Trade unions and social capital in transitional communist states: The case of China

In the study of social capital in Asia, it has been common to see kinship networks as the formation of social capital relations that create trust within society or within Asian states. This paper explores social capital surrounding industrial conflicts to see how unions relate to social capital formation in the context of recent reforms in state socialist China. This paper will argue that in the face of spontaneous outbursts of rapid social capital formation, as in industrial conflicts, the role of institutional agents is important for sustaining social capital. In China, the traditional model of the states bureaucratic trade unions has proved poorly adapted to coping with rapid social capital formation, either as organizer or suppressant. In the case of new workplaces, however, without the history of cynicism and state corporatism, the official unions that seek to represent members and sustain social capital are able to do so quite effectively. To build social capital, it is not necessary to destroy existing trade unions in China but to reorient their focus from bureaucratic centralist to representative organizations.     

Public Management 1995: The Year That Was

Until it was discontinued in 1988, the Australian Journal of Public Administration published an administrative chronicle intended to document the events of the past year in state and commonwealth administrations.
This administrative essay, the first of a projected annual series, has a different, although related purpose. It is organised on a thematic, rather than a state-by-state basis, and attempts to describe and to illuminate the main issues in public administration in Australia as they emerged through the events of 1995.
In a short essay, detail must necessarily be sacrificed in order to capture the main trends. Nevertheless, the major features of the administrative landscape, as they appeared during 1995, have been faithfully recorded.     

The Transformation of Bureaucracy? Structural Change in the Commonwealth Public Service 1983-93

Commentators have predicted bureaucratic organisations would undergo substantial change as a result of social and economic pressures. We ask whether reforms to the Australian public service over the 1983–93 period exemplify this process.
We use the methods of organisational analysis to characterise the direction of change, basing our assessment on the standard structural variables of complexity, formalisation and centralisation, together with a cultural variable. We find evidence that, overall, departments of state in the APS were becoming less bureaucratic in their structure, culture and internal function in the 1983–93 period. However, the effect was not uniform across departments, or unambiguous — formalisation, for example, increased in some respects and decreased in others. Centralisation increased overall, despite devolution of some decision-making.     

From general training to projeetization: Implications for learning processes and the roles of trainers

A large component of development aid in the past has been in the form of scholarships for officials and managers to attend short and long training programmes in the west. However, it has increasingly been felt that the impact of such programmes is limited, and hence the donor community is placing increased emphasis on ‘projectized’ training programmes, i.e. training that is geared to specific development projects in a particular country. This shift has implications for the nature of the training, the learning processes involved and the roles of trainers. This article explores these issues, firstly reviewing the debate between ‘open’ and ‘projectized’ training, and then going on to report on a case study involving a ‘projectized’ learning event run for the Nigerian Civil Service as part of its Civil Service reform programme. The case study explores the main differences between ‘open’ and ‘projectized’ training, demonstrates some of the potential problems with ‘projectized’ learning and, where appropriate, suggests solutions and offers a number of practical suggestions for trainers to consider for operating in an increasingly ‘projectized’ training scene.     

Structural deficits and infrastructure investment in the u.s. economy: an emerging policy and management crisis in capital expenditures

This article examines the impact and magnitude of underinvestment in the public infrastructure of the economy of the United States, and points to its implications for deficit reduction and economic growth. It becomes evident that the lack of both a complete inventory of infrastructure investment needs and a coherent future investment strategy at the federal level have led to a situation where the volume of public works investment in the United States has fallen critically short of what may be considered an optimum level. Recognizing the limitations of capital budgeting, a management perspective is taken in which increased planning and policy development at the national level emerge as necessities in achieving the type of results required to enhance economic growth and responsibly reduce the national deficit.     

整个民族在期待什么

整整50年前，我的父母在内罗毕的恩姆巴八岁男孩——登上国际航班，让我回英格兰的一所寄宿学校就读。我倒没有像作家鲁德亚德·吉卜林那样，他从印度被送回国接受英式教育之后，注定五年都不能见母亲一面。其后十年问，我和家人至少每年团聚一次，在这一点上我很幸运。