Transdisciplinary public leadership theory: Between the extremes of “traditional public administration” and “new public management”

The 21st century public organization is faced with complex problems, informed stakeholders, and information flows, which necessitate a corresponding open system view of leadership. The traditional notions of public administration and new public management had been structured by strict bureaucratic rules and managerial flexibility, respectively. This paper begins by theorizing two hypothetical constructs (helicopter and deadbeat leadership), which engage in extreme micromanagement/surveillance and negligence/indifference, respectively. Those form basis for designing an optimal (transdisciplinary) leadership, which forges synergistic link between leaders, subordinates, and external actors in codesigning objectives and strategies to address societal problems. Strategies to promote transdisciplinary leadership are discussed.     

Implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa: A Firm-Level Study of Sub-Saharan African SMEs

Journal of Chinese Political Science - Over the past few years, the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has seen a marked increase among state-owned enterprises and large...     

The specificity of public service reform

Despite universal recognition of the decline of public services and the need for reforms, considerable divergence of views exists on the strategy and sequencing of reform for individual countries according to their capacities and level of development. This article reflects on the general contours of public service reform, emphasising past experience, the need to be pragmatic rather than idealistic, the mudding of the waters by the New Public Management movement, the complications of structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions and the damage resulting from the imposition of universal solutions unfitted and unsuitable to local circumstances. Reform needs political and bureaucratic champions, careful preparation, patience and necessary investment, and capacity to neutralise opposition. Ultimately, one has to allow for a shifting combination of history, culture, politics, economics, sociology, ideology and values in each country. This analysis is applied to the possibility of reforming the public service of India, the second most populous country in the world, and the lessons to be gleaned for developing and implementing the strategy. The article then concludes with an outline of some universal problems facing public service reformers all around the globe such as corruption, the future role of government, shape of the civil service, reversing its erosion and addressing issues of fragmentation, compensation and diversity. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is sexual victimization gender specific?: the prevalence of forced sexual activity among men and women in denmark, and self-reported well-being among survivors

The present study investigates the prevalence of sexual victimization and correlations between sexual victimization and indicators of poor health in two representative samples of men and women in Denmark. Specifically, the authors explore the prevalence of self-reported victimization among adolescents (N = 5,829) and adults (N = 3,932) and analyze differences in self-reported health outcomes between male and female victims and corresponding controls. Gender differences are found in the reported prevalence of sexual victimization. Significantly more females than males reported forced sexual experiences in both samples. Associations between sexual victimization and poor health outcomes are found for both genders. Comparable patterns of association for men and women are found on a number of variables, particularly those pertaining to risk behavior.     

The predictive validity of the Depression Hopelessness Suicide screening form for self-harm among prisoners

The Depression Hopelessness Suicide Screening Form (DHS) includes 12 ‘critical items’, which have not been validated for the prospective prediction of self-harm. We conducted a retrospective cohort study (N = 4196) to validate the ability of the DHS critical items to prospectively predict inmates with at least one incident of self-harm during the first six months of imprisonment. While the critical items were highly sensitive (89.5%) at predicting incidents of self-harm, 51.3% of the inmates endorsed at least one item. Five items reflecting more recent and specific risk factors reduced the referral rate to 17.7%, while maintaining high sensitivity (84.2%). While the DHS has high sensitivity to predict inmates at risk of self-harm, treating all items as equally critical results in excessive numbers of false positives that likely exceed the capacity of prison resources for professional assessment and intervention. Referral rules based on recency and specificity of risk factors are proposed.     

Population data on the forensic genetic markers: phosphoglucomutase-1, esterase D, erythrocyte acid phosphatase and glyoxylase I

Blood specimens from white and black sample populations from Baltimore, Maryland, were analyzed for the four most forensically important, polymorphic red cell enzyme systems-phosphoglucomutase-1, esterase D, erythrocyte acid phosphatase and glyoxalase I. The distributions of the phenotypes for each marker in each racial group were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The population data were similar to previously reported data for Whites and Blacks from different geographical locations within the United States.