Bureaucratic Hierarchy Research Articles

A Theory of Opinion Writing in a Political Hierarchy

We develop a model of opinion-writing in the judicial hierarchy. The model adopts a case-space approach to judicial decision-making and exploits informational asymmetries across levels of the hierarchy. In the model, a lower court writes an opinion with two features: a legal rule and a level of quality. An upper court must then decide whether to review the decision. The model yields new insights about the strategic incentives created by the judicial hierarchy. Empirical predictions are derived which demonstrate that several common tests employed in the literature may not discriminate among competing sets of first principles. Additional implications for rule-making in a bureaucratic hierarchy are also considered.

Liberal Justice: Judicial Reform in Venezuela’s Courts, 1786–1850

Abstract This article addresses two questions regarding the court system in Venezuela, 1780s–1840s, placed within the context of legal reforms throughout Latin America. First, how accurate is the assumption in the historiography that the disruptions of the independence war and the establishment of a republican government prompted Venezuelans to lose confidence in the courts and virtually stop using them? The investigation finds that republican Venezuelans used the courts as much as or more than their colonial counterparts; the number of court cases dropped during periods of intense violence but then quickly rebounded. Second, did the post-independence judicial system effectively integrate liberal legislative reforms into courtroom standards and practices? The study shows that, while republican court reform failed in some measures, it also succeeded in the following four areas: The courts changed the standards of evidence so that they gave clear preference to the empirical observations of the litigants and witnesses rather than their personal reputations; they reorganized court jurisdictions into an unambiguous hierarchy; they increased transparency; and they adopted constitutionally defined civil liberties of defendants in a manner that equates with modern “due process.” The article contextualizes these changes within legal reforms throughout the Atlantic world that, beginning in the eighteenth century, sought to increase state centralization through establishing the dominance of state legislation over other norms of justice (religious law, tradition, and custom) and creating clear bureaucratic hierarchies. Venezuela’s republican government pursued goals previously aspired to by the colonial government, but accelerated them as it promoted legal equality and rational empiricism.

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific. First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.

Term limits and rotation of Chinese governors: do they matter to economic growth?

Since the 1980s, the economic system in China has evolved into one that combines fiscal decentralization with political centralization. Local officials are successfully motivated to foster economic growth. One of the motivation and control mechanisms established in China's political and bureaucratic hierarchy is an introduction of term limits and a rotation system for higher level government officials. Using a panel data covering detailed information for all the provincial governors between 1978 and 2004, this paper finds a positive impact of both term limits and rotation of governors across provinces on local economic growth. It also finds that term limits and economic growth exhibit a weakly inverted U relationship. Although the rotation of governors matters to local economic growth, regional variation is observed, and the positive impact of rotated governors on local growth turned out to be more obvious in the eastern provinces than in the other provinces.

Private Benefits in IPOs: Evidence from State-Owned Firms

It is a common notion that a significant conflict of interest exists between the state and the bureaucrats who control state-owned firms because the bureaucrats have essentially all the control rights but negligible cash flow rights in those firms. Yet, there is little systematic evidence on whether and how bureaucrats pursue private benefits at the cost of the state-owned firms. Using data from IPOs of state-owned firms in China, we find strong evidence that CEOs of state firms attempt to get promotions in the bureaucratic hierarchy by underpricing IPOs and allocating IPO shares to parties important to their careers. Specifically, we find that i) executives' chance of promotion is positively correlated with the level of IPO underpricing, and ii) those executives who can benefit more from underpricing, such as younger executives and those with government experience, actually underprice more. We don't find similar effects in private firms. These results point to a source of efficiency gains that privatization may achieve.

The Social Division of Care

In Australia, as in most developed economies, care has now ‘gone public’. It is no longer solely a private, familial concern that can be automatically assigned to women to be undertaken without pay. Nor is it contained in residential institutions or bureaucratic hierarchies. In this paper I consider what is emerging in its place ‐ the ‘care deficit’ and the new social divisions of care, in which paid care is assuming an ever more important place as a result of significant developments in both social policy and in market‐based provisions, especially the expansion of corporate care. Linking recent care theory with the need for a program of empirical research, the paper first considers the lack of consensus on the character and meaning of care, as seen from a number of different theoretical standpoints. Despite important differences in the perspectives on care, common features suggest that there are sound reasons to develop research concepts and tools that would help create the dialogue and sharing of ideas that a more mature field of research and practice requires. A starting point for this is the attempt to demark a clear definition of care. Building on this, I propose the development and use of a broad perspective, which I have termed the social division of care, to provide a joint framework for data collection and for monitoring the changing balances of responsibility for providing care.

