Why adaptive management will not save us: Exploring management directives' interaction with practice

Sparked by the critique of practitioners and academics on the excessive managerialisation of development project management, the donor community turns increasingly towards adaptive management approaches. Rather than examining the effectiveness of the new adaptive management trend, the article deals with the more fundamental question of how the underlying relationship between management frameworks and practice can be characterised. To this end, the article analyses the practices of a select number of Dutch Civil Society consortia that are working with a new adaptive management framework. Making use of a practice theory approach, the analysis finds that rules are not directly translated into practice. The presented rules (innovations) are always mediated by antecedent practice, shared histories and interactions amongst individuals, communities and artefacts. Notably, the flexibility provided for in the framework does not reach all links in the aid chain equally and is counterbalanced by the institutional realities of the aid system. The article therewith adds to the literature on everyday development management cautioning against overestimating the effects of management tools, as they operate within and are determined by the funding and accountability requirements of the larger aid regime.     

Gender and Corruption: The Mediating Power of Institutional Logics

Scholars have argued that recruiting more women to office is an effective way to curb corruption; however, the more precise mechanisms underlying why this may be the case have remained unclear. We use meso‐level theories to elaborate on the relationship and suggest that institutional logics mediate the effect of gendered experiences on corruption. We make two propositions: First, we suggest that the relationship between more women and lower levels of corruption is weaker in the state administration than in the legislative arena, because the bureaucratic administrative logic absorbs actors’ personal characteristics. Second, we refine our institutional argument by claiming that the stronger the bureaucratic principles are in the administration, the less gender matters. We validate our theory using data provided by the European Commission (EC) covering the EC countries and original data from the Quality of Government Institute Expert Surveys, covering a larger set of countries on a worldwide scale.     

From Research Evidence to “Evidence by Proxy”? Organizational Enactment of Evidence‐Based Health Care in Four High‐Income Countries

Drawing on multiple qualitative case studies of evidence‐based health care conducted in Sweden, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the authors systematically explore the composition, circulation, and role of codified knowledge deployed in the organizational enactment of evidence‐based practice. The article describes the “chain of codified knowledge,” which reflects the institutionalization of evidence‐based practice as organizational business as usual, and shows that it is dominated by performance standards, policies and procedures, and locally collected (improvement and audit) data. These interconnected forms of “evidence by proxy,” which are informed by research partly or indirectly, enable simplification, selective reinforcement, and contextualization of scientific knowledge. The analysis reveals the dual effects of this codification dynamic on evidence‐based practice and highlights the influence of macro‐level ideological, historical, and technological factors on the composition and circulation of codified knowledge in the organizational enactment of evidence‐based health care in different countries.     

The Process Model of Closure and Nonprofits: The Exit of Exit Art

Experts think of arts nonprofits as fragile organizations, prone to closure. Despite these predictions, little research has been completed on the process of closure within these organizations. I leverage a comprehensive organizational database and seventeen in-depth interviews with staff and board members to understand the process of closing New York's Exit Art. I explore the value of Sutton's (1987) process model, and its application to nonprofits by Duckles et al. (2014), to analyze the case. This study offers novel insights into management practices that may benefit nonprofits in the future, and interest scholars who study management transitions and organizational closure.     

Warum die Kontrolle abgeben? Die Delegation von Migrationskontrolle aus der Prinzipal-Agent-Perspektive

More and more, management and control of immigration is conducted in an exterritorial form that is beyond the territory of destination countries. The visa procedure in embassies and the reliance on carrier sanctions as well as the cooperation with countries of transit or within the EU’s Schengen area aim at conducting control before migration flows reach the respective country of destination. As all these control practices require the delegation of control measures, the paper identifies four types of exterritorial migration control by relying on a principal-agent framework and develops an analytical frame for studying this type of migration management. Within the visa procedure, exterritorialization is achieved by delegation between different agencies and ministries of countries of immigration. The delegation of control to transport enterprises enables exterritorialization by incorporating private actors. Delegation between sovereign nation states is the mechanism for both the cooperation with countries of transit as well as within the EU’s Schengen area. From a principal-agent perspective, the paper analyzes the logics of delegation, the actors’ rationales as well as the resulting costs of shifting migration control to places beyond national territories.     

Autonomy-related Parenting Profiles and their Effects on Adolescents’ Academic and Psychological Development: A Longitudinal Person-oriented Analysis

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - The important role of parenting is widely acknowledged, but as most studies have understood and examined it as a stable attribute (e.g., parenting style), the...