoming a more prominent subject of political debate. This paper considers the pervasive context of political corruption and scandal highlighted by one lobbyist now in jail, analyses various suggestions for lobbying regulation which have been proposed, and concludes with a potential reform agenda. The opportunity exists for Ireland to take a lead in producing a comprehensive and meaningful regulatory regime—genuine and principled reform, rather than a muddled compromise.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning from the Philippine occupation: nation‐building and institutional development in Iraq and other high security risk nations

Outcomes of armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq indicate that the U.S. has been unprepared to fully address problems related to establishing social and economic stability, security and governance in the aftermath of war. This is unfortunate, given that U.S. policy makers' nation‐building efforts to achieve stability, security and good governance in these nations do not reflect what they should already have learnt about organisational and institutional development from past experiences providing significant development assistance to highly unstable nations. Based on the analysis rendered in this article, ‘smart practice’ development administration in such nations comprises the following key points that link nation building to institutional/organisational development:

• Nation building (creating new national sovereignty) is different from, and harder than, building government capacity (creating or strengthening institutions and organisations).
• Given that building government capacity typically requires years of patient assistance and financing, it is better to build on existing indigenous institutions like the civil service and military.
• The time and expense of development assistance to high security risk nations means that it is advisable to establish a multi‐lateral development assistance plan and a multi‐national, multi‐institutional framework for financing development to pay for all that is necessary over a long period of time (i.e. 20–50 years).
• Policy makers should emphasise social stability and stable economic growth under self‐governance to prevent actual or perceived economic exploitation.
• Policy makers' diplomatic efforts should secure accommodation of various stakeholders sufficient to permit compromise leading to formation of an independent government.
• Where occupation appears necessary to achieve security and stability, policy makers should allocate enough troops and money to do the job, and accurately assess and report all costs of military occupation and nation building.
• Once occupation has occurred, policy makers should not withdraw military support in a way that would increase the likelihood of civil war.
• Premature withdrawal of security, economic and political support prior to the point where high security risk nations are capable of governing themselves will cause a power vacuum, and may result in fragmented regional leadership by warlords. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

     

Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded in Interlocal Agreements

This article examines how monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) are associated with vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations. The authors hypothesize that ILAs established by local governments with higher‐level governments are likely to rely on a clearly specified set of rules to establish an administrative structure, whereas ILAs established by local governments with other local governments rely on associational benefits to ensure that policy preferences are aligned across multiple political boundaries. The article examines ILAs established by small town, county, and municipal governments in Denton County, Texas, for the provision of emergency medical, police, and fire services. Findings show that more than half of the ILAs specified a financial reporting system, but an almost equal percentage did not contain features requiring financial records to be available for audit by a third party. Quadratic assignment procedure correlation analysis confirmed the presence of cross‐monitoring mechanisms and showed that the patterns of ILAs tend to cluster around a geographic space.

Practitioner Points

• Monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) matter, highlighting the important managerial functions played by frontline officers drafting ILAs.
• The rules embedded in ILAs are important not only for encouraging intergovernmental cooperation but also for reducing the risks associated with contract failures.
• With the increasing number of ILAs, local government officials need to consider various types of ILAs that are suitable to meet jurisdictional interests and policy preferences.

     

Social networks and the study of relations: networks as method,metaphor and form

Abstract

Networks have recently become fashionable in social analysis but most of the new network approaches have paid scant attention to the long history of reflections upon the potential of networks as an analytical device in the social sciences. In this paper we chart the developments in networking thinking in two disciplinary areas – social network analysis and social anthropology – in order to highlight the enduring difficulties and problems with network thinking as well as its potential. The first half of the paper explores the uses of network approaches over the past fifty years, situating theoretical and methodological questions in their broader disciplinary contexts. The authors then show how emerging issues from both bodies of work offer the promise of new kinds of networking thinking.     

