Evolution in public procurement and the impact of e-procurement platforms: A case study

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Cultural journalism in a digital environment : new models, practices and possibilities

Both culture coverage and digital journalism are contemporary phenomena that have undergone several transformations within a short period of time. Whenever the media enters a period of uncertainty such as the present one, there is an attempt to innovate in order to seek sustainability, skip the crisis or find a new public. This indicates that there are new trends to be understood and explored, i.e., how are media innovating in a digital environment? Not only does the professional debate about the future of journalism justify the need to explore the issue, but so do the academic approaches to cultural journalism. However, none of the studies so far have considered innovation as a motto or driver and tried to explain how the media are covering culture, achieving sustainability and engaging with the readers in a digital environment. This research examines how European media which specialize in culture or have an important cultural section are innovating in a digital environment. Specifically, we see how these innovation strategies are being taken in relation to the approach to culture and dominant cultural areas, editorial models, the use of digital tools for telling stories, overall brand positioning and extensions, engagement with the public and business models. We conducted a mixed methods study combining case studies of four media projects, which integrates qualitative web features and content analysis, with quantitative web content analysis. Two major general-interest journalistic brands which started as physical newspapers – The Guardian (London, UK) and Público (Lisbon, Portugal) – a magazine specialized in international affairs, culture and design – Monocle (London, UK) – and a native digital media project that was launched by a cultural organization – Notodo, by La Fábrica – were the four case studies chosen. Findings suggest, on one hand, that we are witnessing a paradigm shift in culture coverage in a digital environment, challenging traditional boundaries related to cultural themes and scope, angles, genres, content format and delivery, engagement and business models. Innovation in the four case studies lies especially along the product dimensions (format and content), brand positioning and process (business model and ways to engage with users). On the other hand, there are still perennial values that are crucial to innovation and sustainability, such as commitment to journalism, consistency (to the reader, to brand extensions and to the advertiser), intelligent differentiation and the capability of knowing what innovation means and how it can be applied, since this thesis also confirms that one formula doesn´t suit all. Changing minds, exceeding cultural inertia and optimizing the memory of the websites, looking at them as living, organic bodies, which continuously interact with the readers in many different ways, and not as a closed collection of articles, are still the main challenges for some media.

Modelos de gestão pública e as opções de reforma do XIX governo constitucional: análise do discurso

Dissertação de Mestrado em Gestão e Políticas Públicas

"Public on the outside, private on the inside": the organizational hybridization, sense of belonging and identity strategies of the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland

A number of studies show that New Public Management reforms have altered the current identity benchmarks of public officials, particularly by hybridizing values or management practices. However, existing studies have largely glossed over the sense of belonging of officials when their organization straddles the concerns of public service and private enterprise, so that the boundary between public and private sector is blurred. The purpose of this article is precisely to explore this sense of belonging in the context of organizational hybridization. It does so by drawing on the results of research conducted among the employees of a public unemployment insurance fund in Switzerland. On the one hand, the analysis shows how much their markers of belonging are hybrid, multiple and constructed in negative terms (with regard to the State), while indicating that the working practices of the employees point to an identity that is nevertheless closely bound with the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis shows that the organization plays strategically with its State status, by exploiting either its private or public identity in line with the needs related to its external image. The article concludes with a discussion of the results highlighting the strategic functionality of the hybrid identity of the actors.

Modernizing human resource management : the importance of values-based leadership in the Canadian federal public service /

Over the past several decades, many theories have been advanced as to why efforts to reform the public service have met with only limited success. Clearly, the role of leadership with respect to reform must be examined, since successful organizational leaders should be extremely accomplished in the promotion and protection of the values that underlie decision-making. The issue of effective leadership is particularly significant for the future of the public service of Canada. Large numbers of public servants in the executive ranks are due to retire within the next five years. Given their central role, it is vital that there be enough dedicated and committed public servants to staff future vacancies. It is also essential that future public service leaders possess the competencies and values associated with a world-class public service and, a new type of public organization. Related to this point is the importance of people-management skills. People management in the public service is an issue that has historically faced - and will continue to face - major challenges with respect to recruiting and retaining the leaders it requires for its continued success. It is imperative that the public service not only be revitalized and be seen as an employer of choice, but also that the process by which it accomplishes this goal - the practice of human resource management - be modernized. To achieve the flexibility needed to remain effective, the public service requires the kind ofleadership that supports new public service values such as innovation and which emphasizes a "people- first" approach. This thesis examines the kind of public service leadership needed to modernize the human resource management regime in the federal public service. A historical examination of public service values is presented to help determine the values that are important for public service leaders with respect to modernizing human resource management. Since replenishing the 2 ranks of public service leaders is crucial to ensure the quality of service to Canadians, leadership that supports career planning will be a major focus of this paper. In addition, this thesis demonstrates that while traditional public service values continue to endure, innovative leaders must effectively reconcile new public service values with traditional values in order to increase the possibilities for successful reform as well as achieve business objectives. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining the crucial role of post-bureaucratic leadership to successful reform. One of the major findings of the thesis is that leaders who demonstrate a blending of new public service values and traditional values are critical to creating effective employment relationships, which are key to modernizing human resource management in the federal public service. It will be apparent that public service leaders must ensure that an appropriate accountability framework is in place before embarking on reform. However, leaders who support new public service values such as innovation and empowerment and who emphasize the importance of people are essential to successful reform.

