Funding,Management, and Individual-Level Factors: What Factors Matter in Predicting Perceived Organizational Effectiveness?

Scholars have examined organizational effectiveness in state and federal government agencies to determine which factors matter. Their findings revealed that public organizational effectiveness is affected by environmental, human resource management, organizational, and individual-level factors. However, what is conspicuously absent is the impact funding has on organizational effectiveness. To further previous literature, this article examined agency funding levels as well as management and individual-level factors to determine the relationship these factors had on organizational effectiveness. In doing so, a model was developed to predict perceived organizational effectiveness, and it was tested on 330 United States government workers in the state of New York. The findings from the analysis were clear: perceived organizational effectiveness was impacted by employee perceptions regarding the level of funding the agencies were allocated. Additionally, the level of role ambiguity and employee participation in decision-making as well as employee job performance and public service motivation levels were also found to matter. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed in the article.     

Job Satisfaction of Public Sector Employees in Sub-Saharan Africa: Testing the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire in Ghana

Public sector administration in sub-Saharan Africa experiences a myriad of problems of the logical perception between worker dissatisfaction and demotivation of job standards. This study tested the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) in a typical public sector organization in sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 100 usable surveys were analyzed with SPSS. A very low level of job satisfaction was indicated, and more than 83% of respondents indicated dissatisfaction in their pay and the amount of work they do. Significant differences in job satisfaction scores were also found in the educational level of staff, and between genders. The study outcome highlights the roles of employees and organizational weak spots of human resource management (HRM) practices in a typical sub-Saharan African country, and provides an alternative pathway in employee satisfaction and performance outcome.     

Do Role Clarity and Job Satisfaction Mediate the Relationship between Telework and Work Effort?

The empirical association between telework and work effort, as well as how this relationship is mediated by role clarity and job satisfaction, is lacking in the literature. As a consequence, the direct and indirect impact of telework on work effort in U.S. federal government agencies was examined in the article. Results indicate that telework was inversely related to work effort. Moreover, role clarity and job satisfaction did not mediate the relationship between telework and work effort. The implications these results have for theory and practice are thoroughly discussed in the article.     

Taking the bait: Maoists and the democratic lure in Nepal

After leading a tumultuous revolutionary people's war for a decade, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has slithered into a peace process and is being egged on to put the revolution to the vote. Maoists themselves are sending mixed signals about whether or not they are going to take the democratic bait to save the “beautiful” democratic, peace process from the “beastly” people's war, urban insurrection and revolution. My contention is that unless the lie of the liberal political process is identified in its most democratic, free and fair forms and not just in its secret, conspiratorial underside, the Maoists might be lured into an unbalanced democratic game. The article argues that the Maoists were not just pushed into this political process by force of circumstance, as the best possible option, “given the international and national situation,” but it seems to follow from their flawed understanding that the present political process constitutes a progressive phase in the path to a New Democratic society. The Maoists are, of course, not abandoning the revolution as such but they are possibly metamorphosing from revolution-embodied to speaking in the name of the revolution – perhaps with the added risk of transforming the revolution itself to just a name.     

Categorical Threat and Protest Policing: Patterns of Repression Before and After Democratic Transition in South Korea

This article challenges the view that protest policing depends on situational threats, such as violent, disruptive tactics and the size of protests, by analysing how categorical threats assigned to movement groups' social-demographic identities affect repression. An analysis of South Korea's democratic transition reveals that categorical threats importantly trigger differential repression after the transition. Compared to moderate “citizens' movements” that thrived during Korea's democratisation, the protests organised by “people's movements” incurred state repression after controlling for other alternative variables. The result is also supported by qualitative evidence from multiple in-depth interviews with activists. The implication of differential repression is discussed in terms of how a democratising state attempts to channel and regulate social movements.     

Seeking the Soul of Democracy: A Review of Recent Research into Citizens' Political Talk Culture

This article provides a review of extant empirical research on ordinary citizens' everyday political communication, its phenomenology, determinants, consequences, and relevance for democratic politics. It highlights the recent upsurge in interest in the study of political conversations against the background of both classic and more recent developments in democratic theory and empirical research that served as intellectual inspirations. The article discusses conceptual and methodological issues of research into interpersonal political communication and presents key findings with regard to the background and consequences of political talk, tapping into fundamental aspects of democratic citizenship such as political preferences, participation, cognitive involvement with politics as well as orientations towards fellow citizens and towards the democratic political system. It concludes with an assessment of the state of the art in this field of study, highlighting desirable avenues for future empirical research.     

Ethnicity,Language Capacity,and Perception of Ethnic-Specific Services Agencies in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

Abstract

This study examined (1) the ethnicity and language similarity between professional staff and service users, and (2) client satisfaction in ethnic-specific services (ESS) agencies serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). A combined method of agency survey and focus groups was used to collect the data. Findings indicate that ESS served a diverse AAPI population, although some ethnic and language sub-groups remain to be under served. Service users clearly prefer ESS, which is associated with a higher level of trust than mainstream services. However, staff simply sharing similar language or ethnic background does not automatically warrant trust. Trust is developed through a sense of respect that staff demonstrates within a cultural context. The feeling of trust is likely to determine AAPI clients' commitment to remain in treatment, a prior condition for achieving any desirable outcome.     

The significance of the Cracow summit

This article assesses whether the EU contributes to long-term positive change in societies emerging from violent conflict, helping them ‘mend’ or whether it simply encourages societies to ‘make do’ with the status quo. To do so, the article focuses on two of the principles found in the Treaty, peace and justice for human rights violations. It examines how the EU translates the principles of peace and justice into policy and puts them into practice by analyzing EU engagement in peace mediation, transitional justice, and security sector reform in general and through in-depth examination of EU engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It questions the prevailing discourse that greater inter-institutional coherence would improve EU security provision and considers whether and how the EU prioritizes between peace and justice. The article finds that principles may be translated into policy and put into practice, and practice is often ahead of policy. But this is uneven within as well as across the institutions. Greater coherence between principle, policy, and practice, rather than between institutions, would improve EU security provision and enable prioritization. If the EU settles for making do, it undermines its considerable potential to contribute to long-term solutions to complex conflicts.     

是战略继承还是策略调整?——日本民主党政府东北亚安全政策述评

"战略是一个国家或政府对全局性、高层次的重大问题的筹划与指导"。[1]而政策则是"国家或政党为实现一定历史时期的路线而制定的行动准则。"[2]日本民主党上台执政后,面对东北亚地区不断变化的新的地区安全环境,对于一个没有执政经验的新政党来说,其采取的各项政策在战略层面上只能是原自民党政府的继承和延续,不会因新政党上台执政而发生战略性"急变"。2011年以后,东北亚地区形势因朝鲜半岛局势、中日关系摩擦加深以及日俄在解决领土问题上的新纠纷等等,而增加了不确定性,使民主党政府的东北亚安全政策面临着新难题和新挑战,也逼迫其在安全政策上作出新调整。但这些调整仅仅是根据新形势变化作出的政策对应,多属于"策略"层面。野田首相其人、性格及处事方式的圆滑,为日本走出东北亚地区安全"困局"多少会增加一些新变量。