British attitudes on nuclear weapons

• In an increasingly unstable world post‐911, the political landscape seems to be continually shifting, with many of the old certainties around combatants and how to wage war being subject to revision—not least the role of nuclear weapons in a post‐Cold War age. But have our attitudes towards the development and use of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed over the past 50 years? Andy Byrom, Associate Director at Ipsos MORI, examines data from the previous half‐century which lead to some surprising conclusions.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Envisaging the future — scenarios and public affairs practice

Public affairs in the third millennium will develop in three significant ways.

• (1) It will deal increasingly with global issues and authorities. ‘The chief executive needs to be an entrepreneur with global vision. He needs political skills, to steer a course through the regulatory maze.’
• (2) The companies that succeed may be global, but many of the regimes of regulation and control will remain national. The ability to deal with them will be essential.
• (3) Public affairs will have to deal effectively not only with national and international regimes but also with organised ‘civil society’. NGOs have now formed global alliances. They are recognised and consulted formally and informally and have begun to ‘show their teeth’.

These developments create strong and specific challenges for corporate communications. ‘Sovereignty is what you belong to.’ The European Union (EU) has developed as a model for global public affairs. Companies that have learnt to combine national with supranational public affairs in the EU will be well equipped in the fora of WTO, OECD, ILO and others yet to come. The communications challenges are two:

• (1) Support for mergers: As globalisation proceeds by merger, companies will need fluency in communicating the benefits of mergers, both internally and externally.
• (2) Trading identities: As countries go for national brands to achieve tourism and investment, mega‐merged global companies are using nation‐building techniques to achieve internal cohesion across cultures.

Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Communicating corporate social responsibility: an exploratory case study of a major UK retail centre

• Corporate 'social responsibility [CSR] is neither a fad nor an optional extra. The interest in it is reflective of a deeper change in the relationship between companies and their stakeholders. Healthy business requires a healthy community, and should be contributing to its creation and maintenance. The public increasingly wants to know about companies that stand behind the brands and products presented to them. And use their power to reward ‘good’ companies and punish the ‘bad’ ones. (Lewis, S. 2001 ).
• CSR is becoming ever more important in the modern business environment, as is evident by the fact that most leading public companies include a specific statement on their CSR policy within their annual reports. Indeed, changing societal expectations, increasingly intrusive media reporting, and ever more sophisticated and powerful pressure groups have caused all organizations to consider more carefully their wider social responsibilities not only out of altruistic reasons, but because of the need to consider the potential impact of their policies on their wider stakeholder relationships.
• It is argued in academic and professional writing that CSR orientated organizations benefit from a series of tangible and intangible benefits, when stakeholders are informed of their orientation. Corporations have reacted to these calls and this belief in a business case and are implementing CSR programmes or corporate change to bring about new corporate mindsets, and are in‐turn communicating the results of these programmes. However, in order to be able to effectively communicate it is necessary that organizations clearly understand the concept of CSR, both from a managerial perspective and homogeneous and individual stakeholder perspective.
• Aiming to help address this lack of understanding, the proposed paper provides a case examination of stakeholder and management perspectives of CSR in the North West of England in a retail setting. The study was conducted in 2003 around a Major UK retail centre using a mix method approach that drew out management cognate viewpoints on CSR and quantitatively tested these findings against stakeholder viewpoints on CSR. The study is served as a pilot for future studies into the area.
• It found that within the context of the case that the managers and stakeholders (when taken as one homogeneous group) shared a similar view of the concept of CSR. Additionally, the weaknesses of the research pilot brought to the surface methodological improvements that could impact on future researches into the area.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leadership skills for regulators

Regulation plays a vital role in reducing harms and promoting public order. However, regulatory reform has been likened to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it never ends. Coupling this reality with the increasing array of areas requiring regulation, there is an acute need for regulators to become more effective in how they work. We discuss the leadership skills needed to ensure regulators consistently contribute to the creation of public value.