Accountability in Australia: Control, Paradox, and Complexity

Accountability in the Australian federal system has changed in distinctive ways during the last three decades of public sector reform. In association with each major environmental change has been an extension to accountability from the traditional features of ministerial responsibility and bureaucratic hierarchy to new modes of external scrutiny, accountability management, and most recently accountability within market and governance contexts. Each experiment at the national level, however, has had limitations that produce knock on effects. The paradox of accountability is that attempts to satisfy needs for control have led new forms and variations. The result has been the multiplication of accountability mechanisms and increasing complexity.

Mobilizing The Minds of Research/Technology Managers

You don't need be told that what you learned in a university about technology has long been out of date; however, you may not be aware that compared with even a generation ago, the logic of productivity and organizational effectiveness you were taught is just as outdated. And while you've probably noticed that the professionals you manage have different ideas about leadership, you're not always sure how handle them. After all, you got where you are because of your technical skill and can-do attitude. But succeed in today's global market, you may need help in revising your thinking, especially about organization and leadership. In their new book, Mobilizing Minds, Creating Wealth from Talent in the 21st Century Organization (McGraw- Hill), Lowell L. Bryan and Claudia I. Joyce of the McKinsey consultancy point the considerable organizational inertia in large corporations. They write that organizational design and change are hard and timeconsuming. It may run up against stubborn personalities and corporate politics. But in a business environment where talent, not capital, is the scarce resource, productivity and innovation call for remaking the corporation to mobilize the mind power of the workforce and tap into its underutilized talents, knowledge, relationships and skills. Many companies are still organized according 20th century industrial bureaucratic logic. This is a logic of mass production and standardization as contrasted the logic of the knowledge-service workplace, which includes partnering and co-production, continual innovation and learning. Rather than defining quality purely in terms of meeting specs, the 21st century logic demands an offering that helps customers succeed according their own definitions of success. This implies an organization that can learn from customers, and that in turn requires empowered frontline employees rather than formatted roles; cross-functional teams rather than stovepipes; networking and partnering rather than vertical command and control. Clearly, the linear bureaucratic industrial logic is easier apply than the complex holistic thinking of the knowledge-service workplace. It's easier because it assumes a relatively stable market for standardized products and a workforce with uniform motivation, managed by rules and incentives. This contrasts the knowledge-service market, which demands innovation and strategic learning, plus a workforce with diverse personalities, talents and values, and leaders who create collaboration by gaining commitment a common purpose. for How can research/technology managers with a 20th century outlook reprogram their organizational and leadership thinking? There are many courses and programs aimed at transforming 20th century bureaucracies into learning organizations, and I'd be surprised if most readers haven't participated in one or more of them. I invite those readers send me descriptions of courses they've found useful, and I'll summarize whatever I receive in future columns. In this article, I shall describe a 31/2-day course called Leadership for Learning, which was mainly designed by Richard Margolies, vice president of the Maccoby Group, for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Course material is based largely on my work, much of it first published in The Human Side columns I've written over the years for Research * Technology Management, and, quite naturally, I consider it a promising model! The course was designed in 2003 as the work of the Office of Force Transformation of the Defense Department was starting, and it supports the Army's 2006 counterinsurgency doctrine, which states: Learning organizations defeat insurgencies; bureaucratic hierarchies do not. Promoting learning is a key responsibility of commanders at all levels. The U.S. military has developed first-class lessons-learned systems. . . . But these systems only work when commanders promote their use and create a command climate that encourages bottom-up learning. …

