Mutual Monitoring Research Articles

The electric commons: A qualitative study of community accountability

This study explores how energy might be conceptualised as a commons, a resource owned and managed by a community with a system of rules for production and consumption. It tests one aspect of Elinor Ostrom's design principles for successful management of common pool resources: that there should be community accountability for individual consumption behaviour. This is explored through interviews with participants in a community demand response (DR) trial in an urban neighbourhood in the UK. Domestic DR can make a contribution to balancing electricity supply and demand. This relies on smart meters, which raise vertical (individual to large organisation) privacy concerns. Community and local approaches could motivate greater levels of DR than price signals alone. We found that acting as part of a community is motivating, a conclusion which supports local and community based roll out of smart meters. Mutually supportive, voluntary, and anonymous sharing of information was welcomed. However, mutual monitoring was seen as an invasion of horizontal (peer to peer) privacy. We conclude that the research agenda, which asks whether local commons-based governance of electricity systems could provide social and environmental benefits, is worth pursuing further. This needs a shift in regulatory barriers and ‘governance-system neutral’ innovation funding.

Information technology-enabled interactions, mutual monitoring, and supplier-buyer cooperation: A network perspective

This study, which integrates the literature on IT (information technology)-enabled interactions and governance mechanisms in interfirm relationships, proposes facilitated access to a network of partners as a key feature that distinguishes IT-enabled interactions from those that occur offline. Specifically, IT-enabled interactions improve interfirm network embeddedness, which in turn improves firms' perceived ability to mutually monitor each other. In contrast to the unilateral monitoring prevalent in prior research, the network-induced mutual monitoring, which reduces information asymmetry and improves power equity, improves cooperation performance without the backfiring “reactance” effect. Moreover, this study offers conceptual distinctions between formal and informal IT-enabled interactions and their different roles in supplier-buyer cooperation. A sample of 240 manufacturing firms in China contributes to this research, and the results strongly support the hypotheses. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of the role of IT-enabled interactions in supplier-buyer cooperation.

Mutual Monitoring of Resources in an Enterprise Systems Program

During the implementation of IT programs, competition among project managers for the scarce resources required for the completion of individual projects is a common phenomenon. To avoid such self-interested resource competition among individual project managers, according to agency theory, resource monitoring among project managers can serve as an effective management mechanism for effective resource conflict resolution within a program. Furthermore, team cognition theory suggests that an understanding of goals for each project among project managers can also serve as a solid foundation for effective resource monitoring. Social interdependence theory also suggests that positive goal interdependence among projects within a program can motivate project managers to engage in cooperative interactions, allowing them to accomplish individual project goals as well as the overall program's goals. Based on a survey of 146 enterprise system implementation programs, the results of this study confirm that mutual resource monitoring among project managers is positively associated with final program implementation efficiency. Goal understanding among project managers, as well as goal interdependence, is positively associated with the effectiveness of resource monitoring among project managers within the implementation program.

INTEGRATION OF DISTRIBUTED INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEMS BUILT AROUND FIBER-OPTIC AND MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SENSORS

