Quasi-public Institutions Research Articles

Organizational Culture and Performance of Quasi-Public Institutions Within the Pension Industry in Kenya: A Case of Local Authorities Pension Trust

This study intended to examine the organizational culture and performance of quasi-public institutions within the pension industry in Kenya with a focus on Local Authorities Pension Trust. Key theories under review in this research paper were the Balance Score Card theory, Scheins organizational culture theory and Institutional theory. Descriptive research design was employed and utilized by this research. The 224 staff working in Local Authorities Pension Trust offices across the country formed the target population of this study. In order to determine the sample size, simple random sampling was utilized. For this research, the researcher utilized a questionnaire to collect data from responders. There were both open-ended and closed-ended questions on the survey. To determine the connection between organizational culture and performance, the researcher did a multiple regression analysis. Questionnaires were utilized for gathering quantitative data, which were then evaluated employing descriptive statistics in SPSS and displayed in the form of tables, pie charts, and bar graphs. The data gathered was leveraged to create pie charts, bar graphs, and tables that illustrated facts about the link between organizational culture and performance at Local Authorities Pension Trust. The study found that a balanced mix of clan culture, adhocracy culture, market culture and hierarchical culture had a positive significant effect on the performance of LAPTRUST. The study concludes that in a clan culture, employees are encouraged to participate in decision-making processes, share their ideas, and contribute to the overall success of the organization. The study recommended that the organization should encourage cross-functional teams and collaboration across departments to break down silos and promote innovation. The organization should invest in training programs that enhance employees' market knowledge and skills can contribute to a market culture. The organization should clearly define and communicate the roles and responsibilities of each level within the hierarchy, ensuring that employees understand their position and how it fits into the overall organizational structure.

Erosion of University Autonomy: Judicial Supervision of University Conduct

The university was once envisaged as an autonomous, self-governing institution where academic endeavours could flourish sans outside interference. It is a vision with diminishing correspondence to reality. This article explores the degree of autonomy afforded to universities when the university visitor was given a prominent role to play in adjudicating disputes in contrast to contemporary times when universities find themselves increasingly — and inconsistently — under the supervision of the judiciary. By examining university focused jurisprudence involving judicial review, civil litigation, and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenges, the article highlights instances where universities have fallen under the scrutiny of judicial oversight, and circumstances where the courts have chosen not to intervene. The article concludes that today’s universities are subject to both public and private law as administrative decision-makers and quasi-public institutions.

Expropriation as a measure of corporate reform: Learning from the Berlin initiative

A citizens’ movement in Berlin advocates for the expropriation of housing corporations and has won a significant majority in a popular referendum in September 2021. Building on this proposal, this paper develops a general account of expropriation as a measure for corporate reform and thereby contributes to the ongoing debate on the democratic accountability of business corporations. It argues that expropriation is a valuable tool for intervention in a dire situation in some economic sector to enable a re-structuring of the governance of the assets in question. Compared with other tools available, expropriation is a more forward-looking, genuinely political measure that does not depend on the legal assignment of guilt but rather proceeds in a pragmatic and problem-oriented manner. It also allows us to reconsider in how far the market mechanism should be employed in the administration of assets. Objections from private property rights against expropriation fail as corporations generally are privileged, quasi-public institutions that can justifiably be subject to democratic interventions. Expropriation is thus an important addition to the arsenal of corporate reform proposals, especially for those concerned with a broad democratization of the corporation.

Human Rights and Academic Harassment: Policy vs. Action

This comment discusses the available laws around human rights which relate to academic harassment. We discuss how human rights are being violated by institutions, together with how and to what extent institutions violate their policies in action. We propose recommendations for changing this age-old issue in our science backyard. Institutions, regardless of their type (i.e., public bodies, quasi-public or private entities) have a duty to conduct harassment investigations in a principled, responsible and lawful manner. They must conform to the layered legal framework of the country in which they are established, the principles of academic freedom and non-discrimination as well as comply with the highest standards in public life, including integrity, honesty, selflessness, openness, objectivity, accountability and leadership. The legal framework, on the other hand, encompasses not only equality and labour laws, but also international and national human rights law. Protecting targets against human rights abuses is a legal obligation for public or quasi-public institutions; private institutions, on the other hand, have the responsibility to respect human rights and to support target’s rights to access an effective remedy when their human rights are breached.