Bridges, Tunnels, and School Reform: It's the System, Stupid

AFTER ALMOST three decades of school reform, student achievement nationally is about where it was when we started, and student behavior has declined dramatically. Numbers of dropouts, especially in our cities and among the poor and minorities, have gotten much higher. Yet we have spent many billions of dollars; countless professionals have carried out extensive amounts of work; public officials have spawned endless legislation, regulations, and mandates; and everyone has exhibited no end of good intentions. Maybe it's time for something different. W. Edwards Deming pointed out years ago that persistent problems in organizations stem not from workers but from the system: the structure of the work; systemic practices, policies, and methods; and conventional thinking.(1) The success of Toyota is an outstanding example of how Deming's methods can build a company of excellence that dominates its market. When I was a young teacher, I lived in New Jersey and worked in the Bronx. Each morning I would drive to the George Washington Bridge and cross the Hudson River. If all went well (no breakdowns, accidents, bad weather), my delay at the bridge usually ran about 30 minutes. In the evening, I retraced my route and spent more time waiting. As I sat in my car, wasting gas and polluting the air, I frequently cursed the toll takers (blaming the workers). In retrospect, I understand that they could not have improved traffic flow more than a smidgen even if every toll taker operated at 100% efficiency all the time. Since those days, however, there has been a dramatic improvement in the flow of traffic across the bridge. What has made the difference? The structure of work at the bridge had remained essentially the same for over 50 years. Then one day, someone reconsidered the whole system of toll taking and made a startling observation. If tolls were eliminated on one side of the bridge and doubled on the other, the same amount of revenue would be collected overall, and delays would be cut by more than 50%, since extra toll takers would be transferred to places on the collection side. The change was put into place and delays were significantly reduced; the same amount of revenue was collected; toll-taker productivity increased dramatically; resource use was perhaps even a little less. If we generalized and did the same thing at all the bridges and tunnels up and down the Hudson, or in all parts of New York State, or all across the United States, we could reduce driver stress and related medical and emotional problems (thereby decreasing health care costs), lessen air pollution, and reduce gasoline consumption. We might even reduce the divorce rate by creating many more peaceful and enjoyable dinners for commuters. Happier drivers. Happier toll takers. Happier families. This change was actually the second continuous systemic improvement. The first had been the advent of exact-change lanes. This change had also resulted in collection of the same amount of revenue while using fewer resources. Having made such a simple systemic improvement, the leaders at the bridges and tunnels did not stop. They continued to try to improve the system and, indeed, committed to continuous self-improvement. How did they know what to improve? They also committed to continuous self-assessment of the system to find out. Everyone involved with the system--not just those at higher levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy--is welcome to suggest ways to improve it. Following Deming's principle of continuous improvement, subsequent changes were made. First was the Easy Pass system, a radio tag that allowed drivers to pass a toll booth without stopping and which again required fewer resources while increasing productivity. …

The “reputation” of neoliberalism

“Flexibility” has been described as the cornerstone of the current neoliberal agenda—embodied in mandates for the fluid movements and restructuring of labor, capital, and information and, at the individual level, in a supple capacity for creative self‐invention and self‐mastery. Flexibility is also a central quality revered within a realm of oppositional cultural practice known in the analytical paradigm of Caribbean anthropology as “reputation.” What is striking about these different logics of flexibility is that one (reputational flexibility) is grounded in a set of cultural values of the Caribbean subaltern in opposition to bureaucratic hierarchy and (neo)colonial domination, and the other (neoliberal flexibility) sits firmly in the center of contemporary global capitalist orthodoxy. On the basis of fieldwork I conducted between 2001 and 2006, I argue that the quest for flexibility among emergent middle‐class entrepreneurs in Barbados represents a new path of opportunity and upward mobility as well as a gendered tightrope of respectability. In this quest, I argue, these entrepreneurs are redefining the dialectics of reputation–respectability and class in Barbados and the cultural meanings of neoliberalism itself.

The four-ranks bureaucratic hierarchy in ancient Japan : Ritsuryo bureaucracy and the binds of kinship

The four-ranks bureaucratic hierarchy in ancient Japan : Ritsuryo bureaucracy and the binds of kinship

Delivering security through networks: Surveying the relational landscape of security managers in an urban setting

The concept of network is fast becoming ubiquitous. Its broad appeal lies in its ability to account for the present multiplicity of institutional, organizational, and social morphologies. Networks promise to absorb, recombine, and merge the two dominant and competing forms of social organization (the bureaucratic hierarchy and the market) into a third one that would transcend the proclaimed obsolescence of bureaucracies (see for example Osborne and Gaebler, 1992) or the excesses of the market. Crime or dark networks (Raab and Milward, 2003) and their real level of (dis)organization have been studied for a number of years (Naylor, 2002; Morselli, 2005 and in this issue), but the 9/11 events and the failures of the verticalhierarchical bureaucratic forms of security delivery they highlighted provided an audience to those advocating flatter and more flexible law enforcement assemblages (Williams, 1994; Arquilla and Ronfeld, 2001).

