What’s Our Responsibility? How Individuals and Organizations Can Proactively Address Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is regarded by Interpol as the second largest and fastest growing criminal industry in the world. This letter is submitted in response to the topic of Human Trafficking addressed in Volume 2, Issue 1. In response to the ever-increasing attention to this problem, various programs focus on the rescue of survivors in anti-trafficking efforts - sometimes overshadowing efforts to prevent human trafficking and rehabilitate those harmed. A comprehensive, responsible approach requires a system of rescue and rehabilitation with a deliberate eye toward prevention. The basic human rights of survivors are at risk of being violated by “so-called rescue missions, despite the good intentions of would-be rescuers.” At the prevention level, a firm human rights approach is needed. When interventions shift their emphasis to prevention and tackle the innate contributors to inequality, then the roots of trafficking and slavery can be firmly extirpated. By taking a thoughtful and vested approach to tackling all areas of trafficking— including prevention, rescue, and rehabilitation—resources can be used more effectively, and communities are likely to have a more extensive impact in the fight against this hideous crime against humanity.

The World Trade Organization’s Legitimacy Crisis: What Does The Beast Look Like?

The concept of legitimacy has many facets. The article reviews from a politics and law perspective the diagnosis of an ``institution in crisis''. This article is divided into three sections. It starts with a cautionary note on existing fallacies about assessing multilateral intergovernmental institutions and discusses competing schools of thought that approach the World Trade Organization (WTO) with varying perceptions of democracy and legitimacy. Section II takes up the actual debate on redesigning the WTO and directs attention to the question of balancing input and output legitimacy. Section III sketches potential avenues of research that have been neglected in the past.

The Democratizing Effects of Multilateral Organizations: A Cautionary Note on the WTO

The field of international relations has been obsessed with democracy and democratization and its effects on international cooperation for a long time. More recently, research has turned its focus on how international organizations enhance democracy. This article contributes to this debate and applies a prominent liberal framework to study the ‘outside-in’ effects of the World Trade Organization. The article offers a critical reading of democratization through IO membership. It provides for an assessment of the dominant framework put forward by Keohane et al. (2009). In doing so, it develops a set of empirical strategies to test conjectured causal mechanisms with respect to the WTO, and illustrates the potential application by drawing on selected empirical evidence from trade politics. Finally, it proposes a number of analytical revisions to the liberal framework and outlines avenues for future research.

Keeping citizens, companies, and organizations informed by Web KnowARR

For the main part, electronic government (or e-government for short) aims to put digital public services at disposal for citizens, companies, and organizations. To that end, in particular, e-government comprises the application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to support government operations and provide better governmental services (Fraga, 2002) as possible with traditional means. Accordingly, e-government services go further as traditional governmental services and aim to fundamentally alter the processes in which public services are generated and delivered, after this manner transforming the entire spectrum of relationships of public bodies with its citizens, businesses and other government agencies (Leitner, 2003). To implement this transformation, one of the most important points is to inform the citizen, business, and/or other government agencies faithfully and in an accessible way. This allows all the partaking participants of governmental affairs for a transition from passive information access to active participation (Palvia and Sharma, 2007). In addition, by a corresponding handling of the participants' data, a personalization towards these participants may even be accomplished. For instance, by creating significant user profiles as a kind of participants' tailored knowledge structures, a better-quality governmental service may be provided (i.e., expressed by individualized governmental services). To create such knowledge structures, thus known information (e.g., a social security number) can be enriched by vague information that may be accurate to a certain degree only. Hence, fuzzy knowledge structures can be generated, which help improve governmental-participants relationship. The Web KnowARR framework (Portmann and Thiessen, 2013; Portmann and Pedrycz, 2014; Portmann and Kaltenrieder, 2014), which I introduce in my presentation, allows just all these participants to be automatically informed about changes of Web content regarding a- respective governmental action. The name Web KnowARR thereby stands for a self-acting entity (i.e. instantiated form the conceptual framework) that knows or apprehends the Web. In this talk, the frameworks respective three main components from artificial intelligence research (i.e. knowledge aggregation, representation, and reasoning), as well as its specific use in electronic government will be briefly introduced and discussed.

