Public Sector Reform in Denmark: Organizational Transformation and Evaluation

Public sector reform in Denmark has not been studied extensively, despite the country's tireless reorganization efforts and track record of trying new ideas. This article thus seeks to fill a gap in the literature. It does this by examining the reorganization of the public sector in terms of the transformation of organizations, and by assessing how successive governments have evaluated the initiatives taken with the aim of knowing whether or not reorganization has worked. The discussion shows that reorganization has been incremental and pragmatic, and that governments have rarely evaluated their reorganization efforts in any systematic way. One of the primary reasons for this has been the desire of politicians and top civil servants to have political and administrative flexibility and freedom to seize on strategic opportunities, unconstrained by the findings of detailed evaluations.     

Public or Private? Public Corporations,Companies and the Decline of the Middle Ground

In the era of New Public Management in the Anglo-Saxon countries, governments have become infatuated with things private and disparaging of things public. This dramatic attitudinal shift has been reflected in the importation of private sector business method into so much of what government does, and in the championing of privatization in its various forms as a way of reducing the size and importance of public sectors. The change represents a retreat from the more traditional acceptance that a valuable social purpose was served by middle ground structures and activities located in the outer parts of these public sectors, i.e., between the highly politicised cores of government systems and the highly commercialised institutions of private enterprise. In particular, this article argues that the form of the public (or government, statutory or crown) corporation epitomised such social value, and that the state-owned company which is now so often replacing it represents an abandoning of social value.     

New Public Management,Service Provision and Non-Governmental Organizations in Bangladesh

New public management (NPM) is now a universal phenomenon dominating the reform agenda of all countries. Bangladesh is no exception. Following the dismal performance of the state-led development the old paradigm of public sector has come under scrutiny. There is now a call for a minimal government. The scale of operations and the role of the government have to be drastically reduced to focus on core functions. In doing so, this will pave the way for the private sector and the civil society organizations to undertake developmental responsibilities in their areas of expertise. This article is an attempt to analyze the significant role played by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in rural development service provisions. It argues that the government has to share the developmental responsibilities with NGOs, which have proved their potential in reaching the target population and that an effective partnership is a sine qua non for the meaningful rural development in Bangladesh.     

Politics,Public Opinion,and Privatization: A Test of Competing Theories in Great Britain

Reforms known collectively as the new public management (NPM) are sweeping governments worldwide. For a movement espousing customer-based service orientations, there is a curious paucity of research on citizens' attitudes toward these reforms. We know little about how citizens feel about them, how they arrive at their conclusions, and how durable their attitudes are likely to be. Using citizen attitudes culled from the 1987--1992 British General Election Panel Survey, we apply multiple regression analysis to begin exploring these issues in one critical area of NPM reform: privatization of state-owned enterprises. We find that the overall predictive power of the five theoretical perspectives culled from public opinion research and operationalized in our model is quite respectable, but that evaluations are too complex for any single explanation of public opinion formation to capture. We also find that British attitudes toward privatization were most associated with cue-taking from leaders and parties, ideological moorings associated with individualism, and income. From these findings we offer a set of hypotheses suitable for testing in future research—most especially, a disparate impact hypothesis—that have important implications for practice and theory-building regarding public opinion and market-based administrative reforms worldwide.     

Privatization and Public Opinion in Germany

Privatization has been a major issue around the world, but research on public opinion about it has been scarce. The German Social Survey provides an opportunity to compare citizen opinions from a formerly socialist-authoritarian regime with those from a democratic regime, in their opinions about privatizing banks, electrical power, and hospitals. As do citizens in surveys in other nations, Germans support privatization of the services in the order just given. Citizens from the east, where privatization led to sharp increases in unemployment, oppose privatization much more than do westerners. A LISREL analysis indicates that their opposition is not due to their concerns about its economic effects on themselves or the nation (economic pessimism), but more due to perception of the proper role of government (opposition to government spending), and sense of political efficacy. The analysis also reflects on the roles of other variables such as ideology, partisanship, gender, being unemployed, education, and preference for taxes versus public services. We discuss implications for theory and research on public opinion about government policies and services, such as the role of direct economic self-interest versus more symbolic and ideological orientations.     

Making Privatization Work: Utilizing a Scorecard Model of Human Resource Strategy

Three-fourths of privatization efforts fail. Analyses of the other one-fourth have overlooked what is arguably the single most important element: successful management of human resources. In establishing the culture of change necessary to effect competitive initiatives and in motivating employees toward innovation and accountability, a scorecard-based human resource strategy is at the center of it all. A discussion of the strategic role of human resource management supporting privatization efforts in general, and of the remarkably successful Charlotte, North Carolina experience in particular, offers important lessons. Detailed here is a rubric of what works and why.     

