Administrative Incentives Research Articles

Full Disclosure: Unanticipated Improvements in Property Tax Uniformity

This paper contributes to two strands in the property tax literature. One thread considers the effects of full disclosure requirements or “truth in taxation” on the rate of property tax growth. The second studies the determinants of assessment uniformity. This article focuses on the role of full disclosure in changing administrative incentives and improving the uniformity of the property tax. A panel of 29 Utah counties over a 32‐year period is used in a TSCS analysis. Findings suggest there is substantial evidence that full disclosure improved uniformity in Utah, but limited evidence that it restrained property tax growth.

Perceptions of effectiveness and the actual use of technology-based methods of instruction: A study of California criminal justice and crime-related faculty*

The field of criminal justice/criminology has few studies that examine faculty opinions regarding the use of technology as a replacement and supplement to traditional classroom instruction. Using a sample of criminal justice and crime-related higher education faculty members in the state of California, this study examines perceptions of effectiveness and the actual use of various classroom-based technologies. The results reveal that while most faculty members hold positive views toward the use of technology, far fewer are actually integrating technology-based methods of instruction into their courses. Meanwhile, most faculty members do not perceive the presence of adequate administrative supports or incentives at their institutions for the development of distance learning courses. Overall, support for the integration of technology into criminal justice education appears to be greatest when it is used as a supplement rather than a replacement for face-to-face classroom instruction.

Utilization of Fodder Trees and Shrubs in the Arid and Semiarid Zones of West Asia and North Africa

Utilization of fodder trees and shrubs (FTS) in the Mediterranean arid and semi-arid zones was initiated after World War I and expanded between 1950 and 1970. A similarly slow expansion has taken place in other arid zones in the USA, South Africa, South America, and Australia. Currently in West Asian and North African (WANA) countries, the area planted with native or exotic species is about 10 6 ha. Mainly they include three categories of plant species: cacti, saltbushes, and wattles. At this time there is an expansion of hectareage and a diversi-cation of genetic material. The relative success of FTS has a number of reasons. They are tolerant to drought and have the ability to accumulate green fodder over several seasons, providing fodder reserves for times of dearth and thus permitting a switch from transhumance to sedentary husbandry. Deep rooting enables them to reach water resources unavailable to herbaceous species. Their Rain Use Efficiency (RUE) and Water Use Efficiency (WUE) rates provide productivities three to five times higher than rangelands. FTS have a positive impact on soil fertility due to their organic matter production, hence they increase microbial activity, rates of geobiogenic element cycling, and soil structure stabilization. Their above ground biomass, canopy ground cover, provides a microclimatic buffer role for wind, temperature and evapotranspiration, and their landscape roughness factor makes them efficient for erosion and desertification control. Other positive aspects include: the use on non farming land; general suitability for runo farming systems; production of valuable goods, such as food, shade, and firewood; providing wildlife shelter; and other benefits. FTS plantations are subjected, however, to constraints that limit their expansion. Their main shortcomings include the cost of establishment, often not affordable by a small farmer; required long-term planning may not be feasible, as a secure land tenure system often is nonexistent. Appropriate methods of cultivation are not being applied, management, and utilization are lacking, and availability of plant material is limited. Discipline of utilization, allowing regeneration of stands after defoliation is a problem. Identification of constraints indicates needs for research and extension activities. These include reduced-cost of establishment and improved management methods, such as ensuring availability of low-cost seeds and selection of high grade cultivars, and introduction of new high quality exotic species. Additionally, integration into economically feasible and socially acceptable production systems, including joint cultivation with cereal farming and combination with runo farming techniques, should be developed. Legal, regulatory, and administrative incentives are also needed.

Paths of Managerial Learning in the East German Context

In the debate about organizational or managerial learning the connection between individual and organizational levels is often not clearly visible, but there seems to be a consensus that organizational slack is both a main condition for and a result of organizational learning. In the process of learning, manage ment produces or reduces organizational slack. This paper empirically exam ines how managerial learning creates or reduces organizational slack. Such learning is a dialectical process in which the social practices of management are stabilized and/or changed and embedded in special institutional settings. By means of three different case studies it will be demonstrated that the pro cesses of organizational learning, both simple and complex, are tied to spe cifically institutional conditions. The conventional debate about organizational or managerial learning seems to explain only a specific part of these learning processes. In the managerial liter ature the often used metaphor of 'the learning organization' describes learning as a self-centred process, in which the organization and its actors are separated from their institutional context and social embeddedness. The research pre sented in this paper demonstrates that it is also necessary to take into considera tion the learning landscape of an organization. In this way, the internal and external embeddedness of managerial learning are stressed. The creation and use of organizational slack by management — as a main condition for, and product of learning — seem to be directly linked to their abilities to organize the processes themselves and to experiment with established routines without the restrictions of external administrative orders or imaginary market incentives.

