A Preliminary Theory of Informal Accountability among Network Organizational Actors

Widespread government contracting for nonprofit social service delivery has resulted in extensive reliance on networks of service providers, which involve complicated accountability dynamics. The literature has tended to emphasize formal aspects of accountability in contract relationships, focusing on the specification of contract terms, performance measures, reporting relationships, and stipulated consequences. Far less attention has been focused on the interorganizational and interpersonal behaviors that reflect informal accountability. This article examines the informal norms, expectations, and behaviors that facilitate collective action and promote informal accountability among nonprofit network actors. The data are based on in‐depth interviews with nonprofit senior administrators in four major metropolitan areas. Based on this research, the authors propose a preliminary theory of informal accountability that links (1) the shared norms and facilitative behaviors that foster informal accountability for collective outcomes, (2) the informal system of rewards and sanctions used to promote and reinforce behavioral expectations, and (3) the challenges that may undermine informal accountability.     

Female crime and household control in early modern Frankfurt am Main

This article investigates the way in which informal control by household authorities affected how female crime was prosecuted in early modern Frankfurt am Main. Crime historians have argued that female crime was a particular urban phenomenon during this period. They have attributed this to a relatively high level of independence of women and the existence of many formal social control institutions. This article shows that due to strongly enforced patriarchal ideals concerning household authority in the Holy Roman Empire supposedly ‘rural’ characteristics (low levels of independence and high levels of informal control) could also be found in distinctly urban settings, like Frankfurt am Main. As the household was viewed as the central location for social order, authorities required everyone to reside in an orderly household. Unlike regions in which household control was weaker, the majority of women, including migrants, were therefore incorporated in networks of informal control through their position in the household. This means that strong informal control within the household, which is normally associated with close-knit communities in the countryside, also played a dominant role in the urban community of Frankfurt. The criminal investigation records show that only few domestics were prosecuted formally; rather they were disciplined by their master – leaving a possibly very large dark number of female criminality. Most of the offenders appearing in the criminal investigation records were those that had failed to secure a position within a household. Owing to the reliance on household control, cities like Frankfurt am Main knew a distinct type of urban female offender.     

Disentangling effort and performance: a renewed look at gender differences in commercializing medical school research

Recently, questions about gender gaps in science have extended to academic technology transfer. Using systematic data on US medical school faculty, we capture both behavior and performance, examining the hypothesis that women are less likely than men to commercialize their research findings. We pooled faculty invention data from ten departments in three Academic Health Centers from 1991 to 1998??a period when patenting had become prevalent and other researchers note that a gender gap was pronounced. Rather than focusing on patenting, we capture the first step in the commercialization process, as well as the subsequent successful licensing of faculty inventions to a company. We find no significant gender differences in the likelihood of reporting inventions or successfully commercializing them. We do find differences in the number of inventions reported, however, with women disclosing fewer inventions than their male counterparts. Our results demonstrate that gender effects are highly conditioned by employment context and resources. We attribute differences in our findings with regards to gender to the use of outcome measures that capture both behavior and performance, and the inclusion of a more extensive set of control variables.     

Internal Whistle‐Blowing in the Public Service: A Matter of Trust

Although employee reporting of workplace ethical violations is recognized as an important measure for managing the integrity of the public service, not many public employees who have observed ethical violations actually report them. This article examines and compares the links between employee perceptions of trustworthiness of different organizational members and internal whistle‐blowing. It differentiates between trustworthy coworkers, supervisors, and senior managers. It uses cross‐sectional data from 10,850 employees in the Australian Public Service in 2013 and 2016, which are aggregated to construct longitudinal data for 60 organizations. Among the three groups examined, perceptions of trustworthy senior managers are found to be most strongly related to internal whistle‐blowing.     

Inaction,under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance

This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country.

     

Organizational Influences,Public Service Motivation and Work Outcomes: An Australian Study

ABSTRACT

This research examines the influence of organizational factors—intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, work relations with management, and work relations with co-workers—on the relationship between public service motivation (PSM) and two work outcomes: job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Using data from the 2005 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes of over 2,200 employees in the Australian public and private sectors, this study found a direct and significant association between the two work outcomes and PSM (and the PSM-fit variable). Despite their significant and direct effects on the work outcomes, the organizational factors did not show any significant moderating effects on the relationships between PSM-fit and the two work outcomes.