La proyección de imagen a partir de Soft Power, mediante Nation Branding y Diplomacia Pública en el caso de Japón, durante el periodo 2002 – 2010

En el actual contexto de globalización y con el comienzo de la era de la información, cada vez más Estados han buscado proyectar una imagen favorable con el objetivo de atraer atención y crear una reputación que permitan cumplir objetivos de política exterior y fomentar el desarrollo económico, logrando de esta manera un posicionamiento en el sistema internacional mediante estrategias novedosas, que incluyen elementos tanto diplomáticos, políticos, económicos, como comerciales y culturales. Para Japón, Nation Branding y la diplomacia pública han sido dos de las principales herramientas para lograr este reposicionamiento internacional, resaltando atractivos como las tradiciones culturales, el turismo, los incentivos para negocios, y trabajando en conjunto entre el gobierno nacional, el sector privado y la sociedad civil para crear relaciones entre el país y gobiernos y sociedades a nivel internacional.

Diseño de un sistema de benchmarking de prácticas de recursos humanos en redes interorganizacionales

Hoy en día en el mundo empresarial, son cada vez más las compañías que forman parte de redes interorganizacionales, debido a que al hacer parte de estas se genera un apoyo mutuo entre organizaciones sin que ninguna de ellas imponga acciones a realizar sobre la otra (Sulbrandt, Lira, Ibarra, 2001). En años anteriores se han realizado diversas investigaciones acerca de redes interorganizacionales, estudiando factores económicos, financieros y de mercado, pero poco se ha estudiado acerca del campo de recursos humanos y sus prácticas. Es por esto que esta investigación busca describir, explicar, analizar, y comparar, entre otras actividades intelectuales, conceptos de redes interorganizacionales, prácticas de recursos humanos y benchmarking, para finalmente proponer el diseño de un sistema de benchmarking que logre reunir y evaluar las mejores prácticas de recursos humanos de cada empresa dentro de una red interorganizacional.

The determinants and effects of board nomination committees

This article assesses the corporate governance-related antecedents of nomination committee adoption, and the impact of nomination committees’ existence and their composition on board independence and board demographic diversity. We conducted a longitudinal study of board composition amongst 210 Swiss public companies from January 2001 through December 2003, a period during which the Swiss (Stock) Exchange (SWX) introduced new corporate governance-related disclosure guidelines. We find firms with nomination committees are more likely to have a higher number of independent and foreign directors, but not more likely to have a higher number of female board members. Further, the existence of nomination committees is associated with a higher degree of nationality diversity but is not related to board educational diversity. We also find that nomination committee composition matters in the nomination of independent and foreign, but not of female directors. Our results suggest that understanding different board roles and composition require a multi-theoretical approach, and that agency theory, resource-dependence theory and group effectiveness theory help to explain different aspects of board composition and effectiveness. Finally, the article discusses the concept of diversity and appropriate ways to study diversity in a boardroom context.

Which work characteristics predict employee outcomes for the public-sector employee? An examination of generic and occupation-specific characteristics

The wide-ranging changes that have occurred in the public sector over recent years have placed increasing demands on public-sector employees. A survey of employees within a relatively commercially-oriented public-sector organization in Australia was used to test a demand-oriented generic model of employee well-being and a variety of situation-specific variables. The presence of support at work and the amount of control an employee had over their job were found to be key predictors of employee-level outcomes. Perceptions of pay and the perception of a lack of human resources (HR) were also found to predict employee outcome variables. The results emphasize the impact that middle managers and HR managers can have in terms of reducing the detrimental employee effects that can be caused by the introduction of new public management (NPM) and the potential for a positive impact on employees. In particular, public-sector managers can use the design of jobs and the development of social support mechanisms, such as employee assistance programmes, to maintain, if not improve, the quality of working life experienced by their employees. More broadly, this study has found that the job strain model is a useful tool in a public-sector environment and is likely to be of increasing utility with the continuing introduction or consolidation of NPM over time. Managing these issues in the new public sector could be a key means of protecting the key resource of the Australian public sector - the employees.