The current state of airborne measuring-and-computing complexes (MCCs) is characterized by the inclusion of distributed strapdown inertial navigation systems (SINSs) as components of these complexes. This is associated with the necessity of the provision of navigational support not only for aircraft (Acft), but also for airborne Earth surface surveillance systems in which the SINSs are included as components. Among such systems are radar systems, video monitors, laser scanners (lidars), and other surveillance devices. At the same time, when the DSINSs are united into a single structure, new functional possibilities for such integrated navigation systems appear, namely: redundancy and mutual support of SINSs, and also an increase in MCC information reliability on this basis; mutual monitoring and mutual diagnosis of SINSs; optimization of DSINS structure for providing the required accuracy of navigation and attitude control under severe conditions of Acft operation. Such conditions are connected with Acft maneuvering, with a loss of the signals of satellite navigation systems (SNSs). The purpose of this paper is to study the capabilities of DSINS which are built around fiberoptic and micromechanical sensors when they are united into a closely connected information-measuring structure. In the solution of the problem formulated above, an object-oriented modular technology for the creation of integrated navigation systems was taken as a basis. The use of such a technology has permitted us to realize the new functional possibilities of the DSINSs, and also to take into account the following features of the construction and functioning of DSINSs as components of MCCs: need for mutual information exchange among DSINS modules via an MCC airborne top-level computing system; synchronization of measuring-and-computing procedures that are realized in the DSINS. In addition, due to restrictions on overall dimensions and weight, SINSs of surveillance systems are built on the basis of microelectromechanical sensors (MEMSs). Such sensors have a wide insensitivity zone and low accuracy. Taking into account the above-mentioned features, SINS-MEMSs must rely on a base high-accuracy SINS which forms part of an Acft navigation complex. Moreover, the SINS-MEMSs cannot execute the initial alignment from attitude angles in the autonomous mode. Because of this, the initial alignment of such SINSs is realized from information obtained from the base system. Mutual support of integrated inertial systems which include satellite receivers is necessary not only for continuous updating of SINS-MEMSs coordinates but also for the refinement of attitude angles of the places where surveillance systems are mounted. It should be noted that the frequency of updating the coordinates that are determined by an SNS is several units of hertz, and that are determined by a SINS is several units of kilohertz. The features mentioned earlier were taken into account in a DSINS developed by the NaukaSoft Experimental Laboratory, Ltd. (Moscow) and by the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in cooperation. A breadboard model of the MSINS includes the SINS-500NS system based on fiber-optic gyros developed jointly by the “NaukaSoft EMNS” and by the “Optolink” RPC (Zelenograd); micromechanical SINS-MEMSs built on the basis of the ADIS16488 measuring modules developed by the Analog Devices Co. The paper presents the results of fullscale experiments performed at the Ramenskoye Instrument-Making Plant.

中国大学管理行政化与去行政化思考—基于国外大学治理机制研究

20世纪90年代始，高校管理行政化问题开始逐渐被认识，其对学术发展和人才培养的阻碍日益凸显。必须平衡学术力量及行政力量；建立相互监督机制；调整政府与高校关系；完善学术委员会机制；培育学术文化等，以逐步推进对去行政化改革。 From the 1990s, the problems of the administration of management in Chinese universities were gradually discovered, and the barriers to talent cultivation and academic development were also becoming apparent. In order to promote the process of de-administrative reform, it is necessary for us to propose the following reform path: balancing academic power and administrative power, establishing mutual monitoring mechanisms, adjusting the relationship between government and universities, improving the academic committee mechanism, cultivate academic culture and so on.

Négocier en confiance

In order to reconcile their double objective of financial profitability and social performance, the institutions of microfinance developed the loans of group, with joint and several guarantee. This financial innovation aims at curing the informational problems of all credit activities are confronted. The object of this article is to identify the factors which explain the failure rate on this category of loans in an institution of microfinance in Cameroun (the MUFFA). Our empirical study, based on a logistic regression, shows that the self-selection of the members of the loan groups, their structure, the mutual monitoring and the pressure between the members of each group as well as the social capital of the members explain 78% of the unpaid rate for this category of loan. In order to reduce this unpaid rate, we formulated some recommendations for this institution and its women customers.

The Effects of Joint Cost Allocation on Intra-Firm Trade: A Comparison of Insulating and Non-Insulating Approaches

ABSTRACT While it is generally believed that insulating cost allocations help managers focus their attention on their own actions and shield them from the actions of others, non-insulating schemes can have appeal by encouraging teamwork and/or mutual monitoring among divisions. In this paper, we demonstrate that non-insulating allocations can induce fruitful cooperation among parties even when teamwork and mutual monitoring are nonissues. In particular, we show that in the case of intra-firm trade governed by transfer pricing, non-insulating allocations can permit one division to internalize benefits of private information borne by another and thereby alleviate information-induced trade barriers. Unlike in the traditional case of fostering teamwork, however, the cooperative nature of non-insulating allocation introduced by information differences is distinctly more circumstance-specific. In line with this view, the paper also identifies conditions under which the use of non-insulating allocation shifts divisional incentives in a manner that only adds further tension to trade.

