A ‘Fruitless Obsession with Accuracy’: The Uses of Sensemaking in Public Sector Performance Management

Sensemaking provides a framework for understanding and interpreting managers' working lives, based on a thorough critique of rational choice models. It refutes rational choice, and aims not to predict, prove or control but simply to explain: the making of sense. This article, based on the author's original prizewinning MBA thesis, presents research undertaken in 2005–2006 on the uses of sensemaking in understanding local government organisations' contrasting experiences of performance management systems: an internal system in Canadian city government, and an externally-imposed system in the form of the now abandoned Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in British local government. Key literature utilised includes social and organisational psychologist Karl Weick, British complexity theorists such as Ralph Stacey, and a literature on the politics of organisational behaviour (such as Guy Peters et al.). A critique of rational choice and summary of sensemaking precedes an account of phenomenological case study research across two countries, undertaken using ethnographic field methods. The author argues that using sensemaking to understand performance management systems provides a further imperfect means of making sense of inherent organisational equivocality. These systems are radically interpreted as devices for making sense of experience in organisations in which human behaviour cannot be expected to be forever accurately predicted and controlled. Conclusions with enduring relevance for practising managers are presented on the personal, tactical, methodological and philosophical ‘uses’ of sensemaking in managers' working lives.     

A Prehistory of the Best Value Regime

Best Value was one of the central planks of New Labour's modernisation agenda for local government. This article uncovers the origins of the regime by unpicking the activities of two working groups responsible for its design. Licking its wounds in the aftermath of the 1987 General Election the Labour Party's leadership had come to see the party's record in local government as a source of increasing embarrassment. A series of policy initiatives, first emerging from the party's policy review, later given the Best Value tag, were intended to neutralise producer interests and improve the party's reputation for governing competence.     

Four Years After the Collapse of the USSR

A prominent French political scientist and specialist on Russia introduces this special issue of Post-Soviet Affairs, The essay notes recent literature on Russia's regions and challenges analysts to rethink prevailing conceptions of center-periphery relations, centralization versus decentralization of political power, and authoritarian versus democratic politics. Focis is on regional elites' attitudes toward political inclusion and on the mutual dependence of elites.     

Some recent additions to the library

Richard Calland &; Paul Graham (Eds), IDASA's Democracy Index — Democracy in the Time of Mbeki, Cape Town: Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA), Cape Town, 2005, R150, 252 pages.

Pieter Wolvaardt, A Diplomat's Story: Apartheid and Beyond, 1969–1998, South Africa: Galago Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1–919854–15–0, R225, 336 pages.

Greg Mills, The Security Intersection: The Paradox of Power in an Age of Terror, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2005, 321 pages.

Hugh Pope, Sons of the Conquerors. The Rise of the Turkic World, New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2005. ISBN 1–58567–641–1. 413 pages.     

"God We Had Fun": The CIA in China and Sino-American Relations

This article deals with two sets of memories of the Partition of British India in 1947. The first is defined as “Partition memory”; the second set consists of the memories of Muslims who reside today in the state of Jharkhand, India. The author shows that the “enactment” of Partition memory — at different times, in different places and ways, and with different intentions — reinforces the original division of British India into two separate nations, along religious lines, and divides people into binary-opposed but internally homogenous communities of “Hindu locals” and “Muslim foreigners.” Drawing on interviews conducted in Jharkhand in 2000-2001, the author shows that local Muslims experienced the events of 1947 very differently from what Partition memory would suggest. Their memories, which are rarely included in the official history of Partition, challenge the dominant history by underscoring multiple identities based on region rather than on religion. The author concludes by emphasizing that memories similar to those presented in this article should be included in the official Partition history for two reasons: they challenge the threat that a one-sided presentation of Partition memory poses and they will enrich and possibly even transform official Partition history.     

An open letter/response

Abstract

I would offer a comment or two on your review of my book because I think that you did not interpret the book in the way in which I wrote it. I am writing in the hope of clearing up some things; of clarifying our areas of disagreement as opposed to misunderstanding.     

Shaping Citizen Perceptions of Police Legitimacy: A Randomized Field Trial of Procedural Justice

Exploring the relationship between procedural justice and citizen perceptions of police is a well‐trodden pathway. Studies show that when citizens perceive the police acting in a procedurally just manner—by treating people with dignity and respect, and by being fair and neutral in their actions—they view the police as legitimate and are more likely to comply with directives and cooperate with police. Our article examines both the direct and the indirect outcomes of procedural justice policing, tested under randomized field trial conditions. We assess whether police can enhance perceptions of legitimacy during a short, police‐initiated and procedurally just traffic encounter and how this single encounter shapes general views of police. Our results show significant differences between the control and experimental conditions: Procedurally just traffic encounters with police (experimental condition) shape citizen views about the actual encounter directly and general orientations toward the police relative to business‐as‐usual traffic stops in the control group. The theorized model is supported by our research, demonstrating that the police have much to gain from acting fairly during even short encounters with citizens.     

The Effect of Image Alterations on Identification Using Palmar Flexion Creases

Palmprints are identified using matching of minutia points, which can be time consuming for fingerprint experts and in database searches. This article analyzes the operational characteristics of a palmar flexion crease (PFC) identification software tool, using a dataset of 10 replicates of 100 palms, where the user can label and match palmar line features. Results show that 100 palmprint images modified 10 times each using rotation, translation, and additive noise, mimicking some of the characteristics found in crime scene palmar marks, can be identified with a 99.2% genuine acceptance rate and 0% false acceptance rate when labeled within 3.5 mm of the PFC. Partial palmprint images can also be identified using the same method to filter the dataset prior to traditional matching, while maintaining an effective genuine acceptance rate. The work shows that identification using PFCs can improve palmprint identification through integration with existing systems, and through dedicated palmprint identification applications.