Schizophrenic public administration reform in Hungary. Tension between anti-NPM systemic and pro-NPM organizational reforms

The aim of the paper is to highlight the main characteristics of the recent Hungarian public administration reform, as well as to reveal the inconsistent nature of some of its elements and to describe the connected risks. The starting point of the article is the Magyary Zoltán public administration development programme. The reform steps are compared to the ideal type NPM approach. The Hungarian public administration reform can be characterized by strong centralization and the revitalization of Hungarian anti-liberal traditions at macro level, and by the support of the enhancement of market rules and management at micro level.

Liberalization without decentralization: Haiti under Namphy and Delatour, 1986–1987

Following Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier's flight into exile in February 1986, the President of Haiti's provisional Conseil National de Gouvernement (CNG), Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, and his Minister of Finance, Leslie Delatour, enacted liberal reforms. This study examined their initial doctrine, decrees, and institutions for democratization and free markets, within a historical context of over-centralization and exclusion. Its purpose was to explore the contradiction and consequences of pursuing liberalization by decree, without significant decentralization. The author extracted CNG doctrine from speeches, legislation, and economic records. He then juxtaposed it with the adverse results of market reforms and popular reactions gathered from nine Haitian newspapers and two archival collections. He found that CNG doctrine and institutions were inadequate for resolving exclusion and popular discontent. Rather the deficiency of market reforms and the insufficiency of representative institutions exacerbated exclusion, which the author identified as the source of confrontation and violence in 1987.

AIDS workplace *policy adoption and implementation in local government: An analysis of departmental variation

This is an empirical study whose purpose was to examine the process of innovation adoption as an adaptive response by a public organization and its subunits existing under varying degrees of environmental uncertainty. Meshing organization innovation research and contingency theory to form a theoretical framework, an exploratory case study design was undertaken in a large, metropolitan government located in an area with the fourth highest prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the country. A number of environmental and organizational factors were examined for their influence upon decision making in the adoption/non-adoption as well as implementation of any number of AIDS-related policies, practices, and programs.^ The major findings of the study are as follows. For the county government itself (macro level), no AIDS-specific workplace policies have been adopted. AIDS activities (AIDS education, AIDS Task Force, AIDS Coordinator, etc.), adopted county-wide early in the epidemic, have all been abandoned. Worker infection rates, in the aggregate and throughout the epidemic have been small. As a result, absent co-worker conflict (isolated and negligible), no increase in employee health care costs, no litigation regarding discrimination, and no major impact on workforce productivity, AIDS has basically become a non-issue at the strategic core of the organization. At the departmental level, policy adoption decisions varied widely. Here the predominant issue is occupational risk, i.e., both objective as well as perceived. As expected, more AIDS-related activities (policies, practices, and programs) were found in departments with workers known to have significant risk for exposure to the AIDS virus (fire rescue, medical examiner, police, etc.). AIDS specific policies, in the form of OSHA's Bloodborn Pathogen Standard, took place primarily because they were legislatively mandated. Union participation varied widely, although not necessarily based upon worker risk. In several departments, the union was a primary factor bringing about adoption decisions. Additional factors were identified and included organizational presence of AIDS expertise, availability of slack resources, and the existence of a policy champion. Other variables, such as subunit size, centralization of decision making, and formalization were not consistent factors explaining adoption decisions. ^

The Military-Industrial Complex and US Military Spending After 9/11

This article examines the economic, political and institutional power of the military-industrial complex (MIC) by examining its influence on military spending before and after the events of 9/11. The reasons for the continuity of MIC influence in US foreign policy is explored. This includes the role of military contractors in financing policy planning organizations, the relationship between military contractors and the Defense Department, and the centralization of executive branch authority in foreign policy decision-making, especially during critical junctures or foreign policy crises.

Public Service Motivation in Public and Nonprofit Service Providers: The Cases of Belarus and Poland