Audit Pricing of Shared Leadership

This study explores audit implications of shared leadership in client firms. Shared leadership via co-CEO appointments may lead to either suboptimal or optimal managerial decisions, depending on the conflicting or complementary dynamics between multiple CEOs. Analyzing data from 2002 to 2013 of Korean listed companies where co-CEO structure is widespread, we find that auditors spend fewer audit hours and charge lower audit fees for clients with multiple CEOs. Additional tests reveal that hourly fees are not significantly different across clients with or without co-CEOs. Collectively, our findings suggest that the lower audit fees for co-CEO clients are likely attributable to reduced audit effort rather than to a reduced hourly fee. In further searches of specific channels through which audit fees are reduced for the co-CEO clients, we present evidence that firms with co-CEOs exhibit better reporting quality than do firms with a solitary CEO. In sum, the findings of this paper suggest that mutual monitoring via co-CEO appointments assures high quality financial reporting of audit clients, and thus leads to reduced audit fees.

Mutual Monitoring and Team Member Communication in Teams

Prior research suggests that team member communication based on mutual monitoring can improve team performance by enabling the manager to more closely relate individual team members’ contributions to their rewards. Given that diverse work settings affect the ability of team members to observe each other, this study investigates whether the benefit firms can extract from such communication is affected by differences in the type of information available to team members. Specifically, we investigate whether team members’ observations of each other’s effort, output, or both effort and output levels affect the usefulness of team member communication and, thus, team performance. Consistent with our predictions, our experimental study finds that team performance is higher when team members can observe only each other’s effort level than when they can observe both each other’s effort and output levels; however, team performance is lower when team members can observe only each other’s output levels than when they can observe both each other’s effort and output levels. The intuition behind these results is that the type of observable information creates different degrees of ambiguity regarding fair rewards for team members’ contributions, and thus, the usefulness of the communication to the manager in relating individual team member contributions to their rewards. Results of our study contribute to both theory and practice by enhancing our understanding of the role of team member communication based on mutual monitoring in motivating effort in teams, and particularly, how its efficacy is affected by the type of information available to team members prior to communication.

Agency problems and governance mechanisms in collaborative communities

Collaborative communities—where participants collaboratively solve problems and integrate their contributions—are increasingly popular organizational forms in a wide variety of domains. As with any cooperative effort, communities involve differential interests and information asymmetries, creating potential agency problems. I undertake an exploratory multiple-case study of four communities within the domains of enterprise information technology, sustainable products and services, drug discovery, and digital marketing and communication. I find that agency relationships in the collaborative communities are characterized by three distinct multiple-agency structures: commons, team production, and brokering. These are governed by four main categories of mechanism: (1) mutual monitoring, enabling self-regulation and peer-based control; (2) membership restrictions, regulating admission to the community; (3) values and rules, guiding member action and collaboration; and (4) property rights and incentives, regulating rights to community resources and distribution of rewards. I also identify contingencies between governance mechanisms and agency problems.

The Effects of Team Learning Behavior, Individual Creativity, Team Shared Mental Model, Mutual Performance Monitoring on Team Creativity in the College Classroom

