A key question of public sector innovation (PSI) scholarship is: which factors influence innovation? This paper focuses on managerial practices as drivers of PSI and addresses two research questions. ...First, how have the main types of managerial reforms—pertaining to marketization, results‐orientation, and collaboration—influenced PSI? Second, how have different features of public sector reform strategies influenced PSI? Using survey data from 19 European countries, we show that reforms focusing on collaboration and results‐orientation facilitate PSI, while marketization‐type reforms have no significant impact. Our study indicates that reforms initiated by public administration (rather than politicians) are more conducive to PSI. We also show that reforms that are crisis‐driven and reforms oriented toward cost cutting have negative impacts on PSI. Overall, our findings demonstrate that New Public Governance‐type reforms exert more positive influence on PSI than NPM‐type reforms.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Ram Charana, of the Mallah caste and a resident of Lucknow, led the campaign for his caste to secure a place in the plans for constitutional and electoral reform being ...drawn up by the colonial authorities. His objective was to ensure the inclusion of the caste within the administrative category of the Depressed Classes and subsequently as a Scheduled Caste even though it was labelled and stigmatised as a caste defined primarily by its criminality. Ram Charana was appointed to the United Provinces Legislative Council as the sole nominee to represent the Depressed Class population, and he participated in all of the investigations of the time into constitutional reform. Although he personally achieved a leading role in the reform proceedings, he was unable to secure any recognition for the Mallah.
This article examines the criminalisation of the Mallah particularly in the light of police sources not consulted previously. It describes Ram Charana’s role and analyses the reasons for his failure, despite his personal prominence and official promotion, to gain a more advantageous position for the Mallah.
This article sets out guidelines for law reform processes to account for the challenges that terrorism may pose to the rule of law and democracy. As a response to terrorism, an increase in reforms of ...laws and administrative measures has been seen across jurisdictions. The substantive offenses themselves have been criticized, but as of yet, the theoretical issues that may arise during processes of reform have not been considered. However, law reform as a direct and immediate response to such events may curtail the rule of law and democracy: there may be inadequate time for debate in the legislature regarding proposed measures, or the debate may be centered on arguments based on fear and hate toward perpetrators. This article argues that this may curtail individual autonomy of citizens and truncate democracy. It sets out guidelines for how processes of law reform may treat people as capable of self-moderation.
•The agricultural eco-efficiency (AEE) and its influence factors were investigated.•Chinese AEE has increased from 0.405 to 0.713 during 1978–2017.•The periodic growth characteristic of AEE is ...divided into four stages.•The reform of national agricultural policies is an indicator of AEE.•The application of chemical fertilizer has the greatest impact on Chinese AEE.
Chinese agricultural output has been multiple under the intensive input of production factors since the reform and opening-up. Such a growth pattern that realizes high output through high input results in increasingly prominent environmental pollution problems. Considering the provincial panel data in China during 1978–2017 as the research units and taking agriculture in broad sense as the study object, the agricultural eco-efficiency (AEE) was measured by the Super-SBM Model, and the influencing factors were screened out from agricultural basic condition, agricultural industrial structure, agricultural development potential and agricultural input strength. The findings indicated that agricultural expected output and unexpected output were synchronously increased, while the change of input factors was totally different and gradually transferred to materiality from resources. In 1978–2017, AEE was increased to 0.713 from 0.405, with an increase of about 76%. And it approximately underwent four stages, including free development, reform promotion, market regulation and policy incentives. Under the resource restraint and policy incentives, AEE showed that Northeast, East and South China were higher than the national average level. North and Central China basically fitted for the national average level, and Southwest and Northwest China were lower than the national average level. Also, it was successively present in some spatial characteristics including polarization, differentiation, agglomeration and reconstruction on the provincial scale. The magnitude and direction of influencing factors indicated that the introduction of subsidy policies for compound fertilizers, an increase of farmers’ incomes, optimization of agricultural plantation structure, and maintenance of stable agricultural product prices could effectively improve AEE.
Every countrywide reform can always have specific opponents and fans as the changes make people leave their comfort zone. As an example, we have chosen a Ukrainian decentralization reform. Although ...this local self-government reform can be considered the most successful in our country, the attitude of Ukrainians to the changes has not always been unambiguous. Using taxonomic analysis, the paper calculates the integrated indicator of public approval of decentralization reform in Ukraine based on sociological research for 2015-2020. We have described the features of conducting surveys in different periods and identified the reasons for the emergence of such an attitude to the reform. We have also calculated the weights of the impact of each primary indicator on the integrated indicator, which helped us identify the weaknesses and strengths of the reform in public opinion Furthermore, the analysis allowed us to reveal and substantiate a set of problems in implementing decentralization reform in Ukraine, and the causes and solutions were worked out for each problem. Finally, we have made a generalized algorithm for the application of the experience of public opinion analysis in planning and carrying out reforms.