Public service motivation and performance: a critical perspective

Purpose – A growing body of literature points to the importance of public service motivation (PSM) for the performance of public organizations. The purpose of this paper is to assess the method predominantly used for studying this linkage by comparing the findings it yields without and with a correction suggested by Brewer (2006), which removes the common-method bias arising from employee-specific response tendencies. Design/methodology/approach – First, the authors conduct a systematic review of published empirical research on the effects of PSM on performance and show that all studies found have been conducted at the individual level. Performance indicators in all but three studies were obtained by surveying the same employees who were also asked about their PSM. Second, the authors conduct an empirical analysis. Using survey data from 240 organizational units within the Swiss federal government, the paper compares results from an individual-level analysis (comparable to existing research) to two analyses where the data are aggregated to the organizational level, one without and one with the correction for common-method bias suggested by Brewer (2006). Findings – Looking at the Attraction to Policy-Making dimension of PSM, there is an interesting contrast: While this variable is positively correlated with performance in both the individual-level analysis and the aggregated data analysis without the correction for common-method bias, it is not statistically associated with performance in the aggregated data analysis with the correction. Originality/value – The analysis is the first to assess the robustness of the performance-PSM linkage to a correction for common-method bias. The findings place the validity of at least one part of the individual-level linkage between PSM and performance into question.

The tower of David : a book of stories for the program of women's organizations

by Elma Ehrlich Levinger

Gender-Fair Language in Organizations: Attracting Potential Leaders and Promoting the Organizational Image of Gender Equality

In many languages, masculine generics are the traditional way of referring to women and men. However, gender-fair forms (e.g., feminine-masculine word pairs) can enhance gender equality: for instance, they counteract male biases in mental associations (Stahlberg et al., 2007) and evoke more neutral perceptions of gender-stereotypical professions (Merkel et al., 2013). Compared to masculine forms, use of gender-fair language in advertisements for leadership positions also helps to achieve gender equality in hiring decisions (e.g., use of German Geschäftsführerin/Geschäftsführer 'CEO fem/masc' instead of Geschäftsführer 'CEO masc', cf. Horvath & Sczesny, 2012). The present research investigates how potential applicants react to the use of gender-fair vs. masculine forms in German job ads for leadership positions (Study 1) and how the respective organization is perceived in response to these forms (Study 2). In Study 1, 251 participants showed higher intentions to apply for a leadership position when it was advertised with a feminine-masculine word pair instead of a masculine form; this was mediated by job appeal and organizational attraction. In Study 2, 154 participants perceived the organization as more discriminatory when masculine forms were used. This was mediated by the organizational image of gender equality. Thus, gender-fair language affects the social perception of a job and the respective organization and can impact social behavior in an organizational context.

Inseparable, incapable, or invisible: Why public organizations award no-bid contracts

No-bid contracting is a highly prevalent practice in public procurement of technology services. Alt-hough no-bid contracting is a substantial problem since it reduces competition and welfare, the litera-ture lacks theoretical explanations and empirical tests for why public organizations award no-bid con-tracts. In this paper, we propose three theoretical explanations for no-bid contracting, drawing on transaction cost economics, organizational learning, and institutional theory. We also present how we test these explanations using a comprehensive sample of public procurement transactions. We expect to contribute theoretical explanations for no-bid contracting and practical implications for policy-makers.

The Role of Artefacts in the Process of Replication

This paper investigates the role of artefacts for the replication or routines in organizations. Drawing on data of a large franchise organization in the UK, we show that actors' engagement with a portfolio of different primary (e.g. software, tools) and secondary (e.g. manuals) artefacts that are part of the business format, gives rise to five artefact enabled practices of replication (activity scoping, time patterning, practical enquiry, use in practice and contextual enquiry). Importantly, these practices of replication enable three different types of franchisee agency (iterational, practical evaluative and projective agency) that support but partly also challenge replication in terms of the similarity of organizational routines across units. Our findings have several theoretical contributions for the growing literature on replication as well as materiality and artefacts in organizations.

Balancing Control and Coaching in CSO Governance : A Paradox Perspective on Board Behavior

How can governance of civil society organizations be conceptualized more adequately by accounting for the dual and simultaneous requirements of controlling and coaching in board behavior? Empirically, we seem to agree that effective governance of a civil society organization is crucial to its sustained viability. Conceptually, however, we observe a lack of consensus on how to best conceptualize CSO governance. By critically juxtaposing two major theoretical lenses to conceptualize governance, namely agency and stewardship theory, we identify a number of challenges conceptualizing board-management relations that deserve our attention. While agency theory privileges controlling behavior, stewardship theory emphasizes the coaching behavior of boards. The purpose of this paper is to offer a concept of governance that is informed by a paradox perspective advancing a subtler, more adequate conceptualization of board governance that accounts for the often conflicting demands on CSO governance. Drawing on a longitudinal interpretive case study, we exemplify our propositions empirically. The paper concludes with discussing the implications of our argument for CSO governance research and practice.