The aim of this research was to investigate the relationship among team learning behavior, individual creativity, team shared mental model(TSMM), mutual performance monitoring on team creativity and then providing the fundamental data on the education. Also it intended to acknowledge relative predictive power on team creativity of independent variables. The total of 257 college students participated the team learning for 6 weeks in a semester. Pearson's product moment correlation and regression analysis were used for data analysis and testing of significance of verification, The main research results are summarized as follows; team learning behavior, TSMM, mutual performance monitoring had no significant effects on three Received (October 07, 2015), Review Result(October 23, 2015) Accepted(November 05, 2015), Published(December 31, 2015) 38610 Dept. Counseling Psychology, Daegu Haany Univ., 1 Haanydaero, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsanbuk-Do, Korea email: mjun@dhu.ac.kr *이 연구는 2013년도 한국연구재단의 지원에 의해 연구되었음(NRF 2013S1A5A8021767). The Effects of Team Learning Behavior, Individual Creativity, Team Shared Mental Model, Mutual Performance Monitoring on Team Creativity in the College Classroom Copyright c 2015 HSST 318 subfactors of team creativity such as novelty, resolution, elaboration & synthesis. Therefore followed researches are needed about inter and intra processing of team creativity.

The Aromanian-Romanian national movement (1859-1905): an analytical model

At the turn of the 20th century, Macedonia was a region still controlled by the waning Ottoman Empire, though intensely coveted by the neighbouring Balkan states, which deployed national propaganda movements in Macedonia, in preparation for future territorial annexations. It is this author’s contention that the “Macedonian question” thus engendered gives rise to several overlapping triadic configurations of interlocking, interacting and mutually monitoring nationalisms, as per the analytical model put forth by Rogers Brubaker. Working on this premise, and after adjusting Brubaker’s model to account for the specific relational settings of the Macedonian question, this author proceeds to draft a case study of a specific triadic configuration, among several operating in fin-de-siècle Macedonia: namely, the one arisen out of the mutual monitoring and interaction of a Romanian nationalizing nationalism, a Greek nationalizing nationalism, and two Aromanian (or Vlach) minority nationalisms.

The Persistence of Multifamily Firms: Founder Imprinting, Simple Rules, and Monitoring Processes

This study focuses on a particular form of family businesses—businesses with at least two unrelated founding families—and how their organizational form of a multifamily business persists over several generations. Using an inductive approach to study five multifamily cases, we discovered that these firms did not meet complexity with complex structures and processes. Instead, four cases developed and utilized simple rules imprinted by the founders and pulled through to current generations, enabling effective mutual monitoring and persistence of the multifamily organizational form. The lack of simple rules development is associated with one multifamily business to abandon this organizational form.

Impact of an equal pay norm on the optimal design of incentive contracts

Many firms do consider an equal pay norm when designing incentive contracts for their employees. This will affect the insights achieved in literature on incentive provision for multiple agents in a firm. We find that the consideration of an equal pay norm leads to less high-powered incentives and provides a rationale for the application of team-based compensation (TBC). When performance measures are positively correlated TBC can still be preferred over otherwise optimal relative performance evaluation schemes. What is more, the consideration of an equal pay norm makes mutual monitoring and coordination between agents more desirable than individual agent behavior. Finally, an increasing firm size decreases the desirability of individual agent behavior and correspondingly makes TBC even more attractive.

PAReS: A Proactive and Adaptive Redundant System for MapReduce

Recently, MapReduce has been a key and popular technology for tackling data-intensive applications. But its two master servers in current MapReduce implementations have a single-failure problem, which may interrupt MapReduce operations and filesystem services. In this paper, we propose a hybrid takeover scheme, called the Proactive and Adaptive Redundant System (PAReS for short), which employs three service-quality improvement mechanisms, including a proactive synchronization and replication method, a mutual monitoring algorithm, and an adaptive warm-up mechanism, to mitigate the above problems. The extensive experiments show that PAReS enhances service quality at acceptable energy consumption level and synchronization cost as compared with four stateof- the-art schemes.

Social Networks in East and Southeast Asia I

These articles examine social networks in the context of Asia. Their pages contain numerous examples showcasing the primacy of social context in the patterning, accumulation, role, and value of social networks and social capital. Network characteristics follow from national and institutional characteristics: In China, kinship networks are prominent all throughout the life course. Meanwhile, guanxi continues to be an important factor in the labor market and academic success of Chinese individuals, despite the shift from socialism to capitalism. In Japan, mutual monitoring among kin and coworkers make for a society based on strong ties. In Korea, voluntary associations are important communal spaces for meeting diverse contacts. In China’s neighborhoods, cooperation between neighbors coexists with social control from above to reinforce social hierarchy. The issue ends with a note about the importance of cultivating guanxi in organizations and in everyday life.