Women, age, and the managerial career in postwar Britain: Exploring the roots of the barriers to women’s opportunities in management

This essay explores how the assumption that hierarchical position should be linked to a position-holder’s age acted as a barrier to women advancing into management positions. The close and unquestioned association between an individual’s age and what was considered an appropriate place on a bureaucratic hierarchy is one of the less often acknowledged barriers to women’s upward mobility. The study focuses on Britain in the years following the Second World War, because the increased participation of women in the workforce during the war had engendered optimism about women’s opportunities for long-term gains and advancement. Many women came out of the Second World War with a high degree of organizational capital that should have seen them advance into managerial positions. But as this study shows, through evidence gathered from archival as well as published historical documents, in the reality of the postwar world being the wrong age for the job constituted a significant barrier to women’s advancement.

Architecture and design of an internet‐enabled integrated workflow and groupware system

PurposeIn the last decade, bureaucratic organizational hierarchies have been increasingly replaced with flatter organizational forms, bringing together people from different disciplines to form project teams within and between organizations. Distributed project teams often are self‐configuring networks of mobile and “fixed” people, devices, and applications. They are the natural next step in the evolution of distributed computing, after client‐server, web‐based, and peer‐to‐peer computing. Seeks to show that a newly emerging requirement is to facilitate not just mobility of content (i.e. to support a multitude of devices and connectivity modes) to project members, but also mobility of context (i.e. to provide traceable and continuous support of dynamic relationships between people, artifacts, and business processes).Design/methodology/approachThe contribution of this paper is to present the design goals, the architecture, and implementation of a system aiming at supporting internet‐enabled workflow and groupware for project teams, enabling traceable and continuous support of associations (relationships) between people, artifacts, and business processes.FindingsThe findings indicate that building internet‐enabled workflow and groupware systems is valuable for virtual teamwork, since they provide a foundation for context‐aware and process‐aware information systems.Originality/valueThis article outlines some foundations of process‐aware collaborative work. Provides an analysis of current workflow and groupware shortcomings in respect of virtual teamwork, outlines the design goals, architecture and an implementation of a system aiming at supporting virtual teams on the internet.

Can Cyprus overcome its health-care challenges?

Can Cyprus overcome its health-care challenges?

Can Cyprus overcome its health-care challenges?

The divided island of Cyprus is the only EU member state that lacks a universal health system. Public and private schemes operate in isolation, resulting in duplication and waste. Myria Antoniadou takes a look at Cyprus' unusual system and asks why it is taking so long to change.

Social Disparities In Health: An Anglo-European Perspective

Social Disparities In Health: An Anglo-European Perspective

Challenging the post‐Fordist/flexible organisation thesis: the case of reformed educational organisations

This paper examines claims that recent reforms to UK education have led to significant organisational changes in primary school and higher education. It also examines two main theoretical explanations for these, namely post‐Fordism and New Managerialism. Examples of changes in both schools and universities, including flexibility and teamwork, are explored. Up to the mid‐1980s, publicly funded educational organisations did display bureaucratic features, including rules, staff hierarchies and complex procedures. However, professionals employed in these organisations retained discretion and autonomy in their work. Since then, the introduction of an audit culture and a greater emphasis on management and regulation of the work of teachers and academics has decreased discretion and autonomy. This paper suggests that theories of New Managerialism offer a more satisfactory explanation of the changes explored than post‐Fordism, which has more often been used as a normative model of what contemporary organisations should look like.

Ethnic Groups and Population Changes in Twentieth-Century Central-Eastern Europe by Piotr s> Eberhardt Jan Owsinski (review)