Beyond guidelines: promoting clinical change in the real world

There is widespread recognition that simply publishing research findings is not enough to ensure that they are carried into clinical practice. One response to this has been the burgeoning "guidelines movement" of recent years, which has now reached the stage of generating guidelines for the production of guidelines. Argues that guidelines, and other forms of intervention to change clinical practice in an evidence-based direction, will succeed only to the extent that they engage actively with the real world of clinical decision making. This world is more complex than guidelines writers acknowledge, and includes economic, administrative, professional and personal incentives as well as those provided by research evidence. Engaging with this real world may be difficult, but it opens up new possibilities for understanding how clinicians act and how evidence may be used to inform clinical practice. Such possibilities include social influences, educational outreach, providing information to patients, negotiating local coalitions on specific issues and changing the administrative environment.

The Use of Administrative Incentives for Staff Development and Performance

The Use of Administrative Incentives for Staff Development and Performance

The consulting teacher model: risks and opportunities.

The consulting teacher model is receiving increasing attention in state departments of education and local school districts. It offers possibilities for improving educational service in the mainstream to mildly handicapped children and other children at risk and is consonant with the current regular/special education initiative being promoted by the federal government. It also is consistent with reform strategies urging creation of master teachers. Because of its intuitive attractiveness, a risk exists that the model will be implemented prematurely on a statewide level. Among the likely and undesirable side-effects of hasty implementation are ineffective caseload management, conversion of the model into yet another tutoring model, premature replacement of the resource model, inadequate training of both regular and special educators, neglect of financial and program evaluation, and insufficient funding support from regular education. To increase the odds of successful implementation, states must accommodate multiple goals for the model, create administrative incentives that do not undermine it, and assure adequate preparation of teachers as consulting teachers. Without sufficient attention, resources, and planning, the consulting teacher model will fail to achieve its potential.

Canada's Proposed Crimes Legislation on against the Environment

The Canadian Law Reform Commission has explored the possible use of Canada's Criminal Code to ensure the right to health and safety of the individual and to protect the environment. The Commission has recommended that a new and distinct offense called crimes against the environment should be added to the Criminal Code. The Commission acknowledges that other existing and evolving legal and administrative approaches, controls, and incentives, especially those focusing on prevention and compliance, will do much more to limit pollution than will recourse to the Criminal Code. However, in its view, certain types of conduct so seriously harm or endanger human life, health and the environment that they must be characterized as crimes and punished as such. The recommendations have raised fundamental questions of law and policy that must be addressed by the Department of Justice.

TIP: Feasibility and Equity

After several years of dormancy, a Tax-Based Incomes Policy (TIP) -first proposed by Sidney Weintraub and Henry Wallich in 1971-has recently begun to receive serious attention (Okun and Perry, 1978). It has become evident that construction of a TIP package must weigh trade-offs among administrative feasibility, equity, incentive strength, and allocative efficiency. In what follows, these trade-offs are explained and a TIP package is set out which balances these competing objectives, giving special weight to administrative feasibility and equity.

Collective farming in northern and southern Yucatan, Mexico: ecological and administrative determinants of success and failure

Cross economic analyses that compare the productivity of Mexican collective ejidos (farms) with privately owned farms are insufficient to evaluate the success of Mexico's collective ejido program. They fail to account for differences in federal administrative incentives and constraints on the two sectors and differences in local ecologies. An anthropological comparison of local collective ejidos in the northern and southern zones of Yucatan state reveals that local variables are essential in determining the success or failure of ejidos. In both zones restrictive federal administrative policies inhibit the economic development of ejidos, but in zones where local ecological factors have encouraged rather than inhibited economic expansion, the ejidos show greater success.

Administrative Incentives in Nursing Staff Development

Administrative Incentives in Nursing Staff Development