Guanxi, Tie Strength, and Network Attributes

Guanxi possesses a variant network form. A characterization of guanxi in terms of its cultural and institutional attributes is provided, paralleling accounts emphasizing respectively its expressive and instrumental qualities. Both are aspects of guanxi’s reputational focus. Tie strength is considered in terms of differences between latent-structure networks, where tie strength discerns patterned differences, and volitionally constructed networks, where it does not. It is shown that as guanxi networks are constituted by iterated obligations, influence (a directing power) cannot flow through them. Obligation (a constraining power) marks the character of guanxi networks. Finally, discussion turns to the information opaque nature of guanxi, resulting from guanxi’s cultivated form and the obligatory relationships underlying it (requiring confidentiality and mutual monitoring of participants). The adaptability of guanxi in different historical contexts, from imperial China to the present-day market reform period, is suggested throughout.

Tillit og kvalitet


 
 
 Trust and quality: two interdependent concepts 
 A service is intangible, it is created and consumed in the here and now. Although it may be a challenging task to measure the quality of a service objectively, clearly some services are of good quality, while others are not.
 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines quality as "the degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements (or needs)." In other words, any service that meets users' expectations or needs will be of good quality. However, views will differ as to what constitutes good quality and how to achieve it.
 This article is based on a study of deaf people who use interpreters and of hearing Sign Language interpreters. The study examined the parties’ experiences of interaction in interpreting situations where the primary activity was interpretation from Norwegian Sign Language to spoken Norwegian. By considering situations from an interactional perspective, we have focused on how the parties create their social reality. We have also sought to pinpoint the influence of various factors on the experiences of deaf people and interpreters in interpreting situations; and have sought to identify what the parties believe characterizes an interpreting situation of good quality.
 We produced our data by establishing two focus groups, one consisting of deaf people and one consisting of hearing Sign Language interpreters. When analysing the resulting data, our focus was on identifying the thoughts and experiences that determined the behaviour of both the deaf person and the hearing interpreter. Based on the thoughts of both parties regarding actions and experiences, we applied analytical tools based on ethnomethodology and concepts of indexicality and reflexivity. Our aim has been to examine the context in which the actions and experiences were described, and to apply different perspectives to identify the nature of the interaction between the different analytical components.
 Taking an interactional perspective, the article examines the various challenges that may arise in an interpreting situation. Such challenges may relate to communication; differences between Norwegian Sign Language and spoken Norwegian; and to the interpreting process itself. These challenges affect the interaction between the deaf person and the interpreter, making it more difficult to achieve a good-quality interpreting situation.
 When communicating in an interpreting situation, the deaf person and the interpreter employ various control mechanisms when attempting to assess or improve the quality of the situation. Both deaf persons and interpreters mentioned attempting to exert control over the allocation of the interpreter/deaf person that they would be working with as a means of gaining visibility and control over the situation. Two factors that both parties believed could improve the quality of the interpreting situation and enhance their feelings of control were preparation and pre-discussion (a conversation between the deaf person and the interpreter that takes place in advance of a particular interpreting situation). In addition, during the interpreting session, both parties attempt to verify whether the interpreter has perceived an expression correctly. A central assumption in Goffman is that people attempt to control other people’s impressions of them through expressions we give and give off. In an interpreted conversation, however, it will be extremely difficult for a deaf person to verify what the interpreter is saying, and accordingly what impression he or she is making on the deaf person’s behalf. Since the interpreter often is the only party present who is familiar with both languages, this may cause tension between the deaf person and the interpreter.
 Sign Language interpreting situations require collaboration between hearing persons, deaf persons, and interpreters. Situations that require collaboration often involve a mix of mutual monitoring and control, and trust. Since trust is a relevant factor, establishing trust isimportant. The deaf people and the interpreters in the focus groups referred to the concept of trust in different ways, and this in itself may say something about how trust is established. Both parties agreed, however, that while trust may be present from the outset, trust could also be built up over time. The process of the parties getting to know each other plays a major role in the building up of mutual trust. While it is sometimes argued that trust arises more from the behaviour of professional practitioners than from their qualifications and the quality of the work they perform, there is evidence that, in interpreting situations, trust and quality are intertwined. The nature of the interrelation between trust and quality is experienced differently, however, by deaf persons and by interpreters. On the one hand, a deaf person will trust the interpreter if she or he is confident that the quality of the interpretation is satisfactory. On the other hand, interpreters have to feel that they are trusted in order to perform in a qualitatively satisfactory manner.
 
