GitHub use in public administration in Canada: Early experience with a new collaboration tool

GitHub is a web‐based digital project hosting service that facilitates collaboration. We introduce how GitHub works and assess how it has been used in the public sector in Canada based on interviews with federal government leaders and a survey of Canadian public service GitHub users. With little research to date on public sector use of GitHub, and none on its use in Canadian governments, we explore the early experience with this collaboration tool and consider the possible implications for collaboration in government.     

Facilitating officer/councillor relationships — Meeting the Post‐Widdicombe challenge

Democracy Rediscovered, Margaret Simey, Pluto Press, 1988, pp. 138, £14.95.

Stalker, John Stalker, Harrap, 1988, pp. 288, £12.95 (hardback).

Public Sector Pay. Review of 1987: Prospects for 1988, KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock, Public Finance Foundation, IDS Public Sector Unit, 1988, £25;

Salaries and Benefits in Local Government Practice, IDS Public Sector Unit, KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock, 1988.

Urban Development Corporations: Six years in London's Docklands, Docklands Consultative Committee, (Unit 4 Stratford Office Village, 4 Romford Rd, London E15 4EA), 1988, pp. 44, £5 + p&;p.

Public Policy‐Making for Local Government, J. A. Chandler, Croom Helm Studies in Public Policy‐Making, Croom Helm, 1988, pp. 202, £25.00 (hardback) and £9.95 (paperback).

Local Government in the Community, Colin Mellors and Nigel Copperthwaite, pp. 233 + pp. 6 select bibliography, ICSA Publications Ltd., Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, 1987, £14.95 (paperback).     

Target Hardening and Terrorist Signaling: The Case of Aviation Security

In this article, we examine the relationship between hardening a target and the value that a terrorist group derives from attacking it. We use a simple expected value framework to compare how the expected value of attacking a hardened target varies between a violence-based approach, where terrorists are presumed to be maximizing the physical damage done to the target, and a signaling-based approach, where terrorists are presumed to be maximizing the symbolic value of their attack. We argue that, if it is proper to understand terrorist attacks as costly signals of terrorist strength or determination, hardening a target actually increases the expected value of attacking a target (relative to its value before hardening), even if the attack fails. We go on to examine the evolution of aviation security, and trace how al-Qaeda's views of airplanes and airports as targets have changed since 9/11. As aviation targets were hardened with increasingly onerous security measures, al-Qaeda began to see even attacks that did not result in detonation as successes, in large part because of what they signaled about al-Qaeda's abilities, and the ability of al-Qaeda to impose costs on the U.S. and other countries even in the absence of explosions.     

The bounds of smart decline: a foundational theory for planning shrinking cities

Economic decline has led to a new wave of population decline throughout the US, meaning more and more cities are shrinking. Growing interest in using smart decline principles to respond to shrinkage has been met with controversy in cities such as Detroit and Cleveland. This paper advances a foundational theory of smart decline that takes as its starting point discussions of ethics, equity, and social justice in the planning and political theory literature, but is well grounded in observations of successful smart decline practice.     

International Comparison of Public and Private Employees’ Work Motives,Attitudes, and Perceived Rewards

This article presents a conceptual perspective on the distinctive characteristics of public organizations and their personnel. This perspective leads to hypotheses that public organizations deliver distinctive goods and services that influence the motives and rewards for their employees. These hypotheses are tested with evidence from the International Social Survey Programme in order to compare public and private employees in 30 nations. Public employees in 28 of the 30 nations expressed higher levels of public‐service‐oriented motives. In all of the countries, public employees were more likely to say they receive rewards in the form of perceived social impact. In most of the countries, public employees placed less importance on high income as a reward and expressed higher levels of organizational commitment.

Practitioner Points

• The findings presented here add to previous evidence that public employees seek and attain more altruistic and public‐service‐oriented rewards than private sector employees. In particular, we add evidence that these differences hold in many different nations and cultural contexts.
• Compensation and incentive system reforms in many governments have often concentrated on financial incentives and streamlining procedures for discipline and removal. Such matters are important but should not drive out concerns with showing public employees the impact of their work on the well‐being of others and on the community and society. Leaders and managers should invest in incentive systems that emphasize such motives and rewards.
• Leaders and managers should invest in the use of altruistic and socially beneficial motives and rewards in recruiting systems.

     

Shared Race/Ethnicity,Court Procedural Justice,and Self‐Regulating Beliefs: A Study of Female Offenders

Using survey data from a sample of white, black, and Hispanic incarcerated females (N = 554), we examine if the theoretically hypothesized and empirically demonstrated relationship between procedural justice and obligation to obey the law is substantiated among a sample of offenders and explore the impact that sharing the race/ethnicity of the defense attorney and prosecutor in their most recent conviction has on female inmates' perceptions of court procedural justice and their perceived obligation to obey the law. The findings reveal that female offenders who perceive the courts as more procedurally just report a significantly greater obligation to obey the law. In addition, white female inmates who had a white prosecutor were significantly more likely to perceive the courts as procedurally just. Non‐whites, though, perceive the courts as more fair if they encountered a minority prosecutor regardless of whether the prosecutor was black or Hispanic.