Points for practitioners

• Regulators can be more effective when they appreciate their authorising environment and the factors which make that environment dynamic.
• Careful calibration of enforcement practices to the capabilities of those being regulated can reduce conflicts and improve outcomes.
• Regulators with good communication skills can do much to resolve apparently intractable disputes.

     

Pictures at an exhibition revisited: reflections on a typology of images used in the construction of corporate social responsibility and sustainability in non‐financial corporate reporting

• Strategic corporate and public affairs communication about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a major component of corporate efforts to interact with their stakeholders and society at large. Non‐financial reporting, and CSR reporting in particular, is now seen as an essential corporate communication process by most members of a company's stakeholder community. This growth in CSR reporting has been driven by the need to increase corporate transparency and accountability concerning social and environmental issues. Arguably, the European Union is the most progressive region in adopting CSR reporting. Almost all of Europe's top 100 companies report on social and environmental performance, whilst figures for the USA and the rest of the world are much lower. The latest Accountability Rating concludes that ‘Europe leads, America lags’ after measuring companies' social and environmental impacts.
• The authors argue that visual communication is as important as words and numbers in creating meaning and assess UK and German Companies' non‐financial performance. Utilizing a range of research methods including content analysis and semiotic interpretation the authors propose a typology of images used in non‐financial reporting. This typology and associated conceptual development can used to more accurately define and interpret CSR and sustainability.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ‘Bubbling Up’ of Subterranean Politics in Europe

This article presents the findings of a collaborative research project involving seven field teams across Europe investigating a range of new political phenomena termed ‘subterranean politics’. The article argues that the social mobilizations and collective activities in 2011 and 2012 were probably less joined up, more heterogeneous, and, perhaps, even, smaller, than similar phenomena during the last decade, but what was striking was their ‘resonance’ among mainstream public opinion—the ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics. The main findings included:

• ??Subterranean political actors perceive the crisis as a political crisis rather than a reaction to austerity. Subterranean politics is just as much a characteristic of Germany, where there are no austerity policies, as other countries.

• ??Subterranean political actors are concerned about democracy but not as it is currently practised. They experiment with new democratic practises, in the squares, on the Internet, and elsewhere.

• ??This new political generation not only uses social networking to organize but the Internet has profoundly affected the culture of political activism.

• ??In contrast to mainstream public debates, Europe is ‘invisible’ even though many subterranean political actors feel themselves to be European.

The research concludes that the term ‘subterranean politics’ is a useful concept that needs further investigation and that Europe needs to be problematized to seek a way out of the crisis.     

Beyond Enforcement: Welcomeness,Local Law Enforcement,and Immigrants

Studies of local law enforcement actions toward immigrants show that while some cities engage in enforcement, many others do not. The extent and determinants of enforcement have been assessed, but these studies have not evaluated the full range of practices, including welcoming practices, toward immigrants. This article introduces the concept of “welcomeness,” develops a framework for measuring it, and, using a nationwide survey of local police departments, examines how widely departments are welcoming (or unwelcoming) to immigrants. The data show that many police departments have consciously and deliberately developed practices intended to foster positive relationships between the police and immigrants and to encourage immigrants to call the police for assistance.

Practitioner Points

• Welcomeness encompasses a range of practices toward immigrants that are often intentionally created, thoughtfully implemented, and found in a variety of communities.
• The dimensions of welcomeness provide a framework for police departments to assess their practices and provide a model for police departments that want to engage positively with immigrants.
• Welcoming practices may improve interactions between police officers and immigrants and may improve immigrants’ perceptions of local law enforcement.
• Welcoming police departments often have a deeper commitment to community policing.

     

International Comparison of Public and Private Employees’ Work Motives,Attitudes, and Perceived Rewards

This article presents a conceptual perspective on the distinctive characteristics of public organizations and their personnel. This perspective leads to hypotheses that public organizations deliver distinctive goods and services that influence the motives and rewards for their employees. These hypotheses are tested with evidence from the International Social Survey Programme in order to compare public and private employees in 30 nations. Public employees in 28 of the 30 nations expressed higher levels of public‐service‐oriented motives. In all of the countries, public employees were more likely to say they receive rewards in the form of perceived social impact. In most of the countries, public employees placed less importance on high income as a reward and expressed higher levels of organizational commitment.

