When Less is More: The Impact of the Regulation on Standard Workweek on Labor Productivity in South Korea

This paper examines the impact of a workweek reduction policy on the labor productivity of manufacturing plants in Korea. Taking advantage of the stepwise introduction of the standard 40‐hour workweek in Korea, we apply a difference‐in‐differences framework to individual‐level cross‐sectional and plant‐level longitudinal data to examine the impact of the policy on working hours and output, respectively. We find that the policy reduced per‐worker hours but increased per‐worker output, which is robust to various specifications and sample restrictions. The observed increase in per‐worker output is likely to be mediated through the increase in the total factor productivity and the amount of capital stock.     

Child soldiers and distributive justice: addressing the limits of law?

This paper discusses the limitations of legal responses to the problem of child soldiery, beginning from the premise that the crime of using child soldiers is comprised of both the recruiter and the recruit. While legal approaches are addressed to the recruiter, because of the dearth of enforcement mechanisms, the protections established in international law have failed to prevent the recruitment of under-aged combatants. It remains to be seen how efficacious a deterrent the precedent-setting recent and on-going prosecutions of recruiters will be. Nonetheless, legal approaches do not address the recruit, and thus they fail to account for the complex of social reasons that prompt many children to join armed groups “voluntarily”. This paper argues that the conditions that lead children to join armed groups are structural and, thus, must be addressed structurally through developing greater “distributive justice”.     

The Dynamics of Abstract and Manifest Institutional Change: MITI and the Japanese "Economic Miracle" Reconsidered

Modern institutional theory specifies two different aspects of institutions. The first aspect—and by far the predominant perspective—sees institutions as recurrent patterns of behavior, values, norms and practices which guide social and political behavior. The second aspect refers to the manifest institutional systems of the state. These two sides of institutions are supposed to be mutually reinforcing. Thus, institutions are "embedded" in overarching systems of values at the same time as they "constrain" behavior. This article takes exactly the opposite approach and seeks to separate the two different meanings of institutions in order to explain changes in the effective capabilities of manifest institutions. Using the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as an empirical case, the argument advanced in the article is that variations in the institutional leverage and capacity of MITI can to a significant extent be explained by changes in the relationship between "abstract" and "manifest" institutions, i.e. the extent to which the institutional arrangement of the state reflects predominant systems of values, norms and beliefs in society. In addition to the vast literature on institutional theory, the article draws on a series of interviews with MITI senior officials between 1988 and 1996 as well as on the literature on Japanese political economy.     

Effect of Blameworthiness and Outcome Severity on Attributions of Responsibility and Damage Awards in Comparative Negligence Cases

We studied the effects of accident victims' legal blameworthiness and the severity of their injuries on determinations of responsibility and damage awards. In general, participants tended to ascribe more fault to victims than warranted by the facts presented, displaying an antiplaintiff bias. When attributing fault and awarding damages, they were especially sensitive to the blameworthiness of the victim when the consequences of the accident were severe rather than mild. These findings appeared not to be mediated by emotional reactions to the victims. Participants tended to conflate issues of liability with what ought to have been the legally distinct question of damages. They appeared to decide comparative negligence awards not by determining percentage fault and gross damages as discrete items and then computing their product, as the law prescribes, but rather by using more holistic judgmental processes.     

Taking a Closer Look at the Empowerment‐Performance Relationship: Evidence from Law Enforcement Organizations

This article examines the influence of empowering leadership practices on police officers' job performance, perceptions of managerial effectiveness, and unit performance. These relationships are examined using multisource survey data collected from 100 law enforcement managers, 446 of their subordinates, and 98 of their direct supervisors. The analysis shows that empowering leadership contributes positively to subordinate officers' job performance and unit effectiveness. Empowering leadership is also positively associated with subordinate but not with supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Task‐oriented leadership, however, is positively associated with both subordinate and supervisor ratings of managerial effectiveness. Implications of these results for managerial leadership in law enforcement organizations are discussed.     

The Dynamics of an Interorganizational Emergency Management Network: Interdependent and Independent Risk Hypotheses

The purpose of this research is to uncover the dynamic structure of an interorganizational emergency management network after a disaster. This research tests two hypothesized network structures: interdependent risk and independent risk. While the former illustrates the importance of trust and information redundancy in coordinating and aligning emergency preparedness and response, the latter captures the tendency for local actors to seek dominant partners to bridge crucial information across the region. A stochastic actor‐based model with a forward selection strategy is used to analyze the structural effects of endogenous networks and the effects of exogenous community attributes on interorganizational ties. Based on the data sets collected before and after the 2012 typhoons in South Korea, the results support the interdependent risk hypothesis, suggesting that an interorganizational network structure tends to evolve into the notion of shared collaboration risk.     

Framing Contests and Policy Conflicts over Gas Pipelines

This paper compares and contrasts high‐conflict policy debates over the siting of three natural gas pipeline projects at different decision stages of the siting process. This paper draws on over 600 newspaper articles spanning 3 years, analyzed through Discourse Network Analysis. Drawing from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Policy Conflict framework, this paper finds that actor framing of opposing policy beliefs involves more indirect than direct confrontations, with statements in the media waxing and waning over time. Opponents of the pipelines more often explicitly argue against pipelines, while also using a broad range of conceptual arguments, whereas proponents more often couch their arguments around the economic benefits of pipelines and use fewer conceptual frames overall. We also find evidence that opposing coalitions use similar framing across different decision contexts. This paper concludes with a commentary on the status and contributions of this paper to the study of policy conflicts and next steps in advancing similar research agendas.