The role of the board in building strategic capability: towards an integrated model of sport governance research

Governance is a critical issue confronting sport organisations. Its importance in the management of sport organisations has been heightened due to the transition of many sports from predominantly volunteer administered organisations anchored in an amateur ethos, to professionally managed entities catering to a more sophisticated sport marketplace. This paper identifies four elements from the sport governance literature as the key research foci to date: shared leadership, board motivation, board roles, and board structure. Four generic themes (performance, conformance, policy and operations) are also examined and expressed as governance capabilities. The strategic role and performance of the board, while central to the practice of governance, is shown to be a weakness in many sport organisations. Further, the strategic role of the board is underdeveloped in the sport management and governance research literature. Finally, it is noted that the governance literature is shaped by a normative and prescriptive approach that may not fully encompass the diversity that exists within the sport setting. The paper concludes by identifying and affirming the critical gaps in our knowledge of sport governance. Future work should seek to understand sector-specific considerations, such as non-profit and commercial differences in sport; governance designs in response to changing environmental conditions; the impact of the CEO on the board's strategic contributions; and strategic activity by the board. More use of qualitative research methods to probe such issues is recommended

Integrating job stress and social exchange theories to predict employee strain in reformed public sector contexts

This research examines the organizational characteristics that contribute to employee wellbeing in public sector agencies that have undergone substantial organizational change. Two studies were undertaken, the first involving 2,466 police officers working in a state-based law enforcement agency, whereas the second comprised 1,010 occupationally diverse employees working in a State Government authority. The research was guided by a theoretical framework that begins with a model underpinning many large-scale job stress investigations—the job strain model (JSM)—and is expanded to incorporate widely used social exchange variables (i.e., psychological contract breach and organizational fairness). The results of hierarchical regression analyses from both studies confirm the value of the JSM. There was also strong support for extending the JSM to include the breach and fairness variables; however, proposed interactions between job demands and organizational fairness failed to add to the explanatory value of the model. The implications of these results particularly for public sector organizations that have undergone extensive reforms consistent with New Public Management are discussed.

Improving employee outcomes in the public sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficacy of the demand-control-support model, augmented with employee perceptions of organisational justice and degree of met expectations.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 128 public sector employees working in a large state police force operating under many of the elements of new public management. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted using four indicators of occupational strain: employee wellbeing, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and intent to quit.

Findings – The results of this study suggest that the demand-control-support model has great utility in identifying those aspects of the work environment associated with employee strain. Job control and social support at work in particular were the most consistent predictors. In contrast, the expectation and justice variables failed to make significant contributions to the model in all but one analysis providing no support for the “injustice as stressor” perspective.

Research limitations/implications – Although a cross-sectional design was utilized, these results highlight the value of applying the parsimonious demand-control-support model to a wider set of outcomes, especially in a public sector environment.

Practical implications – The results emphasize the importance of the relatively neglected “softer” work characteristics support and control. In order to combat the ill-effects of organisational reforms and prompt a shift towards the public value approach, managers operating under elements of new public management should ensure that adequate social support at work is available and that employee control is commensurate with their demands.

Originality/value – This study examined an augmented demand-control-support model and identified that whilst perceptions of justice can influence employee attitudes and wellbeing, the demand, control, and support variables remain the most influential factors with regard to public sector employee attitudes and wellbeing.

The politics of boganism and public relations in contemporary Australia

What is meant by the term ‘bogan’ and how does its popular usage distinguish a new public occupying a particular class position and social presence in Australian society. Examining a number of media texts, this paper explores the bogan phenomenon and asks if it normatively repositions Marxist ideas of class within the contemporary construct of lifestyle politics and classless capitalism (Beck). Challenging the idea the term is politically benign, the paper argues that the rise ‘boganism’ and its stigmatic associations has implications for public relations. In particular, it argues successful framing techniques designate a group of people occupying social risk positions and that are dis-empowered by eco-discourses and targeted for social control. These marginalised publics lack the sociocultural resources required for participation in the public sphere and as such are malleable and highly receptive to intrinsic and extrinsic forms of public relations.