Human resources play a critical role in encouraging efficient performance within organisations, especially for public healthcare organisations, where competences of staff are key aspects of the ...quality of services provided. In this context, the enhancement of competences are strategic objectives for Human Resources Management (HRM) in order to achieve excellent and lasting results. However, competences of healthcare professionals are both clinical and managerial. This study identifies specific managerial competences perceived as crucial by healthcare professionals in order to improve their performance and develop suitable HRM practices.
The research methodology was divided into three main phases using mixed methods, commencing with literature review to identify the initial framework about managerial competences. Focus groups were then used to discuss evidence from the literature. Feedback from focus groups was used to draft the final questionnaire. Finally, the answers to the questionnaire were analysed through statistical software.
The results show that managers and professionals share a view of what specific managerial competences for healthcare organisations should be. Main competences are: quality evaluation based on outcomes; enhancement of professional competences; programming based on process management; project cost assessment; informal communication style; and participatory leadership.
Although the issue of managerial skills in healthcare is widely discussed in literature, findings are often fragmentary. Our work includes a systematic literature review useful for more empirical studies. Furthermore, our results can support public managers who want to set up positive HRM practices for healthcare professionals.
We develop a new approach for the identification of Pareto‐improving tax reforms. This approach yields necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of Pareto‐improving reform directions. A ...main insight is that “Two brackets are enough”: When the system cannot be improved by altering tax rates in one or two income brackets, then there is no continuous reform direction that is Pareto‐improving. We also show how to check whether a given tax reform is Pareto‐improving. We use these tools to study the introduction of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the United States in 1975. A robust finding is that, prior to the EITC, the U.S. tax‐transfer system was not Pareto‐efficient. Under plausible assumptions about behavioral responses, the 1975 reform was not Pareto‐improving. Qualitatively, though, it had the right properties: A similar reform with earnings subsidies made available to a broader range of incomes would have been Pareto‐improving.
The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) has conducted several surveys to understand the development of the internal auditing (IA) profession worldwide. In its latest survey, the Middle East and ...North Africa (MENA) region was expected to experience the most significant changes in the regulation of internal auditing (IIA, 2010). This study reviews the MENA region literature dealing with recent regulatory reforms in internal auditing, focusing on independence and objectivity, assurance versus consulting services, and the IA role in consulting activities. We find that while the majority of the region has introduced reforms to the IA function, more needs to be done to (1) insure independence and objectivity; and (2) involve IA in consulting services, particularly with respect to risk management, control and governance. This review and its findings are timely given the vast advances the IA profession is witnessing, and has implications for both the IIA and MENA countries’ regulators. The study also hopes to motivate further research in this region.
This paper presents a novel simulation method for estimating the likely welfare effects of policy reforms aimed at increasing competition in strategic economic sectors such as mobile phone services. ...The proposed method relies on a partial equilibrium simulation approach and estimates the welfare impacts on current consumers and the potential welfare effects among new consumers brought into the market by changes in prices due to competition. This approach is applied to the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Ethiopia, one of the three countries in the world with a monopoly in the market for mobile phone services. Based on household budget survey data for 2015/16 and departing from a baseline reform scenario that dilutes the market share of the state-owned monopoly to 45 percent, the simulation model estimates a 25.3 percent reduction in the price of mobile services and an increase in 5.7 million new users of mobile services. The predicted drop in prices and increased users would generate a combined relative welfare gain of 1.18 percent (1.09 percent among current users and 0.09 percent among new users), that could be translated into a 0.31 percentage point decline in the national poverty rate and equivalent to lifting about 275,000 people out of poverty. Alternative reform scenarios that dilute the market share of the monopoly to 75 percent and to 30 percent are expected to reduce poverty rate in 0.13 and 0.52 percentage points, respectively. The method proposed in this study represents a useful tool for promoting competition reforms in developing countries, particularly in sectors known for excluding significant segments of the population because of high consumer prices.
•Novel method for estimating the likely welfare effects of policy reforms aimed at increasing competition in key markets such as mobiles telecommunication services.•Approach is applied to the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Ethiopia, one of the three countries in the world with a monopoly in the market for mobile phone services.•Baseline scenario dilutes the market share of the state-owned monopoly to 45 percent. The simulation model estimates a 25.3 percent reduction in prices of mobile services and 5.7 million new users of mobile services.•The price drop and users' increase generate a relative welfare gain of 1.18 percent, translated into a 0.31 percentage point decline in the national poverty and equivalent to lifting 275,000 people out of poverty.
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