Agency Decisions Research Articles

Too young to have sex: Conversations with very young adolescents about sex, dating and related decision-making.

Background. Very young adolescents receive little research and pragmatic attention regarding their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs. As a result, their experiences are often overlooked. Furthermore, when this age group is included in SRH education, the dominant public health lens tends to focus on health risks associated with sex, with less emphasis on a holistic approach that considers the sociocultural and relational contexts in which adolescents’ decision-making about sex and dating occurs. Objectives. To explore the beliefs, perceptions and decision-making pathways of adolescents about heterosexual sex, dating and relationships. Methods . The sample included 33 girls and 30 boys aged 10 - 14 years attending schools in rural Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Data collection entailed participatory methodologies of group-based activities and individual interviews. Data were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded and analysed using thematic analysis. Results. The findings focused on three themes: timing of dating, relationships and sex; gendered depictions of first sex; and agency in sexual decision-making. These themes shed light on the relational context in which adolescents’ decision-making takes place and highlight the pervasive influence of wider gendered norms. Conclusion . Very young adolescents are not sexually naive and instead are faced with complex decisions regarding sex and dating. This age group is not, however, fully supported in developing a healthy, positive sexuality when emphasis is on the negative outcomes of sex. The paper concludes with recommendations for adolescent SRH programmes to provide a supportive environment for younger adolescents to make informed choices and develop positive, healthy sexualities.

The Politics of Selecting Chevron Deference

In this article, we examine an important threshold question in judicial behavior and administrative law: When do federal circuit courts decide to use the Chevron deference framework and when do they select a framework that is less deferential to the administrative agency's statutory interpretation? The question is important because the purpose of Chevron deference is to give agencies—not judges—policy‐making space within statutory interpretation. We expect, nonetheless, that whether to invoke the Chevron framework is largely driven by political dynamics, with judges adopting a less deferential standard when their political preferences do not align with the agency's decision. To provide insight, we analyze circuit court decisions from 2003 until 2013 that review agency statutory interpretations. Our results—from the largest and most comprehensive database of its kind—provide partial confirmation of our expectations. When courts reviewed liberal agency interpretations, all panels—liberal, moderate, and conservative—were equally likely to apply Chevron. However, when reviewing conservative agency interpretations, liberal panels selected the Chevron deference framework significantly less frequently than conservative panels. Contrary to limited prior studies, we find no evidence of “whistleblower” or disciplining effects when judges of different judicial ideologies comprised the panel. Viewed together, our results provide important implications for the current debate on whether to eliminate, narrow, or clarify Chevron's domain.

Simulation-Based Method of Capacity Utilization Evaluation to Account for Uncertainty in Recovery Time

A typical objective of a railway agency is to design an efficient and reliable service plan. Although enhancing the level of capacity utilization may increase efficiency, the stability of the service plan may also decrease due to stochastic railway disruptions. Past studies used recovery time to evaluate the stability of a service plan; however, the variation of recovery time was not fully examined. Therefore, we developed a Monte Carlo simulation framework to address this issue and proposed four capacity-based indices for the evaluation of service efficiency and stability. These indices are capacity utilization efficiency, mean recovery time, dispersion of recovery time, and probability of unacceptable recovery time. The latter two new indices explored the variation of recovery time and probability of unacceptable long recovery time, which is undesired for railway operation. We conducted a real-world case study on the Taiwan Railways Administration before and after the service plan revision. Consequently, the northbound service plan needed a deliberate review and revision before implementation, whereas the southbound plan successfully increased capacity usage while not necessarily worsening stability. This result demonstrated that our study introduced uncertainty analysis into the evaluation framework and provided flexible information on the service plan. These developments can provide improved support in the decision-making of railway agencies to strike a balance between service level and asset usage.

Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

A defining feature of public sector employment is the regular change in elected leadership. Yet, we know little about how elections influence public sector careers. We describe how elections alter policy outputs and disrupt the influence of civil servants over agency decisions. These changes shape the career choices of employees motivated by policy, influence, and wages. Using new Office of Personnel Management data on the careers of millions of federal employees between 1988 and 2011, we evaluate how elections influence employee turnover decisions. We find that presidential transitions increase departure rates of senior employees, particularly in agencies with divergent views relative to the new president and at the start of presidential terms. We also find suggestive evidence that vacancies in high-level positions after elections may induce lower-level executives to stay longer in hopes of advancing. We conclude with implications of our findings for presidential politics, public policy, and public management.

Implicit decision framing as an unrecognized source of confusion in endangered species classification.