Geo-identity, urban school choice and education campaigns for public schools

Educational campaigning has received little attention in the literature. This study investigates long-term and organised urban campaigns that are collectively lobbying the Victorian State Government in Australia, for a new public high school to be constructed in their suburb. A public high school is also known as a state school, government school, or an ordinary comprehensive school. It receives the majority of its funding from the State and Federal Australian Government, and is generally regarded as ‘free’ education, in comparison to a private school. Whilst the campaigners frame their requests as for a ‘public school’, their primary appeal is for a local school in their community. This study questions how collective campaigning for a locale-specific public school is influenced by geography, class and identity. In order to explore these campaigns, I draw on formative studies of middle-class school choice from an Australian and United Kingdom perspective (Campbell, Proctor, & Sherington, 2009; Reay, Crozier, & James, 2011). To think about the role of geography and space in these processes of choice, I look to apply Harvey’s (1973) theory of absolute, relational and relative space. I use Bourdieu (1999b) as a sociological lens that is attentive to “site effects” and it is through this lens that I think about class as a “collection of properties” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 106), actualised via mechanisms of identity and representation (Hall, 1996; Rose, 1996a, 1996b). This study redresses three distinct gaps in the literature: first, I focus attention on a contemporary middle-class choice strategy—that is, collective campaigning for a public school. Research within this field is significantly under-developed, despite this choice strategy being on the rise. Second, previous research argues that certain middle-class choosers regard the local public school as “inferior” in some way (Reay, et al., 2011, p. 111), merely acting as a “safety net” (Campbell, et al., 2009, p. 5) and connected to the working-class chooser (Reay & Ball, 1997). The campaigners are characteristic of the middle-class school chooser, but they are purposefully and strategically seeking out the local public school. Therefore, this study looks to build on work by Reay, et al. (2011) in thinking about “against-the-grain school choice”, specifically within the Australian context. Third, this study uses visual and graphic methods in order to examine the influence of geography in the education market (Taylor, 2001). I see the visualisation of space and schooling that I offer in this dissertation as a key theoretical contribution of this study. I draw on a number of data sets, both qualitative and quantitative, to explore the research questions. I interviewed campaigners and attended campaign meetings as participant observer; I collected statistical data from fifteen different suburbs and schools, and conducted comparative analyses of each. These analyses are displayed by using visual graphs. This study uses maps created by a professional graphic designer and photographs by a professional photographer; I draw on publications by the campaigners themselves, such as surveys, reports and social media; but also, interviews with campaigners that are published in local or state newspapers. The multiple data sets enable an immersive and rich graphic ethnography. This study contributes by building on understandings of how particular sociological cohorts of choosers are engaging with, and choosing, the urban public school in Australia. It is relevant for policy making, in that it comes at a time of increasing privatisation and a move toward independent public schools. This study identifies cohorts of choosers that are employing individual and collective political strategies to obtain a specific school, and it identifies this cohort via explicit class-based characteristics and their school choice behaviours. I look to use fresh theoretical and methodological approaches that emphasise space and geography, theorising geo-identity and the pseudo-private school

O controle externo sobre as agências reguladoras de Estado : limites e (im)possibilidades

Com a criação das primeiras entidades reguladoras de infraestrutura, década de 90, surgiu uma nova maneira estratégica de o Estado atuar com intuito de melhorar a governança pública. O Estado brasileiro, que era responsável direto pelo desenvolvimento econômico e social, buscou se redefinir frente ao modelo de entidades reguladoras que emergia. Em decorrência dessa nova fisionomia estatal, a descentralização funcional ganhou ênfase resultando no aparecimento de estruturas mais flexíveis e autônomas sob a natureza de direito público com a finalidade de atuar em setores típicos de Estado. Assim, foram criadas as primeiras agências reguladoras brasileiras com objetivo de normatizar, incentivar e regular setores essenciais à sociedade. Por consequência de tais inovações, diversas áreas administrativas tiveram de serem adaptadas, sobretudo as relacionadas à atividade de controle no âmbito administrativo. Para tanto, tornou-se necessário conciliar, dentro de um escopo sistematizado, mecanismos capazes de atender as demandas oriundas do recente Estado regulador brasileiro. Com efeito, a função controle adquire relevo no sentido de evitar que tais agências reguladoras apartem-se de limites impostos por lei ou de que divirjam de suas missões institucionais. Assim, o presente trabalho investiga a atuação do controle externo exercido pelo Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) no desempenho das agências reguladoras de Estado. Diante de o assunto permear várias áreas epistemológicas, entende-se que abordá-lo sob o enfoque interdisciplinar pode estender em contribuições sobre o objeto investigado. Nesse contexto, esta dissertação visa incorporar, também, outras áreas de conhecimento. Longe de defender um isomorfismo para o arranjo regulatório brasileiro ou de promover uma saída paradigmática, esta pesquisa busca, com amparo na metodologia qualitativa e sob os enfoques exploratórios e descritivos, reunir conhecimentos e constatações no sentido de propiciar maior aproximação acerca do assunto e concorrer para o delineamento de diretrizes futuras do controle externo sobre a regulação brasileira. Destaca-se que tanto a regulação como o controle sobre o ambiente regulatório são assuntos que se encontram em desenvolvimento no contexto brasileiro, o que enseja a pertinência desta pesquisa. Em face do exposto, esta dissertação visa investigar o estado atual do controle exercido pelo TCU sobre o desempenho nas agências reguladoras de Estado – infraestrutura - com intuito de analisar e promover um debate sobre limites e (im)possibilidades dessa atuação.