Performance measurement as a policy instrument

ABSTRACT

The rise of government by indicators, by figures may reveal a new wave of rationalization organized by the state in the classic Weberian sense. Contemporary forms of government are marked by the rise of indicators, measures and new metrics to compare, certify, codify and evaluate. In many countries, performance measurement has become one of the symbols of the transformation of governance. The paper aims to show how performance indicators are a particular type of policy instrument that increases competitive pressure within societies even if that cannot be analysed only in terms of neoliberalism.     

Exact confidence regions for scale and location parameters based on sample quartiles

In this paper we present relatively simple (ruler, paper, and pencil) nonparametric procedures for constructing joint confidence regions for (i) the median and the inner quartile range for the symmetric one-sample problem and (ii) the shift and ratio of scale parameters for the two-sample case. Both procedures are functions of the sample quartiles and have exact confidence levels when the populations are continuous. The one-sample case requires symmetry of first and third quartiles about the median.

The confidence regions we propose are always convex, nested for decreasing confidence levels and are compact for reasonably large sample sizes. Both exact small sample and approximate large sample distributions are given.     

Optimal fractional factorial designs for estimating interactions of one factor with all others: 3m Series

In some experimental situations, only one factor is expected to interact with other factors. Designs which permit estimation of all main effects and the interactions of one factor ‘With All Others’, are termed WAO designs. This paper discusses the existence and construction of s^m WAO designs. A series of WAO designs are presented for the 3^m factorial, for m = 6, 7, ... , 14. The p non-negligible effects are estimable in 9f^? runs, where f^? is the smallest integer such that 9f^? ≥p. These designs are determinant optimal within the class of parallel flats fractions and, except for the case f^? = 9, are new. They are ideally suited for sequential experiments.     

Business Location Decisions in the United States: Estimates of the Effects of Unionization,Taxes, and Other Characteristics of States

This article examines how corporate decisions about the location for a new manufacturing plant in the U.S. are influenced by unionization, taxes, and other characteristics of states. The conditional logit model is used with some modifications to make the model more applicable to the business location decision. The most important finding is that the union sympathies of states have a major effect on business location. The results also indicate that state taxes affect business location, contradicting the conventional wisdom in the economic literature, although the tax effect is of modest magnitude.     

Shop Floor Control When Tacit Worker Knowledge is Important

We investigate a shop where the workers and supervisors have tacit knowledge of how to operate efficiently and where efficiency is important to providing capacity to meet demand. This tacit knowledge includes setup dependencies between products as well as which worker or machine is best suited for a particular product. We discuss a real‐world shop where this is the case. Management expects workers and supervisors to use their knowledge to schedule efficiently by monitoring their performance based on standards. The question that we explore is how management should control for due date performance in light of the discretion given to the workers and supervisors to sequence jobs on the basis of efficiency. We explore management control of due date performance through the use of order review and release (ORR) and management expediting. We find that although ORR is quite effective at reducing work‐in‐process (WIP) inventories, it may foster very late deliveries in a shop such as this. In fact, under such conditions, deftly executed expediting with no ORR at all can be far more effective at supporting all deliveries. Even improving ORR into a hybrid by actively updating path efficiencies (observed from supervisor/worker scheduling) did not support a change to this conclusion. Conversely, when conditions are created where tacit knowledge plays a reduced role or utilization is decreased, ORR delivers in a timely manner. The interaction between utilization, WIP levels, and worker knowledge all help dictate the appropriate control methodology.     

Civil Society on Global Governance: Facing Up to Divergent Analysis, Strategy, and Tactics

This paper considers three different conceptualizations – three politico-ideological perspectives within civil society – on global-scale economics and geopolitics. The standpoints can be termed “Global justice movements,” “Third World nationalism,” and the “Post-Washington Consensus.” These three perspectives stand in contrast to the fusion of neoliberal economics and neoconservative politics that dominates the contemporary world. The three approaches sometimes converge, but more often than not they are in conflict; as are the civil society institutions that cohere to the three different political ideologies. From the three different analyses flow different strategies, concrete campaigning tactics, and varying choices of allies. The World Social Forum provides hints of a potentially unifying approach within the global justice movements based upon the practical themes of “decommodification” and “deglobalization” (of capital). It is, however, only by facing up to the ideological divergences that the global justice movement can enhance its presence.