Legal classification of species requires scientific and values-based components, and how those components interact depends on how people frame the decision. Is classification a negotiation of trade-offs, a decision on how to allocate conservation efforts, or simply a comparison of the biological status of a species to a legal standard? The answers to problem-framing questions such as these influence decision making in species classifications. In our experience, however, decision makers, staff biologists, and stakeholders often have differing perspectives of the decision problem and assume different framings. In addition to differences between individuals, in some cases it appears individuals themselves are unclear about the decision process, which contributes to regulatory paralysis, litigation, and a loss of trust by agency staff and the public. We present 5 framings: putting species in the right bin, doing right by the species over time, saving the most species on a limited budget, weighing extinction risk against other objectives, and strategic classification to advance conservation. These framings are inspired by elements observed in current classification practices. Putting species in the right bin entails comparing a scientific status assessment with policy thresholds and accounting for potential misclassification costs. Doing right by the species adds a time dimension to the classification decision, and saving the most species on a limited budget classifies a suite of species simultaneously. Weighing extinction risk against other objectives would weigh ecological or socioeconomic concerns in classification decisions, and strategic classification to advance conservation would make negotiation a component of classification. We view these framings as a means to generate thought, discussion, and movement toward selection and application of explicit classification framings. Being explicit about the decision framing could lead decision makers toward more efficient and defensible decisions, reduce internal confusion and external conflict, and support better collaboration between scientists and policy makers.

Stakeholders and Multiple Objectives: The Case of Global Value Chains

It has been argued in the stakeholder literature that rational decision making is implausible without using a single corporate objective function as a guide (e.g., shareholder wealth maximization, stakeholder happiness enhancement, etc.), principally due to the difficulty of measurement (incommensurability), variety in values (stakeholder pluralism), and longitudinal (temporality) challenges under indeterminism (e.g. informational uncertainty). Yet decision making within the very large clusters of stakeholders that comprise Global Value Chains (GVCs: groups of vertically related but independent firms that each have their own objectives organized to convert raw materials into finished products and services) continues to function despite these supposed impediments. To address this challenge, we develop a generalized multi-criteria decision-making pluralistic model by extending the Mitchell, Weaver, Agle, Bailey, and Carlson (2016) stakeholder agency decision framework. We demonstrate theoretically how Pareto improvements in social welfare are more likely through a multi-criteria decision-making “intracorporate marketplace” model that enables more direct participant engagement and goal negotiation among diverse stakeholders.

Managing the vanishing North American hunter: a novel framework to address declines in hunters and hunter-generated conservation funds

ABSTRACTAs long as the funding mechanism supporting state wildlife conservation relies heavily on hunter-generated funds, declines in hunter participation are a threat to the conservation of both game and nongame species. To address options to bolster wildlife agency profit from the sale of hunting licenses, we developed a stage-based, stochastic population model of a hunter population, and demonstrate its utility within a decision-making framework to inform state wildlife agency decisions. We evaluated hypothetical youth and adult recruitment-focused outreach programs over 10 years to increase license sale profit. Using our model as the core of a decision analysis, state agencies can set hunter population or license profit targets, and evaluate management actions designed to achieve those objectives. We expect that our approach will provide a valuable framework for anticipating the future of hunting and hunting-generated conservation funds, and can be extended to other user groups, including target shooters and anglers.

Multi-level governance in public transport: Governmental layering and its influence on public transport service solutions

Public transport is supported by governments to deliver social and environmental objectives through public value established through the instrument of a subsidised transport services for its inhabitants and visitors. In the current literature on public transport policy and governance, governments are generally seen as singular: the transport authority or the government. However, as has been well researched in administrative science, governments are not as singular and not as unitary as assumed by this literature. Different governments in an area operate on various scales of jurisdictions and their actions in a specific policy field are generally mutually dependent. These different levels of government do not necessarily coordinate their policies, as the scale differences drive different perspectives and objectives. This is conceptualised as multi-level governance with documented issues and practices that resonate in the provision of urban public transport.This paper presents the literature context of multi-level governance and its application to public transport provision through the examination of case studies. The hypothesis that the distribution of agency (decision power) and funding has a great deal of explanatory power for the public transport solutions that are implemented is examined in the context of case studies in the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa. These seek to demonstrate how the distribution of agency and funding over different layers of government explain the directions in which public transport service solutions have developed in recent times.

