Challenges to the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteers in Traditional Nonprofit Organizations: A Case Study of Australian Meals on Wheels

Australian Meals on Wheels (MoWs) is a well-known, traditional nonprofit organization operating for over 60 years in a mixed economy of welfare, where it is positioned between the increasingly complex demands of state regulation and market efficiency. These contextual challenges cause critical tensions to an organization reliant on humanitarian principles and a large volunteer workforce. Findings show that this organization is experiencing conflicting and multiple identities which are having a significant impact on volunteer recruitment and retention. Specifically, data highlight the external challenges that threaten volunteers relating to regulation and funding, and internal challenges that tend to ignore volunteer value and instead picture volunteers as ageing and resistant to change. Findings suggest that the organization needs to work with all stakeholders to develop a shared organizational identity that blends humanitarianism with managerialism. New inclusive processes can enable better recruitment and retention practices, enabling the organization to “unfreeze” its traditional ways of operating to build a sustainable future for this much-needed organization.     

Organizational Trust and Accountability Reforms in Public Management: Analysis of Inter-agency Implementation Relations in Kenya

Contemporary governments have persistently responded to accruing implementation blind-spots by further restructuration of public bureaucracies. This has come with increased agencification and coordination efforts to enhance organizational efficacy and to produce trust for legitimation purposes. Accountability reforms in particular rarely address non-formal implementation processes that seem to characterize these efforts, mainly, inter-organizational trust. This is despite mounting evidences on the centrality of organizational trust in collaborative implementation processes of policy reforms. Basing on qualitative data from Kenya, this paper explores the production of organizational trust and its influence on the implementation environments for accountability reforms between oversight and governmental institutions. Data indicate that common difficulties in collaborative-implementation framework like fragile horizontal accountability-relations, misinterpretations of authority, obsession with control and autonomy, poor organizational-communication mechanisms, public trust deficits, poor internalization and institutionalization, etc. also correspond to problems of organizational trust. So, it is suggested that besides building public and interpersonnel trust, a policy design should also device steps that can strengthen internal-accountability systems, reduce some forms of bureaucratic slackness, enhance interorganizational communication and justice systems. This should improve inter-agency trust and ease cultural-instrumental tensions typical in collaborative implementation relations common in modern public administration.     

Are Changes Effective in Performance Management? An Analysis of Japanese Agencies

Agencies are key organizations for implementing and studying performance measurement and management (PMM). This article explores the implementation and effect of PMM in Japanese agencies. In Japan, design of the agency system included New Public Management elements, such as independence and delegation of powers, but also traditional ones, with a strong system of controls. The discourse about the soundness and ambitions of the PMM system permeated the agencies but not so much their effort toward PMM. The performance improvement attained by agencies depends on their agency characteristics, organizational culture, and organizational factors, with a remarkable influence of the organizational culture.     

Do National Economic and Political Conditions Affect Ideological Media Slant?

Political scientists are interested in the influence of the news media on politics. However, relatively few studies investigate whether or not ideological slant in news coverage changes systematically over time. If it changes systematically, what factors explain the changes? This study argues that external conditions, such as national political and economic situations, influence ideological media slant at the aggregate level. To examine this argument, “macro media bias” is measured quarterly by gauging the relative size of liberal and conservative news stories regarding domestic issues from 1958 through 2004. Utilizing ARIMA models, this study reveals that the news media tend to negatively react to government spending. Also, economic conditions, such as unemployment and inflation, significantly explain changes in the relative number of liberal and conservative news stories.

[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource(s): the coding keywords, detailed coding rules, and alternative regression results.]     

“和谐管理”与提高社科类社团活动质效分析——以桂林市社科组织为例

为了适应新形势,桂林市社科联积极探索和引入先进理念,运用“和谐管理”理论加强对所属社科类社团管理与服务,为提高本市社科类社团活动的质效,创新社会科学类社团管理的路径作了有益探索。     

论民主与效率的协调兼顾——现代行政程序的双重价值辨析

行政管理活动中,效率与民主的冲突是确实存在的,但并非不可调和。一个理想的行政程序应是民主与效率的完美统一。正确理解民主和效率对行政程序的意义及它们之间的关系,必须建立在给定的民主、效率含义基础上。本文通过语义分析、价值分析等方法,深入挖掘行政程序尤其行政执法程序中民主价值与效率价值的内在一致性,两者的协调兼顾,是提高政府执政能力的基本路径。     

Reinventing the Hong Kong state or rediscovering it? From low interventionism to eclectic corporatism

Abstract

The low-intervention state of Hong Kong in colonial times did not originate from strong neo-liberal ideological convictions. It was an artefact of the colonial political configuration, a pragmatic governing strategy adapting to the political and economic needs at the time. Political changes, economic restructuring, divestiture and marketization of state institutions since the 1980s had brought a new state form after 1997. A new business and professional elite class, embedded in an eclectic corporatist structure, evolved and brought multilateral, ad hoc and particularistic bargaining, leading to more sectoral intervention after 1997. Fragmented state institutions nonetheless weakened state capacity, making it difficult for the post-1997 state to be highly penetrative, transformative or developmental.     

The Factory： Organizational Culture,Organizational Structure,in the Small to Medium Size 21st Century Chinese Factory

China is the ＂factory to the world＂, but little is known outside of China about the small to medium size （SMS） Chinese factory. This ignorance can cause considerable misunderstanding, particularly among Western buyers of goods made in China. The Chinese factory originated in the 18th century and changed as China itself has changed. Still, the Chinese factory is different from factories that emerged in the 18th century Europe and the 19th century America, during their respective ＂industrial revolution＂ periods. This paper is a qualitative analysis of the SMS Chinese factory more than a decade into the 21st century, across industries, across regions, based on the author＇s participant observation in the course of 14 research trips to China lasting a total of two years across a 10-year time period. China has the most efficient SMS factories in the world, although many are working significantly below capacity. New Chinese factories are state-of-the-art, clean, healthful, safe, and able to deliver orders substantially on targeted schedule. Quality Control （QC） can be erratic and passed on to the buyer. On balance, strengths far exceed weaknesses, and opportunities outweigh threats, even as Taiwanese investments begin to be withdrawn from mainland China.     

Resource Priority,Fairness, and Equality-Efficiency Compromises

A central issue in theories of social justice is the potential conflict between equality and efficiency in the distribution of resources. We suggest here that resource priority is a key factor that moderates the perceived fairness of equality/efficiency compromises in resource allocation. Participants were presented with scenarios involving a policy change that pitted equality against economic efficiency in the allocation of a variety of resources that differed in their importance levels (basic versus non-basic). We found that participants gave more weight to efficiency considerations at the expense of equality in distributing non-basic (higher-level) resources than in distributing basic resources. We discuss the priority hypothesis in connection with norms of justice, human motives, the need hierarchy (deficiency versus growth needs), the consumption of basic versus non-basic resources, and the legitimacy of allocation policies. The paper is based on portions of doctoral research conducted by Eviathar Matania under the supervision of Ilan Yaniv.     

诉讼证明理念初探

我国学界对于诉讼证明理念的研究尚处于起步阶段.诉讼证明理念可以从证明目的、证明价值、证明模式和证明效率这四个维度来加以把握.近年来有关客观真实与法律真实的争论,引发了学界对传统诉讼证明理念的深刻反思.现代诉讼证明理念的内涵主要包括四个方面,即真实发现与价值选择相结合,形式正义与实质正义并重,法定证明与自由证明相统一,以及真实优先、兼顾效率.