Combatting corruption in Kazakhstan: A role for ethics commissioners?

Central Asian countries have, since gaining independence in 1991, suffered from endemic corruption as a legacy of their Soviet roots. There are multiple ways of tackling corruption ranging from preventative to control measures. One tool in this battery of measures is the use of codes of ethics enforced through ethics commissioners. Kazakhstan is attempting to take a lead role in driving public sector reforms in the Central Asian region but has achieved limited success in addressing the seemingly intractable problem of corruption. This paper offers a formative assessment of the impact of ethics commissioners on the problem. We find limited political commitment for the initiative, institutional weaknesses, and the absence of a problem solving approach by the Kazakhstani government.     

Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

“初心使命”失守衍生的贪腐后果与成因——基于教育系统15个违纪违法案件的考察

初心使命作为党的思想建设范畴,具有重要的廉政价值,可以为构建廉政体系中的不想腐环节提供思想资源和技术支持。初心使命在实践运作中体现为岗位职责,初心使命失守是指党员干部在特定岗位上的职责意识淡化、弱化、异化。对教育系统15个违纪违法案例进行分析,发现“利益诱惑情境—初心使命失守—贪腐行为”是初心使命失守衍生的贪腐行为的内在逻辑链条,凸显了初心使命的廉政价值及作用机制。因此应根据利益诱惑情境的作用机制,构建激发初心使命特点优势与控制利益诱惑情境的双重防腐模式。从初心使命视角研究腐败行为的发生机理,弥补了当前初心使命与廉政关系研究的不足。     

Theoretically,yes, but also empirically? How the corruption-turnout link is marginally explained by civic duty to vote

Corruption is generally associated with low electoral participation. A recurrent explanation of the negative correlation between corruption and electoral turnout involves the rational calculus of the costs and benefits of voting. More specifically, in a context of high corruption, citizens do not vote because they think that doing so will hardly affect policy decisions. A number of influential studies has argued that corruption affects citizens' electoral engagement in a different and more fundamental way as well: It erodes their sense of civic duty to vote in elections. Yet, a relation between corruption and civic duty and a mediation effect of the attitude remains empirically untested. This article examines empirically whether perceived corruption and sense of civic duty are correlated, as well as whether civic duty mediates the relation between perceived corruption and turnout. It does so with the pooled Making Electoral Democracy Work data, as these data contain measures on individuals’ sense of civic duty to vote in four election levels, namely, national, regional, European, and municipal elections, as well as on their perception of corruption in each of these government levels, and on their participation in these four election levels as well. I find a weak relation between perceived corruption and civic duty, and a low mediation effect of the attitude (compared with rational factors), irrespective of the election level.     

Labour and the Culture Wars of Modern Politics

Anyone who attempts to understand and reverse the major defeat suffered by Labour in the December 2019 general election needs first to appreciate why comparisons with the defeats of the 1980s are so unhelpful. In 1983 Labour was all but wiped out across southern England, but held on comfortably across the ‘red wall’. By contrast, in 2019 Labour did well in cities and university towns across the south, and appears to have solved its historic problem with the southern, educated middle class. However, this has been at the expense of alienating working class voters across the country, not just in its former industrial heartlands. But this is not inevitable. A reanalysis of testimony from hundreds of interviews with working people across England from the 1940s onwards allows insights into attitudes and values that are often obscured by survey techniques. Crucially, it points to a broad-based vernacular liberalism at odds with the culture wars model of a terminal crisis for social democracy.     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

Just Use What You Have: Ethical Fashion Discourse and the Feminisation of Responsibility

ABSTRACT

The rise of fast fashion has meant that young women (even those on relatively low incomes) are able to ‘regularly consume and discard fashionable clothing’ [Buckley, Cheryl, and Hazel Clark. 2012. “Conceptualizing Fashion in Everyday Lives.” Design Issues 28 (4): 18–28. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00172., 21]. While this development may be aligned with the democratisation of fashion—the fact that the supply chains that deliver fast fashion are not consistent with the principles of global democracy is now also relatively common knowledge in the democratised West. This, along with growing awareness of the ecological harms associated with the fashion industry has contributed to what Elke Gaugele [2014. Aesthetic Politics in Fashion. Vienna: Sternberg Press] has termed the ‘ethical turn’ in fashion. However, despite the fact that young women are often not deemed capable of translating their (ethical) attitudes into (ethical) behaviours [McNeill, Lisa, and Rebecca Moore. 2015. “Sustainable Fashion Consumption and the Fast Fashion Conundrum: Fashionable Consumers and Attitudes to Sustainability in Clothing Choice.” International Journal of Consumer Studies 39 (3): 212–222], nor able to be ‘trusted to consistently make good decisions’ [Brooks, Andrew. 2015. Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes. London: Zed Books, 241], they are also increasingly being called to recognise their individual role in the politics of global fashion supply chains. Drawing on examples from scholarly and popular discourses as well as online peer to peer communications, this article explores the historical moment of fast fashion as an instance of both the feminisation of consumption and the feminisation of responsibility.     

东北老工业基地全面振兴中的劳模文化价值探析

东北老工业基地的劳模文化集中表现为以"爱岗敬业、争创一流、艰苦奋斗、勇于创新、淡泊名利、甘于奉献"为本质内涵的劳模精神,是东北老工业基地全面振兴的重要精神资源,应充分发挥其在全面振兴东北老工业基地中的重要价值。使劳模文化融入到政府的建设中,企业的实践中,人才的培养中。把劳模文化融入培育和践行社会主义核心价值观的全过程。     

Communication uncertainty and the fictional role of organizational culture

This theoretical investigation aims to critically analyze the concept of organizational culture as an example of ＂organizational fiction＂. In order to benefit from unveiling organizational fictions, it is necessary to be aware of how illusion is linked to stability and predictability. It is here proposed to consider communicational uncertainties as positive qualities in flexible organizations, where communicative flows between organizational spheres and individual spaces of employees or managers engender new ideas and foster creativity. Thus, a strong organizational culture, especially in intercultural contexts, may be a barrier to organizational health, but a strong and unified corporate identity is necessary to guarantee organizational stability and cohesion. The solution is the interplay between stability and contingent openness toward external influences.     

白族文化的包容性及其现实意义

包容性是白族文化最主要的特征之一。包容性几乎表现在白族文化的方方面面,但突出地表现在白族族源的多元性、白族文化源流的多源性、白族宗教信仰的多元性、南诏大理国与唐宋的关系、白族的民族观及婚俗观和丧葬观等方面;白族文化包容性的主要成因是受中原文化和白族生息的地理环境的影响;充分挖掘和利用白族文化的包容性有利于促进边疆民族地区的和谐社会建设。