Developing one map of national marine resources of Indonesia

Indonesia is the largest archipelagic country in the world, with two third of waters containing large marine resources. However, the coastal and marine resources have not been optimally utilized due to the limitation of Spatial Zoning Plan for Coastal and Small Islands (RZWP3K). In addition, there were many institutions which produce thematic maps of the coastal and marine resources (MGI) using different basemap, standard and technical specifications. Hence, same thematic maps provide different information. For these reasons, One Map Policy (OMP) is required to overcome the problems. The objective of this research was to develop datasets of one map of the coastal and marine resources needed for developing RZWP3K by using thematic layer maps produced by their respected Ministries/Agencies as the custodianships. The current custodianships of thematic maps in Indonesia is defined based on the Head of Geospatial Information Agency Decision Number 54 Year 2015. The method used the OMP approach was based on one reference, one standard, one database, and one geoportal. The research resulted the dataset of MGI integrated to the national basemap in a geodatabase format. From this research, it was concluded that the thematic maps of the coastal and marine resources which were produced in many institutions can be integrated to a national basemap and standard specification. The integrated thematic maps are then useful for developing the RZWP3K.

An Evolutionary Theory of Administrative Law

Law evolves to accommodate change—this is axiomatic in most academic legal traditions. But in the era of the administrative state, with congressional gridlock and a judiciary hesitant to address policy questions, evolution of statutory law has become much more difficult. This leads to pent up demand for change in legal regimes. If the legislature and the courts cannot provide an outlet for this pressure, where does it go? How does the law continue to change? Although other scholars have looked to agencies as engines of legal change, we lack a theoretical framework to understand how that change happens. I argue that an evolutionary framework provides an informative framework for understanding administrative legal change. I provide three case studies that demonstrate the administrative evolution of the Endangered Species Act. In spite of tremendous advances in conservation, fundamental changes in scientists’ understanding of human impacts on the natural world, and increasingly strident clashes over private property rights and endangered species, the Act has remained largely unchanged for the last 35 years. In a functioning legislative system, the Act would have been amended to accommodate many of these changes. Instead, the case studies show a mechanism of legal change through agency action analogous to the mechanisms underlying biological evolution. Other commentators have argued the administrative state stymies evolution of the law, but this research contradicts that view. Applying an evolutionary framework to administrative actions creates a new theory of administrative evolution of the law, placing administrative analysis within the long tradition of evolutionary approaches to legal change used by commentators from Aristotle to Holmes. In contrast to traditional normative theories of administrative law, an evolutionary approach focuses on how change progresses over time. This theory of administrative evolution of the law also casts new light on a host of normative questions, from the role of judicial review to improvements in agency decision-making. Considering administrative actions within the broader context of the legal evolution promises a fruitful new approach to analyzing administrative law.

Design of Advance Market Commitment Contracts

(1) Problem Definition: Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in production capacity for vaccines and therapeutic drugs to combat diseases prevalent in developing countries because demand is uncertain and the affected countries have limited ability-to-pay to cover product development and capacity infrastructure costs. (2) Academic/Practical Relevance: We derive equilibrium decisions of pharmaceutical manufacturers and global health agencies within the framework of an advance market commitment (AMC) contract via formal models. We also compare several variants of the AMC contract that global health agencies have considered implementing. (3) Methodology: We formulate and solve Stackelberg games between a global health agency and either one or two manufacturers. Our two-manufacturer model also involves a simultaneous capacity game between the manufacturers, embedded in a leader-follower setting involving the global health agency and the manufacturers. (4) Results: We derive contract terms that induce a single manufacturer with a late-stage product to invest in an amount of capacity that maximizes the number of doses supplied. We also show that among variants of the base AMC contract, minimum capacity requirement contract outperforms the minimum purchase guarantee contract. When there are two manufacturers, we demonstrate that demand allocation rules matter. Also, if both manufacturers' products meet the necessary functional requirements, it may not be optimal for the global health agency to strictly prioritize one manufacturer over the other for demand allocation. (5) Managerial Implications: Global health agencies have considered proposals to offer purchase guarantees as part of AMC contracts. We show that a better alternative might be to require minimum capacity investments from manufacturers. Similarly, with two manufacturers, it might be beneficial for the health agency to consider allocating demand proportional to each manufacturer's capacity investment.

21st Century Citizen Pharma: The FDA & Patient-Focused Product Development.

Perpetual debate regarding the delicate balance between access and innovation and the protection of the public health and safety dominate discussions of the United States Food and Drug Administration ("FDA"). Established chiefly as a command and control federal administrative agency, iterative changes in legislation have shaped the FDA's activity in drug, biologic, and medical device regulation over the course of the last one hundred plus years. The most recent fundamental reframing of the agency's authority and directive presented itself in the 21st Century Cures Act, reflecting an important role for patient perspectives in the regulatory process. This Article explores recent developments in patient-focused product development efforts at the FDA and offers modest insights on the increasing role of patients, and patient advocacy groups, in agency decision-making. The Article terms this era "21st century citizen pharma."