Practitioner Points

• The findings presented here add to previous evidence that public employees seek and attain more altruistic and public‐service‐oriented rewards than private sector employees. In particular, we add evidence that these differences hold in many different nations and cultural contexts.
• Compensation and incentive system reforms in many governments have often concentrated on financial incentives and streamlining procedures for discipline and removal. Such matters are important but should not drive out concerns with showing public employees the impact of their work on the well‐being of others and on the community and society. Leaders and managers should invest in incentive systems that emphasize such motives and rewards.
• Leaders and managers should invest in the use of altruistic and socially beneficial motives and rewards in recruiting systems.

     

What is an algorithm? Financial regulation in the era of high-frequency trading

Abstract

In response to the flash crashes and market manipulations blamed on high-frequency trading (HFT), algorithms have been brought inside the regulatory perimeter. This paper focuses on the most ambitious regulation directed at the practice: the algorithm-tagging rule in the German High-Frequency Trading Act. Fifteen interviews with stakeholders in the Act’s implementation serve to reconstruct how regulators defined an algorithm and help pose the question of to what extent regulatory definitions and data need accurately to represent financial practices to be useful. Although tentative in its findings, the research suggests that the algorithm-tagging rule may be providing valuable signals in the noise to trade surveillance officers and having virtuous effects on the cultures of trading firms. The conclusion argues that sociologists of finance should adopt a more balanced approach when evaluating regulatory technologies and heed MacKenzie’s 2005 call to open up their black boxes.     

Compartmentalized minds: the Communist security services’ understanding of the Western espionage threat to the Communist bloc during the Cold War

ABSTRACT

Marxism-Leninism required the counter-intelligence officers of the East German Stasi and Soviet KGB to believe in a Western espionage threat to their states which was far greater and more malevolent than was actually the case. In fact, the two counter-intelligence staffs knew that the Western states were trying to create small agent networks on their territory, tasked only with collecting intelligence. This accurate understanding enabled them to contain Western espionage during the Cold War. They ‘compartmentalized’ their knowledge of the real Western espionage threat from their belief in a much greater threat. They believed in one, but knew of another.     

OUTCOMES OF VARIOUS MODES OF ADMINISTERING AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES

The outcomes of various modes of administration may be summarized as follows:

• 1 Under both ministerial and departmental control, the prior experience and predispositions of the Minister were critical factors affecting the colleges. Under departmental control, the background and attitudes of senior officers within the department were also important. Various instances of this were cited.
• 2 There tended to be proportionately fewer dismissals of principals or resignations in protest by them under departmental control than when colleges were controlled by Ministers of the Crown or governing councils. Several reasons for this trend were suggested.
• 3 Under all systems of control the colleges were subject from time to time to direct or indirect political pressure. For example, there were instances in which parents invoked or attempted to invoke political pressure to save their sons from expulsion from a college. Such pressures played a part in the dismissal or resignation of several principals.
• 4 Another factor which led to the resignation of two principals who were directly responsible to a Minister was the belief that their jurisdiction had been transgressed by another senior public servant.
• 5 Under departmental control a principal was likely to be caught up in intradepartmental politics. The fortunes of the college depended somewhat upon his success in this arena.
• 6 In determining the policies and practices to be adopted on the college farm, a principal generally had greater freedom under Education Department control than under Agriculture Department control. On the other hand, teaching practices were generally subject to closer departmental supervision in the former case than in the latter.
• 7 One problem with any system of control is that of maintaining a balance between continuity in policy on the one hand and sensitivity to demands for change on the other. In general, control over the colleges by government departments or governing councils tended to be conservative in emphasis, to stress continuity. By contrast, where control was directly exercised by Ministers of the Crown and where there were relatively frequent changes in incumbency of the relevant portfolio, continuity in policy was less assured.
• 8 The life of advisory committees was typically marked by early enthusiasms and influence in dealing with urgent matters of policy. After these matters had been dealt with there was generally a decline in activity and influence, growing disillusion among members, and eventually reconstitution or replacement of the committee.