The work motivation construct is central to the theory and practice of many social science disciplines. Yet, due to the novelty of validated measures appropriate for a deep cross-national comparison, studies that contrast different administrative regimes remain scarce. This study represents an initial empirical effort to validate the Public Service Motivation (PSM) instrument proposed by Kim and colleagues (2013) in a previously unstudied context. The two former communist countries analyzed in this dissertation—Belarus and Poland— followed diametrically opposite development strategies: a fully decentralized administrative regime in Poland and a highly centralized regime in Belarus. The employees (n = 677) of public and nonprofit organizations in the border regions of Podlaskie Wojewodstwo (Poland) and Hrodna Voblasc (Belarus) are the subjects of study. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed three dimensions of public service motivation in the two regions: compassion, self-sacrifice, and attraction to public service. The statistical models tested in this dissertation suggest that nonprofit sector employees exhibit higher levels of PSM than their public sector counterparts. Nonprofit sector employees also reveal a similar set of values and work attitudes across the countries. Thus, the study concludes that in terms of PSM, employees of nonprofit organizations constitute a homogenous group that exists atop the administrative regimes. However, the findings propose significant differences between public sector agencies across the two countries. Contrary to expectations, data suggest that organization centralization in Poland is equal to—or for some items even higher than—that of Belarus. We can conclude that the absence of administrative decentralization of service provision in a country does not necessarily undermine decentralized practices within organizations. Further analysis reveals strong correlations between organization centralization and PSM for the Polish sample. Meanwhile, in Belarus, correlations between organization centralization items and PSM are weak and mostly insignificant. The analysis indicates other factors beyond organization centralization that significantly impact PSM in both sectors. PSM of the employees in the studied region is highly correlated with their participation in religious practices, political parties, or labor unions as well as location of their organization in a capital and type of social service provided.

A gestão educacional das secretarias municipais de educação de municípios maranhenses a partir do plano de ações articuladas 2007-2011

The main purpose of this thesis was to analyze educational management of Municipal Departments of Education (SEMED’s) of cities in Maranhão inserted in the Plan of Articulated Actions (2007- 2011). We evidence the role of Union in that public policy. The leading argument is that Brazilian federal government is not demos constraining in relation to its national sub-governments, what makes the central government to enforce, primarily, educational politics like PAR. This kind of politics interferes in the educational management by national sub-governments, turning them into mere executors. By turning them into mere executors, PAR limits their autonomy and over imposes the results-based management as a parameter to improve the education quality. In order to develop the hypothesis, we adopted Political Science as theoretical basis, represented by Federalism Theory as pact which premise is the cooperative pattern of federalism as being the best form of government because it allows a joint decision-making process from the idea of no centralization of power. The methodology was historical materialism, which assumes the totality and contradiction as a form to understand the phenomenon that does not express in direct way its existence, but can be analyzed from such categories that made possible to interpret the reality. So, we used as tools the semistructured interview and documental analyses with triangulation of data. The empirical basis of the research is 04 (four) cities in Maranhão that obey the following criteria: 1. The municipality has to be assigned on the FNDE Resolution nº 29/2007; 2. To present the lowest educational management indexes from the diagnosis made in loco by PAR; 3. To present the lowest financial management indexes based on the diagnosis in loco by PAR. The results suggest that PAR does not effect a resultbased management which are proposed in its legal rules neither the SEMEDs can propose their conception of educational management. That situation creates a hybridism that sometimes turns to managerialism and performativity, sometimes to bureaucracy, sometimes to a total uncoordinated and unarticulated action. In relation to SEMEDs management, this thesis shows that these institutions have no own conception about educational management and end up acting in an uncoordinated and unarticulated way. The thesis concludes that PAR is an over imposition by federal government towards national sub-governments that conflicts with management patterns of those institutions that are used to a less managerial logic. This over imposition makes the Central government to be the center of Brazilian federalism, which is in reality an incomplete pact.

Meating the social: sharing atiku-euiash in Sheshatshiu, Labrador

This work examines atiku-euiash (caribou meat) sharing practices in Sheshatshiu, Newfoundland and Labrador, and aims to elucidate an overarching question: how do sharing practices participate in the co-constitution of the Innu ‘social’? The ‘social’ is understood in this work as a descriptor that refers to the emergent properties of the Innu collective. The thesis is that sharing practices participate in the co-constitution of the Innu social and enact its boundaries. Inside these boundaries, atiku-euiash is more than simply a food resource: by realizing Innu values of generosity, respect and autonomy, sharing implicates the associations of human, animal, and animal masters that constitute the Innu world. Sharing is connected with the enskilment of the younger generations by their el-ders, and thus with the reproduction of Innu values through time. The ways of sharing are relevant because changes in such practices affect the constitution of the Innu social. Giv-en Euro-Canadian colonization, the Innu are in a fraught social space in which sharing is interrupted by colonization practices and values. Understanding sharing is necessary to develop policies that do not interrupt the reproduction of the Innu world This work uses several research methods: participant observation, sharing surveys, and interviews. It also uses network analysis as sharing practices leave traces of giving and receiving actions and these traces can be represented as a network of givers, receivers and circulating caribou meat. There are two main ways in which caribou is hunted and shared: household-based hunts and community-based hunts. The household-based hunts are organized by the hunters themselves, who are able and willing to hunt. Community-based hunts are completely organized and funded by the SIFN or the Innu Nation. In or-der to understand the differences in the distribution of the two hunt types, the categories of centrality and clustering are used to show how the flow of atiku-eiuash and its associ-ated realization of values and enskilment correlate with different degrees of centralization inside the sharing clusters.