The Effects of the Macroeconomic Determinants on Sovereign Credit Rating of Turkey

The effects of the main macroeconomic determinants on the sovereign credit rating of Turkey assigned by Standard & Poor’s are analyzed in this paper. As the main macroeconomic determinants, inflation rate, economic growth rate, foreign direct investment, external debt, current account debt and savings are taken into account in this study. The data related to Turkey in this study covers between 1992-2016. In this study, the Granger causality test and the OLS regression model are used for that correlations of the variables. Outcomes of the analysis show that just two in six macroeconomic determinants are effective on the sovereign credit rating. According to the results of the study, external debt and inflation rate have a statistically significant relationship with the sovereign credit rating of Turkey. The outcomes show that external debt and the inflation rate have negative effects on the sovereign credit rating of the country. The coefficient of the external debt and the inflation is negative which means that if the inflation or external debt increases the rating decreases in appropriate with the theory. On the other hand, the effects of the other four macroeconomic variables are not significant. The results of the study indicate that some factors other than the primary macroeconomic determinants are effective on the sovereign credit ratings of Turkey. The results also unveil the door for the criticism that the decisions of the credit rating agencies are biased.

Context before implementation: a qualitative study of decision makers' views of a peer-led healthy lifestyle intervention for people with serious mental illness in supportive housing.

People with serious mental illness die at an earlier age than people in the general population largely due to cardiovascular disease. Healthy lifestyle interventions can help reduce this health inequity. In this qualitative study, we examined the perceptions that decision makers in supportive housing agencies had toward a peer-led healthy lifestyle intervention and their views of contextual factors that could shape implementation at these agencies. A purposive sample of 12 decision makers from three supportive housing agencies was recruited. We presented participants a vignette describing our peer-led intervention and used semistructured qualitative interviews to examine their views. Interviews were recorded, professionally transcribed, and analyzed using directed content analysis. Participants reported positive views toward the intervention with the most valued intervention attributes being relative advantage over existing services, compatibility to clients' needs, ability to pilot the intervention, and cost. A model emerged from our data depicting multilevel contextual factors believed to shape the implementation of our intervention at these agencies, including system- (funding, marketability, and external regulations), organization- (leadership support, fit with organization, staff buy-in and burden), and client-level (adaptability to clients' needs, and clients' buy-in) factors. Study findings illustrate the importance of understanding the context of practice before implementation. This examination can help identify critical views from decision makers that could undermine or advance the integration of peer-led interventions in supportive housing agencies and help identify structures, policies, and organizational practices that can inform the implementation process.

Looking Back to Look Forward: Federal Officials’ Perceptions of Public Engagement

The authors of the Refounding volumes raised concerns about citizen inclusion in agency decision making. We respond by studying public participation in federal decision making through 61 interviews with federal officials. We examine the interviewees’ candid perceptions of public engagement through three themes of the Refounding: the importance of deliberation, attention to whose words are heard, and facilitation of the processes of interaction. Our findings suggest that while agencies do work to engage the public, there are still many challenges to achieving meaningful public participation, which yields consequences for legitimacy and trust.

Economic analysis of three interventions of different intensity in improving school implementation of a government healthy canteen policy in Australia: costs, incremental and relative cost effectiveness

BackgroundNo evaluations of the cost or cost effectiveness of interventions to increase school implementation of food availability policies have been reported. Government and non-government agency decisions regarding the extent of investment required to enhance school implementation of such policies are unsupported by such evidence. This study sought to i) Determine cost and cost-effectiveness of three interventions in improving school implementation of an Australian government healthy canteen policy and; ii) Determine the relative cost-effectiveness of the interventions in improving school implementation of such a policy.MethodsAn analysis of the cost and cost-effectiveness of three implementation interventions of varying support intensity, relative to usual implementation support conducted during 2013–2015 was undertaken. Secondly, an indirect comparison of the trials was undertaken to determine the most cost-effective of the three strategies. The economic analysis was based on the cost of delivering the interventions by health service delivery staff to increase the proportion of schools ‘adherent’ with the policy.ResultsThe total costs per school were $166,971, $70,926 and $75,682 for the high, medium and low intensity interventions respectively. Compared to usual support, the cost effectiveness ratios for each of the three interventions were: A$2982 (high intensity), A$2627 (medium intensity) and A$4730 (low intensity) per percent increase in proportion of schools reporting ‘adherence’). Indirect comparison between the ‘high’ and ‘medium intensity’ interventions showed no statistically significant difference in cost-effectiveness.ConclusionsThe results indicate that while the cost profiles of the interventions varied substantially, the cost-effectiveness did not. This result is valuable to policy makers seeking cost-effective solutions that can be delivered within budget.