 

Do pó à ferramenta: autogestão do trabalho e da produção em uma fábrica brasileira recuperada pelos trabalhadores

Workers recovered from bankruptcy a metallurgic industry and constituted a self-managed industrial cooperative. Their peculiar way of coordinating the productive and commercial activities resulted in increased productivity, participation and employee satisfaction. Had they developed their own form of self-management in labor and production? This article presents a study that combines periods of interaction with co-workers during their work activities with the realization of semistructured interviews. The investigation revealed a daily work routine marked by freedom and concern. We found that, supported by freedom, workers circulate in the factory, talk during work and modify the production process. Freedom, therefore, leads to fl exibility, mobility, learning, communication and improvement of production processes. On the other hand, while dealing with the production, cooperative’s members also get concerned about the viability of the cooperative. Concern generates responsibility, mutual monitoring and confl icts among members. Together, freedom and concern enabled the combined increase of productivity, worker participation and their satisfaction. The conclusion of this study is that this way of working, free and concerned, characterizes their own mode of self-management of production and work. Keywords: Social Work Psychology, self-management, organizational processes, recovered factories, industrial cooperatives.

Towards polycentric governance of small‐scale fisheries: insights from the new ‘Management Plans’ policy in Chile

Small-scale fisheries are increasingly conceptualized as complex social–ecological systems (Folke et al., 2005; Basurto et al., 2013). Management of complex social–ecological systems requires knowledge to monitor resource availability, make decisions about their allocation, and respond to feedbacks from the system at multiple social and ecological scales (Berkes et al., 2003; Robinson and Berkes, 2011). Typically, no one agency, organization or group is likely to have the full range of knowledge needed for effective management of complex social–ecological systems (Berkes et al., 2003; Gelcich et al., 2006). Thus, there is a pressing need to develop environmental governance models, the structures and processes by which people in societies make decisions and share power with respect to the environment (Folke et al., 2005), which can allow partnerships and cooperation among agencies and stakeholders to confront the management of such complex systems (Berkes, 2009; Gelcich et al., 2010; Robinson and Berkes, 2011). A possible way to deal with environmental governance of complex marine social–ecological systems is to incentivize shifts towards the development of new multi-level, polycentric forms of governance, partly through government-designed decentralization (Ostrom, 2010). ‘Polycentric’ connotes many centres of decision making, that are independent of each other (Ostrom et al., 1961). Polycentric systems are thus characterized by multiple governing authorities at differing levels rather than a monocentric unit (Ostrom, 1999). Each unit within a polycentric system exercises considerable independence to make norms and rules within a specific domain (such as in a family, a firm, a local government, a state or province, or a region; Ostrom et al., 1961). In theory, with such approaches, problems associated with non-compliance, power inequalities and inappropriate discrimination can be better addressed, and major investments made towards information and innovations (Ostrom, 2010). Although no governance system is perfect, research has shown how polycentric systems can have considerable advantages given their mechanisms for mutual monitoring, learning and adaptation over time (Ostrom et al., 1961; Galaz et al., 2012). Rather than relying on a single type or level of governance, a shift towards polycentrism would be