A escola do urbano no campo do município de Catalão/GO : ensino de geografia nas especificidades do lugar

This study makes an approach to the Morro Agudo Community (Cisterna) located in Catalão city(GO) rural area where stands the Maria Bárbara Sucena Municipal School. This school center is a result of getting together several small and isolated schools, which worked, scattered in many rural communities in the region. After this centralization in a single school, many students had to move along inconvenient distance to get their classes. Morro Agudo Community (Cisterna) was outstanding at garlic cultivation throughout the 1990`s when eventually this activity came to a decline. The region is constituted by properties of small tract of land. The landowners come from a Portuguese background and there are, in addit ion, migrant workers from the northeast region of Brazil. These northeasterners work for these local landowners, and that brings an additional meaning to the social relations in the region and to the rural schooling. The social and cultural diversity of the region has a feedback at the school arising tensions in many ways. In the teaching and learning process the school deals with this diversity, combined with rules and goals that, in the end, delivers a geography teaching not able to value the local knowledge accumulated in the region by its own inhabitants. New methodological approaches to rural school communities emerged out of the analysis of these unmet expectations. Furthermore, this study takes into consideration some “residues”, that means not all events are fit into programs; there are unintended consequences in an open process. All these are object of deep review in this doctoral dissertation. In this community, an analysis of the public policies implemented by Federal and municipal governments to rural schools communities in Brazil was conducted. The way in which public policies toward rural communities are implemented at the schools was reviewed; the goals they pursue and the role played by textbooks are also object of analysis. This study questions the relevance of this tools, mainly if they meet the real needs of the local people. The social representations of teachers and students are considered carefully based on their everyday lives and experiences.

Spontaneity and international marketing performance

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how today’s international marketers can perform better on the global scene by harnessing spontaneity. Design/methodology/approach: The authors draw on contingency theory to develop a model of the spontaneity – international marketing performance relationship, and identify three potential moderators, namely, strategic planning, centralization, and market dynamism. The authors test the model via structural equation modeling with survey data from 197 UK exporters. Findings: The results indicate that spontaneity is beneficial to exporters in terms of enhancing profit performance. In addition, greater centralization and strategic planning strengthen the positive effects of spontaneity. However, market dynamism mitigates the positive effect of spontaneity on export performance (when customer needs are volatile, spontaneous decisions do not function as well in terms of ensuring success). Practical implications: Learning to be spontaneous when making export decisions appears to result in favorable outcomes for the export function. To harness spontaneity, export managers should look to develop company heuristics (increase centralization and strategic planning). Finally, if operating in dynamic export market environments, the role of spontaneity is weaker, so more conventional decision-making approaches should be adopted. Originality/value: The international marketing environment typically requires decisions to be flexible and fast. In this context, spontaneity could enable accelerated and responsive decision-making, allowing international marketers to realize superior performance. Yet, there is a lack of research on decision-making spontaneity and its potential for international marketing performance enhancement.

Structural and agentic analysis of supply-chains: a social network analysis approach

This research adds to a body of work exploring the role of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in the study of both relational and structural characteristics of supply chain networks. Two contrasting network cases (food enterprises and digital-based enterprises) are chosen in order to elicit structural differences in business networks subject to divergences in local embeddedness and the relative materiality of the goods and services produced. Our analysis and findings draw out differences in network structure as evidenced by metrics of network centralization and cohesion, the presence of components and other sub-groupings, and the position of central actors. We relate these structural features both to the nature of the networks and to the (qualitative) experiences of the actors themselves. We find, in particular, the role of customers as co-creators of knowledge (for the Food network), the central role of infrastructure and services (for the Digital network), the importance of ICT as a source of codified knowledge inputs, along with the continuing importance of geographical proximity for the development and transfer of tacit knowledge and for incremental learning.