Emergency and Disaster: Pervasive Risk and Public Bureaucracy in Developing Nations

Developing nations experience pervasive risk of devastation, human and property loss resulting from human and natural disasters. This level of risk is attributable to socioeconomic stress, aging and inadequate physical infrastructure, weak education and preparedness for disaster and insufficient fiscal and economic resources to carefully implement the preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery components of integrated emergency management. This article examines these dynamics using a conceptual framework derived from chaos theory and emergency management theory and raises several critical methodological issues related to inquiries into disaster and emergency management dynamics in developing nations.     

Organizations in the Public Sector in Hong Kong: Core Government, Quasi-Government and Private Bodies with Public Functions

Twenty-five years ago, the Hong Kong government was lauded as the model of a small, restricted government which was most suited to capitalist economic growth. Since that time, the government and the organizations which it has created have expanded to such an extent that there has been widespread concern that the public sector has grown too large. This article examines the reasons for the rapid growth in the size of the public sector, reflects on the organizational forms outside the traditional civil service that have been adopted, and analyzes the attempts that have been made to reduce the public bureaucracy by corporatizing and privatizing some of the services that it provides. Central to the argument presented is the question of whether an ideological commitment to small government or other functional and political factors have been the critical determinants of organizational change.     

A Critique of the New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian State: Advancing a Critical Theory of Administrative Reform

The New Public Management (NPM) has often been favorably contrasted with European Public Administration (EPA). This paper attempts to balance this Anglo-American perspective with a relatively new European critique of NPM which its authors call the Neo-Weberian State (NWS). Despite their differences in some key respects, however, it is argued that the NPM and NWS are similar in their sweeping paradigmatic character, their ambiguities and internal inconsistencies, their inability to go beyond instrumental rationality and incorporate forms of hermeneutic and critical reason, and in their advocacy of bureaucracy via participation under certain historical conditions, hence consistent with Weber’s characterization of modern organization and management. The paper, based on the authors’ rendering of critical social theory, provides a fresh means for bridging the two perspectives.

An exploratory study of ERP implementation in Saudi Arabia

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is being implemented by many organisations as a potential solution to their businesses. In spite of its appeal, ERP has challenges and difficulties in its realisation, especially in developing countries. In this article, existing trends and success factors for ERP implementation in Saudi Arabia is investigated. The results of this study apply, to a large extent, to other developing countries in the Middle East and other oil producing countries. The study captures the best implementation practices, difficulties encountered, critical success factors and benefits realised. Most organisations suffer serious time and/or cost overruns in ERP implementation. Management commitment and the existence of a clear strategic objective were found to be critical for the success of the ERP implementation. Change management programmes and extensive training were found to be essential for smooth implementation process.     

考虑公众参与环境行为的公共健康两方博弈演化模型研究

公众参与环境行为是深化生态文明改革的重要组成部分,对化石能源消费排放引发的公共健康水平有着不可忽视的影响。将“公众参与”作为博弈模型的主要策略参数,“政府”与企业设为公共健康影响主要主体。运用演化博弈构建了公共健康影响主体交互机制博弈模型,基于复制动态方程原理与问卷调查数值仿真方法,详尽分析了公共健康主体各相关要素交互演化路径的变化快慢。研究结果表明：模型有{监管,不转型},{监管,转型}两个演化稳定策略。公众参与环境治理程度以及公众自身健康关心度对企业能源转型和政府监管演化路径有显著正向影响,同时与“政府”和企业自身特征相关;公共健康损失赔偿大小是政府监管与企业实行能源转型的重要因素;政府监管知识掌握程度、能源政策执行力、企业能源转型成本大小及额外收益极大影响公共健康主体演化路径;学习型“政府”的监管更能有效加快企业能源转型。同时发现,只有各主体参数共同改变,其中公众参与环境行为群体达90%以上时,公共健康损失才会显著下降;单一主体不能有效作用于公共健康水平;目前,{政府不监管,实行能源转型}这一最理想演化博弈策略在我国国情下还未出现。本文为激发公众参与环境行为、助推企业能源转型与提升公共健康政策的制定提供了新的视角。     

Reforming Public Administration in Southeast Asia: Trends and Impacts

In Southeast Asia, the recent two decades have witnessed major theoretical, structural, functional, and ethical reforms in the administrative system. In the region, the state-centric mode of public administration that emerged during the colonial and postcolonial periods, has recently been transformed into a businesslike public management in line with the current global movement for such a transition. This article examines the trends of administrative changes in countries such as Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It also briefly evaluates the critical impacts of these recent changes on the systems of public administration the conditions of citizens and societies in the region.     