     

Implementation of Digital-Era Governance: The Case of Open Data in U.S. Cities

This article examines the institutional factors that influence the implementation of open data platforms in U.S. cities. Public management scholarship has argued that governance can be transformed by new information technologies that improve transparency and engagement, reduce administrative costs, and support performance management systems. However, this argument ignores key risks for administrators, as well as institutional and political obstacles that can thwart implementation. This article uses hierarchical negative binomial regression to analyze the organizational and institutional features influencing implementation in more than 1,500 departments across 60 cities. Department type and administrative capacity are strongly associated with the number of open data files available, while city-level institutional characteristics and administrative capacity are not significant factors. Municipal demographics are also identified as a factor, suggesting a potential demand-side influence from wealthy and technologically proficient residents. Evidence for Practice

• The implementation of open data policies benefits from targeted approaches at the department level rather than uniform, citywide objectives or requirements.
• City executive-level positions such as chief data or information officers are not necessarily associated with successful implementation, measured by the number of open data files made available.
• Open data implementation involves additional administrative responsibilities and labor at the department level, so city administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should devote time and resources to working directly with departments to facilitate and encourage data sharing.
• Administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should consider the costs associated with investing in increasing individual departments’ abilities to balance the additional administrative responsibilities and labor involved.

     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Comparative Chinese/American Public Administration

In the field of public administration practice, China has a history of several thousand years, whereas the United States has a much shorter history of hundreds of years of governance. In terms of the scholarly development of public administration in China, the roots of those intellectual resources can be traced far back, to Confucius’s ideology of governance and the ancient development of a civil service system some 2,000 years ago. In terms of the systematic development of public administration as an independent subject of learning, however, the United States has been a leader worldwide. Public administration as a discipline in the United States dates back to the late nineteenth century, with extensive scholarly research and publications in the early twentieth century ( Follett 1926 ; Goodnow 1900 ; Taylor 1912 ; Weber 1922 ; White 1926 ). In the Chinese context, although there were occasional studies of public administration in the first half of the twentieth century, systematic study was deferred until the middle of the 1980s. They were only truly continued following the official launch of master of public administration degree programs at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. In this respect, China was a latecomer, and Chinese scholars almost always date the study and scholarship in this field to about 1980. Over the past eighty years or so, the United States has established more than 200 MPA and related programs, while China has founded 100 MPA programs in just the past eight years. Recognizing the urgent need for MPA training, China is trying to catch up to the demand for social development and societal transition. Considering that China has a population of 1.3 billion, compared to a population of 300 million in the United States, it looks as if there is great potential for China to expand its MPA programs.     

Overcoming resistance to resistance in public administration: Resistance strategies of marginalized publics in citizen‐state interactions

There has been a general resistance to resistance studies in public administration (PA) research. Although previous research has documented instances of selective policy implementation by PA practitioners that put minority groups at a comparative disadvantage, we still have a limited understanding of the different ways in which these groups contest discriminatory administrative practices especially within non‐western developing countries. To address this gap, in this article, I discuss the various strategic responses the Khawaja Sira—a genderqueer group of Pakistan—employ in their interactions with the frontline police workers to contest their hyper‐surveillance and moral policing. The discussion illustrates that while Khawaja Sira mostly rely on individual acts of contestation in their interactions with police officers, the emerging leadership of the Khawaja Sira is enabling emergence of new forms of resistance based on social capital and collective protests. In addition to contributing to the limited literature on citizen perspectives and LGBT issues in PA research, the theoretical framework of resistance presented here can serve as a good template to analyze citizen responses to discriminatory frontline practice in other sociopolitical contexts as well.