Continuidades y rupturas en el proceso de centralización de la administración sanitaria argentina (1880-1945)

El objetivo del trabajo es presentar el proceso de centralización administrativa de la repartición sanitaria nacional. Para ello se analizan, en primer lugar y con la intención de situar el problema en un plazo más largo, los límites que debió afrontar el Departamento Nacional de Higiene desde el momento de su creación, en 1880, para avanzar en sus intenciones centralizadoras. Entre ellos se encuentran su escasa autonomía administrativa, las superposiciones jurisdiccionales con otras dependencias del Estado, las indefiniciones respecto de su supremacía jerárquica, la resistencia de las provincias, los municipios fuertes y las asociaciones benéficas y los conflictos de proyectos al interior mismo de la repartición. En segundo lugar se muestra cómo los sucesivos presidentes del Departamento Nacional de Higiene asumieron ese límite para su gestión y apostaron a la organización interna de la repartición antes que al desafío de la centralización de la asistencia sanitaria. Su estrategia fue el fortalecimiento de nuevas áreas de incumbencia que constituyeron una agenda que sirvió como base de la definitiva centralización de la administración sanitaria. En esta tarea contaron con el apoyo parlamentario, fundamentalmente de la bancada socialista, que logró convertir en ley durante los años 30 a una serie de nuevas atribuciones del Departamento en aspectos que ligaban la salud con la asistencia social. Por último se analiza un momento clave de este proceso, el primer ensayo de centralización sanitaria a través de la creación, en 1943, de la Dirección Nacional de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social.

Trayectorias locales y proyecciones nacionales en el proceso de centralización sanitaria en Tucumán (1900-1950)

El objetivo de este trabajo consiste en examinar el proceso de centralización sanitaria en la provincia de Tucumán durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, atendiendo a sus particularidades y a sus vinculaciones con la administración sanitaria nacional. Se abordan tópicos que permiten reconstruir, en instancias diferenciadas, los rasgos del desarrollo institucional, las tensiones al interior del sistema y los cambios que pautaron el recorrido hasta la centralización sanitaria lograda durante los gobiernos peronistas.

La Salud Pública frente a un Estado centralizado : establecimientos y servicios asistenciales en la provincia de Mendoza durante el primer peronismo

La presente investigación analiza la acción del Estado en materia de salud pública durante el primer peronismo e incursiona sobre algunos factores que condicionaron el éxito o fracaso de las políticas a nivel provincial. El trabajo remite además, a través de algunos ejemplos concretos, a unidades territoriales más reducidas como son los municipios, en tanto ámbitos de aplicación de las políticas públicas o bien ejecutores de las mismas. Algunas de las preguntas que se intentaron responder fueron ¿En qué medida los nuevos cambios en la estructura del Estado fueron acompañados de acciones concretas que incidieran en las condiciones de vida de la población? ¿Qué obstáculos limitaron la acción gubernamental? Se incluirá en este análisis la realización de obra pública por parte del Estado, personal a cargo, como así también las inversiones en otros recursos necesarios para una adecuada atención médica.

Nuevas capacidades estatales para una sociedad transformada : Instituciones y políticas sanitarias en la provincia de Santa Fe primera mitad del siglo XX

El presente trabajo indaga las dinámicas de transformación de las políticas sanitarias en la provincia de Santa Fe en la primera mitad del siglo XX, focalizando tres coyunturas: en primer lugar, el contexto previo y la sanción de la ley de sanidad en 1932; en segundo término, los cambios sostenidos durante la segunda mitad de la década de 1930 que darían lugar a la creación del Ministerio de Salud y Trabajo en 1941; finalmente las innovaciones proyectadas desde la intervención de 1943 y los posteriores gobiernos peronistas. A partir de los debates parlamentarios, las memorias ministeriales, la prensa y las publicaciones especializadas, nos proponemos dar cuenta de algunos aspectos de este proceso de transformación en las políticas sanitarias locales en diálogo con el plano nacional.

La centralización estatal en la Argentina y el sistema de salud público cordobés en la primera mitad del siglo XX

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar los procesos de centralización de las políticas sanitarias en la Argentina a partir del caso del sistema de salud público cordobés. Consideramos que una exploración de las transformaciones de la esfera provincial constituye una vía valiosa para examinar sobre los alcances y contenidos específicos de la centralización de las políticas públicas producida durante el peronismo. Para ello, indagamos en el desenvolvimiento del Estado provincial a través de sus capacidades administrativas y relaciones con otros proveedores durante la primera mitad del siglo XX.