Performance management and “undesirable” organizational behaviour: Standardized testing in Ontario schools

Performance management (PM) is a major administrative mechanism for assessing efficiency and effectiveness, and for exacting accountability from organizations and individuals. Many have argued, however, that using PM in such ways creates perverse incentives and may lead to undesirable behaviours, such as the obstruction of accurate performance measurement in an effort to avoid public mortification. By examining the introduction of standardized testing in the Ontario public school system, this article adds to the debate on whether PM leads to undesirable behaviours and distorts the representation of actual performance by public sector employees. It argues that, while PM in the public sector may be well intentioned, it may generate a system that produces undesired results.     

The ambiguities of political terrorism in Central America

Abstract

Over the last ten years left‐wing terrorism in Central America has spawned a number of related and opposed phenomena. Right‐wing terrorism has become very active but has degenerated into pseudo‐left‐wing terrorism and finally into gangsterism. Examples of this are the alleged Chacon group in El Salvador and the related activities of the Zimeri gang in Guatemala. Non‐Central American factors have also come into play, such as connections with the PLO and the activities of Cuban exile groups. This situation has made it extremely difficult to label any individual act of terrorism as being related to the Right or to the Left.     

Dollar diplomacy and the Persian bubble

The Lawrence medal in question was purchased some thirty years ago in New Zealand and the obverse side had clearly been filed down. Relatively few Lawrence medals were ever struck, but extensive research has not yet revealed the identity of the original recipient of a medal now safely back with the Society     

The UK Politics of Overseas Voting

The enfranchisement of non‐resident citizens has always been controversial in the UK, where for historical reasons, voting rights are not as closely associated with citizenship as elsewhere. The introduction of ‘overseas’ voting in the 1980s by the Conservatives was contested by Labour as a form of ‘international gerrymandering’ since expatriates were widely assumed to be disproportionately wealthy and therefore more likely to vote Tory. Expatriate campaigners have been increasingly vocal in denouncing the ‘electoral injustice’ of the ‘fifteen‐year rule’ which disenfranchises them after fifteen years abroad, and the exclusion of so many from the EU referendum highlighted their cause. A recent private member's bill proposing ‘votes for life’ for UK expatriates aimed to meet their demands to abolish the time restriction, now considered anachronistic. But their arguments were hijacked by historically embedded attitudes and disputes driven by party politics, ending in a dramatic and bewildering filibuster which this paper elucidates.