动态联盟企业的利益分配博弈

通过研究供需链上相邻两个企业之间的交易情况对动态联盟的利润分配进行了讨论。指出了动态联盟的利益分配实际上是通过内部供应链上的交易过程得以实现。讨论了成员的产品需求价格弹性与产品的价格和产量、原料消耗率与对上游产品价格的承受能力之间的关系。论证了讨价还价博弈和非合作博弈的不足,指出协商博弈是价格博弈的最佳策略,但是它往往缺乏稳定性。     

Replenishment Strategies for Micro‐Retailers in Developing Countries

When formal distribution channels are absent in developing countries, micro‐retailers travel a long distance to replenish their stocks directly from suppliers. This “informal” replenishment strategy is inefficient due to high imputed travel costs involved in the replenishment process. To improve efficiency, one “hybrid” replenishment strategy has emerged under which one of the micro‐retailers in a neighborhood, while continuing its own retail business, also operates as a wholesaler to serve other micro‐retailers in the neighborhood. A major obstacle for the transition from the informal strategy to the hybrid strategy is that the micro‐retailers are reluctant to source from a wholesaler who also competes with them in the retail market. Thus, it is not clear when the micro‐retailers adopt the hybrid strategy instead of the informal strategy. Meanwhile, the micro‐retailers may prefer the “formal” strategy: a traditional replenishment strategy under which one of the micro‐retailers relinquishes its retail business and operates purely as a wholesaler. We examine a situation when competing micro‐retailers contemplate with the three potential aforementioned replenishment strategies. Our equilibrium analysis of the two‐store model reveals that the dominant strategy is: (a) the hybrid strategy when the travel cost is high; (b) the formal strategy when the travel cost is medium; and (c) the informal strategy when the travel cost is low. This key insight is shown continue to hold when we extend the two‐store model to incorporate other issues including: quantity discounts from the supplier, variable operating costs, price competition, local monopolies, and different decision sequences. One additional finding is that the transition from the informal strategy to the hybrid strategy could benefit consumers if the micro‐retailers receive quantity discounts from the supplier. Furthermore, when there are more than two stores, we show that the formal strategy is never dominant. Moreover, when the number of stores increases, the hybrid strategy becomes more preferable to the informal strategy.     

Women entrepreneurs in and from developing countries: Evidences from the literature

Entrepreneurship has a leading role in economic development worldwide and, although it has usually been considered as a male dominated activity, recent studies emphasize how significant the contribution of women today is: in 2010, almost 42% of entrepreneurs in the world were, indeed, women (GEM, 2010).     

Estimating Housing Infill Potential: Developing a Case for Floorspace Pooling in Ahmedabad,India

This paper demonstrates a rapid and inexpensive methodology (using minimal data) for estimating housing infill potential and develops the idea of residential floorspace pooling to deliver the infill. Estimates are based on surveying 11 km2 of the residential land in Ahmedabad. The analysis suggests that Ahmedabad has a huge potential for infill development, which could accommodate significantly more than its new housing requirements for 2031, within the existing footprint of the city. The second part of the paper discusses development of the idea of floorspace pooling as a tool to enable supply of the new housing infill floorspace in the market.     

Brain drain in Venezuela: the scope of the human capital crisis

ABSTRACT

Brain drain, the exodus of highly skilled professionals, has a strong connection with Human Resource Development (HRD), as these experts are human capital for organizations, communities, and nations. In today’s global economy, HRD practitioners and scholars need to keep abreast of what circumstances trigger the migration of talented workers around the world and the implications for HRD. This article describes the brain drain in Venezuela. The magnitude of the talent crisis is the result of a complex combination of poor policy implementation, mismanagement, corruption, and socio-economic and political conflict. This article exposes the current realities and the repercussions the exodus of talent has had on Venezuela and the decline of a country that was once among the world’s richest, but is now an impoverished nation.     

From Change to Change: Patterns of Continuing Administrative Reform in Europe

This paper examines the continuing reform of the public sector in European countries. While reform fatigue might be expected after the major efforts at reforming that were undertaken during the 1980s and into the 1990s, there is apparently little loss of fervor about reform. The reasons for the continued reform efforts are discussed in administrative and political terms. Likewise, the logic of the continuation of reform in the contemporary era, as contrasted to earlier periods of reform, is discussed.     

Drivers and Enablers That Foster Environmental Management Capabilities in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Suppliers in Supply Chains

The limited capabilities and resources available within many small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises frequently hamper an effective response to environmental pressures, which in turn hurts large buying firms (i.e., customers). Using a case study method with multiple suppliers of two large buying firms, we mapped factors that initiated and improved environmental capabilities in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises over time. Through several specific mechanisms, buyers' green supply chain management initiated and then enabled the improvement of suppliers' environmental capabilities. Independent of buyers, internal championing of environmental concerns also provided an impetus for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprise suppliers to acquire resources outside the supply chain. Thus, synergistic linkages emerged in supportive buyer‐supplier relationships, resource acquisition, and capability development. When these findings are combined with earlier research on larger suppliers, an integrative framework emerges that provides direction for suppliers, buyers, and public agencies seeking to improve environmental performance.     

Organizations in Public Management: Guest Editors' Introduction

This brief introduction sets the scene for the symposium. It identifies three factors which prompted its preparation, and then outlines the six contributions to it.