Who to blame: An inquiry into universal factors accounting for output variations in public–private partnership initiatives across geographical locations. Who to be blamed for not meeting performance,innovativeness, and quality outputs?

With the current controversy and blame game on output of public–private partnership (PPP) initiatives concerns, we investigate why there may be variations in achieving innovativeness, perceived quality, and performance of PPP initiatives across different geographical locations. For instance, we investigate a scenario where “a private company involved in waste management will perform in country ‘A’ but fails to perform in country ‘B’ given the same assignment and target.” We empirically sampled and make conclusions with 475 respondents from the public sector, private sector, and academia based on a survey inquiry. We adopted the structural equation modeling method using the partial least square for the data analysis. The results show that environmental dynamism causes major variations in desired output of PPP initiatives followed by collaboration capacity, environmental fit, and absorptive capacity, respectively. The findings further show that one partner cannot be blamed entirely for causing the failure of PPP initiative. However, we conclude that because on the basis of our data, environmental dynamism, which is as a result of some governmental activities, depicts the highest effect on output, public partners might be more liable. The findings from this study are an explicit view of PPP technocrats, which makes the conclusions more reliable.     

Maintaining legitimacy using external communication strategies: An analysis of police-media relations

Police organizations must strategically control their external environment in order to maintain organizational legitimacy. Exploiting their relationship with the news media is one way to accomplish this goal effectively. Despite the documented importance of crime, justice, and social control as a news topic, there is a limited understanding of the variables driving how police and media evaluate this relationship. This study used data collected from a national sample of police media personnel to fill this gap, and concluded that the police and media valued their interdependent relationship, but for different reasons. Police public information officers recognize the power of the media and attempt to use this power to promote the organization. News personnel are satisfied because the police provide data so they can easily produce crime stories. The implications for understanding how police organizations control their external organization are discussed.     

Images of China in the American Print Media: A survey from 2000 to 2002

American society's images and perceptions of China have had several recurring themes over the years. In the past, some of these have included the perception of China as a potential market for American goods and as a potential supply of converts for American missionaries. These images changed during the years of diplomatic isolation of the Cold War, turning the Chinese into a vast horde of 'reds', a faceless, invincible mass that threatened all of Asia. In the post-Cold War world, Sino-US relations face an uncertain future. The time is not far off when there will again be two superpowers, and there is the potential for conflict between them. In this new era, it is interesting to examine what images of China have emerged in contemporary American society. The goal of this paper is to do just that. By examining articles about China in four major American daily newspapers, over a three-year period, a rough sketch emerges of how China is perceived to the 'average' reader of these four publications. These images, while interesting in their own right, also provide a valuable benchmark for the direction of Sino-US relations. Overall, it seems that, just as in past periods of rivalry, negative images of China overwhelm the positive. But, before we can conclude that the current relationship is also one of competition, there are also some significant images of a country whose future lies entwined with the US in a partnership, not a battle. If we can take the articles of this study as a representative slice of American society at large, the general trend seems to be one in which, although China is sometimes viewed in a harsh and critical light, there is still hope for the two countries to come together--or even for China to become more like the United States.     

The role of procedural and distributive justice in organizational behavior

To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.