Examining the Nature and Significance of Leadership in Government Organizations

Though the mainstream organizational literature has advanced in the last 20 years with the integration of transformational and distributed leadership theories, as well as genuine attempts at comprehensive models, the public sector literature has lagged, especially in utilizing large‐scale empirical studies. This study takes advantage of a very large government data set to test the utility of one of the best known theories, the “full range” leadership theory of Bernard Bass. It addresses three important research questions: How inclusive is Bass’s operational definition of leadership? How much of an impact do Bass’s leadership competencies have on follower satisfaction? Finally, how important is transformational leadership compared to transactional leadership in government settings? The results indicate that Bass’s broad definition of leadership comes quite close to capturing what federal employees perceive to be effective leadership. The relationship between good leadership in an organization and follower satisfaction is also presented as an important outcome in the federal government. Finally, both transactional and transformational leadership are perceived as important in the federal government, although transformational leadership is considered slightly more important even after shifting one important factor, individualized consideration, back to the transactional model.     

The need for performance auditing in the public sector and the best-practice frontier

The article is organized as follows. In Section 2 the arguments for performance auditing in the public sector are reviewed along the lines of the public-choice approach. An international comparison of the functions of supreme auditing institutions (Section 3) reveals that the BelgianRekenhof-Cour des Comptes lags behind, lacking a mandate for performance auditing. In Section 4 the notions of efficiency and effectiveness are clarified. Section S compares the concept of the best-practice frontier with a standard production function. In the public sector one is often confronted with a weak knowledge of the underlying technology. This poses problems of specification for a parametric estimation. Therefore a nonparametric frontier may be recommended. In Section 6 the Farrell method and the free disposal hull are presented. Moreover, when several inputs are transformed into a multiple output (instead of one single homogeneous output), data-envelopment analysis offers a solution (Section 7). These latter methods are also illustrated by an international empirical comparison of the efficiency of public enterprises: postal services in Section 6 and railway companies in Section 7. Some conclusions are reported in the final Section 8.     

Determination at the nanogram range of rilatinic acid in urine after ion-pair extraction

Ion-pair extraction and extractive alkylation of urine allows a simple, rapid, and very sensitive detection by TLC as well as EC-GLC tecnhiques, of rilatinic acid in small urine samples after the oral intake of therapeutic doses of methylphenidate.     

Ranking the Law Schools: The Reality of Illusion?

This article examines the problems inherent in any endeavor to rank law schools on a qualitative basis. Analysis of possible ranking criteria forces the conclusion that attempting to assign specific rankings based on objective criteria is a futile task. However, objective tests are suggested which indicate, on application to available data, that about 40 of the approximately 165 ABA-AALS-accredited law schools are of superior quality and differ among themselves only as to an image of prestige.