778 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 did not start with Kekkonennor with Paasikivi.The proudly newlyindependent Finnishstateof the 1920Shadaspectsof this;HjalmarProcope hadtowarntheFinnish presstostopitsstrident criticism oftheSovietUnion. Anotherway of lookingat mattersis to see what else therewas in the Kekkonen era,suchasthechallengetothetraditional bureaucratic hierarchy ofthecountry whichbegantoemerge,a challenge possibly helpedbysomeof thefeatures ofFinlandization, inwhichtheenthusiasm foraforeignwould-be superstate helpedtoempower,amongasectionoftheyoung,criticism oftheir ownsociety.Letusnot,however,be carriedaway.Thisreviewstarted witha broadside againstanyreturntoFinnishself-censorship, aphenomenon much deeperthanFinlandization. It maybe hopedthatin hisnextworkLehtinen willnothaveto cometo theconclusionthatthecurrentDrang nachWesten is engendering a self-censorship ofitsown. University ofTurku, Finland GEORGE MAUDE Eberhardt,Piotr.Ethnic Groups andPopulation Changes inTwentieth-Centu?y CentralEastern Europe. TranslatedbyJan Owsinski.M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY and London, England, 2003. xxxii + 559 pp. Maps. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Indexes. $I85.95. PRODUCTION of this work representsan astounding achievement on the part of Piotr Eberhardt.That this volume was compiled single-handedlyindicates that the author must have dedicated a staggering amount of time and resourcesto the project.Based upon a Polish-languageoriginalfirstproduced in I996, the author has sought to track and account for ethnographic population changes during the course of the twentieth century in a total of nineteen contemporary countries, as well as in the Kaliningrad exclave. His definition of Central-East Europe is admittedly rather broad, but given the impressivenature of the oeuvre this reviewer is not about to quibble with the author'sunderstandingof which countriesconstitutethe region. Naturally enough, given the disappearance of empire, the creation of (nation-)states,the disappearanceof some of those states,and myriadborder changes, a number of methodological issues spring to mind. The most important being, just exactly what territorial unit should be measured? ProfessorEberhardt'sdecision was to attempt to trackethnographicchanges within the boundaries of the contemporary states as they exist today. Some may disagreewith thisapproach,but giventhat,forexample, Poland'sborders in 2004 are radically different from those of I938, and countries such as Slovenia are barely into their teens, no other approach would have made sense. Another methodological issue that arisesconcerns the interpretationof the welterof officialand unofficialstatisticsthatformthe backboneof the analysis. As the author acknowledges, such data is always open to question. Census takers and national governments have their own agendas and as a result censuses do not alwaysreflect accuratelythe true ethnographicmake-up of a particularcountry. Similarly, there are issues of identity-switching,growing national awareness,and to this day ambiguity on the part of individualswith REVIEWS 779 regard to questions of identity. ProfessorEberhardtdemonstrates that he is aware of these issues, but it could be argued that they are not examined in sufficientdepth. In termsof itsorganizationalstructure,the main body of theworkis divided into geopolitical sections, on a north-southcontinuum. So we begin with the Baltic states, and end with the Balkan countries. Each section contains an overview of the region, and the ethnographic composition of each country is then assessed. The initial assessment is of the situation at the turn of the twentieth century. The second examines the situationbetween the wars, and the third and final section looks at the post-war scenario. In all instances the text is complemented by a rich mixture of figures and tables. Unfortunately the concluding chapterswhich I had hoped would contain some substantive analysisof the natureand consequencesof themassivepopulationmovements, campaigns of ethnic cleansing and outright genocide that marred the region throughout almost the entire course of the twentieth centurydo not reallydo that. Instead, more than anything else they are summaries of earlier observationsand findingswith some additionalbriefcomment. Each region receives appropriatetreatment, and in general is dealt with in an even-handed manner. Neither nations as collective entities, nor followers of given ideologies are singled out eitherfor specialpraise, or are condemned for having perpetratedparticularexcesses. Of all the geopolitical areas under consideration, only with the section on the Balkans, and in particular the former Yugoslavstates did I feel uncomfortable. It simply is not sufficientto say that 'The immediate causes of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina were ethnic conflicts' (p. 395). In addition, the author seems to be unaware of the mass conversion of the Bogomils to Islam, and of the ambiguous relationship between Christianity and Islam in southern former Yugoslavia that until recently meant that in some areas individuals could effectively practice versionsof both faithswithout any apparentcontradiction.His understanding of the pressures faced...

The Theory and Practice of Chinese Grassroots Governance: Five Models

Theories of governance and Chinese understandingsThere is a vast and eclectic literature about many forms of governance, including markets, bureaucratic hierarchies, associations and different types of networks. The Commission on Global Governance, for example, defines governance as ‘the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs. It is a continuing process through which conflicting or diverse interests may be accommodated and cooperative action may be taken. It includes formal institutions and regimes empowered to enforce compliance, as well as informal arrangements that people and institutions either have agreed to or perceive to be in their interest’. Thus, ‘at the global level, governance has been viewed primarily as intergovernmental relationships, but it must now be understood as also involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs), citizens' movements, multinational corporations and the global mass of dramatically enlarged influence’.