Competing for government procurement contracts: The role of corporate social responsibility

Research Summary: This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) improves firms’ competitiveness in the market for government procurement contracts. To obtain exogenous variation in firms’ social engagement, I exploit a quasi‐natural experiment provided by the enactment of state‐level constituency statutes, which allow directors to consider stakeholders’ interests when making business decisions. Using constituency statutes as instrumental variable (IV) for CSR, I find that companies with higher CSR receive more procurement contracts. The effect is stronger for more complex contracts and in the early years of the government‐company relationship, suggesting that CSR helps mitigate information asymmetries by signaling trustworthiness. Moreover, the effect is stronger in competitive industries, indicating that CSR can serve as a differentiation strategy to compete against other bidders. Managerial Summary: This study examines how companies can strategically improve their competitiveness in the market for government procurement contracts—a market of economic importance (15–20% of GDP). It shows that companies with higher social and environmental performance (CSR) receive more procurement contracts. This effect is stronger for more complex contracts, in the early years of the government–company relationship, and in more competitive industries. These findings indicate that firms’ CSR can serve as a signaling and differentiation strategy that influences the purchasing decision of government agencies. Accordingly, managers operating in the business‐to‐government (B2G) sector could benefit from integrating social and environmental considerations into their strategic decision making.

Routing design and fleet allocation optimization of freeway service patrol: Improved results using genetic algorithm

Freeway service patrol (FSP), is considered to be an effective method for incident management and can help transportation agency decision-makers alter existing route coverage and fleet allocation. This paper investigates the FSP problem of patrol routing design and fleet allocation, with the objective of minimizing the overall average incident response time. While the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and its improvements have been applied to solve this problem, they often become trapped in local optimal solution. Moreover, the issue of searching efficiency remains to be further addressed. In this paper, we employ the genetic algorithm (GA) and SA to solve the FSP problem. To maintain population diversity and avoid premature convergence, niche strategy is incorporated into the traditional genetic algorithm. We also employ elitist strategy to speed up the convergence. Numerical experiments have been conducted with the help of the Sioux Falls network. Results show that the GA slightly outperforms the dual-based greedy (DBG) algorithm, the very large-scale neighborhood searching (VLNS) algorithm, the SA algorithm and the scenario algorithm.

RuleRS: a rule-based architecture for decision support systems

Decision-makers in governments, enterprises, businesses and agencies or individuals, typically, make decisions according to various regulations, guidelines and policies based on existing records stored in various databases, in particular, relational databases. To assist decision-makers, an expert system, encompasses interactive computer-based systems or subsystems to support the decision-making process. Typically, most expert systems are built on top of transaction systems, databases, and data models and restricted in decision-making to the analysis, processing and presenting data and information, and they do not provide support for the normative layer. This paper will provide a solution to one specific problem that arises from this situation, namely the lack of tool/mechanism to demonstrate how an expert system is well-suited for supporting decision-making activities drawn from existing records and relevant legal requirements aligned existing records stored in various databases.We present a Rule-based (pre and post) reporting systems (RuleRS) architecture, which is intended to integrate databases, in particular, relational databases, with a logic-based reasoner and rule engine to assist in decision-making or create reports according to legal norms. We argue that the resulting RuleRS provides an efficient and flexible solution to the problem at hand using defeasible inference. To this end, we have also conducted empirical evaluations of RuleRS performance.

Lost in Transactions: Analysing the Institutional Arrangements Underpinning Urban Green Infrastructure

Urban development has altered surface-water hydrology of landscapes and created urban heat island effects. With climate change, increasing frequency of extreme heat events and in some areas, episodic drought and flooding, present new challenges for urban areas. Green infrastructure holds potential as a cost-effective means of providing microclimate cooling and stormwater diversion. Further, green open spaces when combined with the provision of equipment and facilities have the potential to promote physical and emotional well-being. However successful implementation may be predicated on co-ordinated efforts of multiple agencies. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework developed by Crawford and Ostrom is used in a case study to understand the institutional impediments, transaction costs and gaps in responsibility associated with the delivery of green infrastructure. Lessons learned are potentially transferable to other urban settings. Our analysis reveals areas of high transaction costs as well as a gap in the polycentric decision-making of agencies. The local government council is concerned with the well-being of its residents but has limited financial capacity. None of the agencies who deliver green infrastructure have responsibility for facilitating the indirect or preventative health benefits. Thus, a co-ordination problem among agencies can lead to suboptimal investments in green infrastructure.