The politics of social spending after the Great Recession: The return of partisan policy making

Prior research shows that the effect of partisanship on social expenditure declined over time in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. In this article, the author argues that the 2007/2008 recession resulted in the reemergence of partisan policy making in social spending. This was a result of mainstream parties needing to respond to the growing challenge from nonmainstream parties as well as demonstrating that they responded to the economic crisis by offering different policy solutions. Using a panel of 23 OECD countries, the author shows that since the Great Recession, partisan effects on social spending are once again significant. These effects are more likely to be observed where the salience of the Left–Right dimension is higher. In accordance with classic theories of economic policy making, left‐wing governments are more likely to increase social spending when unemployment is higher and right‐wing governments restrain social expenditure when the budget deficit is greater.     

The Public Governance of Collaborative Spaces: Discourse, Design and Democracy

This article investigates the relationship between democratic practices and the design of institutions operating in collaborative spaces, those policy and spatial domains where multiple public, private and non-profit actors join together to shape, make and implement public policy. Partnerships are organizational manifestations of institutional design for collaboration. They offer flexibility and stakeholder engagement, but are loosely coupled to representative democratic systems. A multi-method research strategy examines the impact of discourses of managerialism, consociationalism and participation on the design of partnerships in two UK localities. Analysing objective measures of democratic performance in partnerships and interpreting the discursive transition from earlier practices in representative democratic institutions we find that institutional designs for collaboration reflect different settlements between discourses, captured in the distinction between club, agency and polity-forming partnership types. The results show how the governance of collaborative spaces is mediated through a dominant set of discursively defined institutional practices.     

Leading and Managing at the Boundary: Perspectives Created by Joined Up Working

Based on a process of action inquiry, this article reflects on the capacities that chief executives need in order to engage effectively with ‘joined-up’ working. It begins by examining the paradoxical feelings that chief executives can hold about their roles – feeling both powerful and powerless at the same time, for example. By adopting the notion of boundary, it is possible to understand more about the complexities that chief executives need to work with. These boundaries are emotional as much as they are structural. They imply a duality in the role as the chief executive works with the shifting relationships between the organisation and its external world, between organisational and political leadership, and between ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’. To be able to work at the boundary, there is a premium on the capacities for sense-making through systemic analysis, for maintaining personal perspective and for seeing leadership as synonymous with learning. In the end, leading at the boundary challenges the chief executive to think from time to time about what he or she stands for as a person.     

Die Bedeutung institutionalistischer Ansätze für das Verständnis von Organisations- und Managementprozessen in multinationalen Unternehmen

Es ist auffällig, dass sich die sozialwissenschaftlich orientierte Organisationsforschung nur sehr wenig und theoretisch recht einseitig mit Multinationalen Unternehmen (MNU) als Organisationen beschäftigt. Organisationstheoretische Erklärungsmodelle, die das Verhalten in und von Organisationen jenseits technischer und ökonomischer Unternehmensumwelten erklären, sind daher eher rar und erst seit kurzem in einschlägigen Forschungsarbeiten zu finden. Ziel dieses Beitrages ist, die jüngere und vorwiegend englischsprachige Diskussion über den Einfluss von Institutionen und unterschiedlichen lokalen Rationalitäten auf Organisations- und Managementprozesse in MNU aufzuarbeiten. Im Folgenden werden die Grundlagen, wesentlichen Ansätze, Kernaussagen und Konsequenzen des europäischen und amerikanischen Institutionalismus dargestellt. Insbesondere wird der Beitrag die Bedeutung, aber auch Grenzen dieser beiden Ansätze für die Analyse von Veränderungsprozessen in Multinationalen Unternehmen skizzieren und evaluieren. Im Vergleich zum noch dominanten ?evolutionären Paradigma“ in der internationalen Managementforschung wird hier das alternative Erklärungspotenzial von sozialwissenschaftlichen Institutionentheorien herausgestellt und anhand von vier verschiedenen Aspekten diskutiert: dem Einfluss des Heimatlandes, der Macht und der Autonomie von Tochtergesellschaften sowie der Entstehung transnationaler sozialer Räume.     

Technology transfer in a global economy

The emergence of new technologies is acting both as a driving force and an enabling factor to globalization. At the same time, these technologies are changing rapidly, shortening the life cycles of products and the underlying processes, and raising technology costs. Technology transfer from academic and scientific institutions has thus transformed into a strategic variable for companies and nations to cope with these challenges in a global economy. This article introduces the rationale for the special issue on the role of technology transfer in a global economy. The paper summarizes the main topics and themes covered by a selection of papers and keynotes presented at the annual conference of the Technology Transfer Society in 2011, as well as providing some pointers towards a future research agenda.     

Incorporating consensus and conflict into the legitimacy of law

Recent research on the legitimacy of law is dominated by the confirmed effect of procedural justice on views of legitimacy. The procedural justice research, however, neglects the substantive component of law and how that substance may conflict with value systems of the various subcultures that constitute a complex society. This paper reviews classic and contemporary theory, as well as supporting empirical criminological research, in order to argue that views of the legitimacy of a given law can also be affected by such conflicting value sets. Allotting subculture a central influence, a model is proposed that integrates a sociological conception of the legitimacy of law with the existing research from psychology on procedural justice.