At the juncture of funding, policy, and technology: how promising is match-funding of arts and culture through crowdfunding platforms?

ABSTRACT Despite its ubiquity in arts and culture, crowdfunding has limitedly been instrumentalized in policy settings. Yet, with joint contributions by friends, fans, governments, and quasi-public institutions, match-funding of arts and culture through crowdfunding platforms may have benefits: increased revenues for makers and cultural fields, transparency in funding allocation, and stronger community engagement. Drawing upon interviews with regional and local match-funding entities in the Netherlands, we explain how and why they engage in match-funding and what is needed for the collaborative funding mechanism to thrive. Funders are attracted by match-funding’s potential to support relatively large numbers of hitherto underserved makers with relatively small amounts of money, complementary to other funding instruments. Aspects largely overlooked are match-funding’s capacity to leverage resources and install co-decisive processes of public funding allocation. Situated at the juncture of funding, policy, and technology, match-funding requires learning and experimentation with other than reward-based formats to unleash its democratizing potential.

Of fields and of factories: the political construction of comparative advantage in French wine and German core manufacturing

ABSTRACT This article explores state-association dynamics in large quality sectors, focusing specifically on the institutionalization of power across production networks. I demonstrate how incentives for high value-added production emerge when normally competitive production actors organize to solve their problems and speak together with one voice to shape policy through a bureaucratically powerful state apparatus. Despite historical differences in both state and associational structures, the cases of French wine and German core manufacturing share three essential characteristics: producer structures that cultivate consensus; deliberate historical action to ‘tame’ or reign in a powerful state; quasi-public institutions playing ‘honest broker’ between organized interests and the state. The consequence of these structures is depoliticized (überparteilich) but informed public policy, which protect decentralized collaborative value-enhancing production structures.

Producing Alberta’s Tar Sands: Oil, Ideas, Rents, and New Enclosures

ABSTRACT The production and transfer of knowledge are essential for producing oil. In this paper, I examine the nexus between a subnational quasi-state publicly funded hydrocarbon research program and a novel knowledge-production regime and explore how this relationship resulted in the production of oil from Alberta's oilsands. In particular, the paper highlights the significance of the Alberta Oilsands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA), a quasi-public institution credited with financing research, which among other finding, made the in-situ oilsands' mining method steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) commercially viable. SAGD proved essential in enlarging the Province’s oil reserves, but this paper focuses on AOSTRA’s novel intellectual property regime. Under that regime the intellectual property AOSTRA (the Provincial government) held the licensing rights to the research it funded and commanded its future revenues. In contrast to accounts of the development of the current mode of entrepreneurial knowledge production that emphasizes the new knowledge-enclosures of the biosphere, I suggest this was a novel system of knowledge-enclosure of the "necrosphere." I stress how this knowledge-production-transfer regime only emerged in Alberta because of the specific material characteristics of bitumen and the Provincial government’s tripartite role as resource rentier, funder of the research, and owner of the resource.

Neoliberal shareholder value and the re-privatization of corporations

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the extent to which the ideology of shareholder value is compatible with that of transformative corporate social responsibility (CSR). It traces the transformation of corporations from quasi-public institutions at inception to purely private enterprises beginning from the middle of the nineteenth century and attempts to locate the ideology of CSR within the wider viewpoint of shareholder value.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts a doctrinal approach through a critical evaluation of the nature and implications of the shareholder value ideology. Using existing literature in the area, it traces the evolution of the shareholder value ideology and how it is antithetical to any meaningful CSR regime.FindingsThe paper finds that there is a fundamental tension between ideas about the desirability of effective CSR and the belief that it is to the benefit of society as a whole for corporations to be run solely in the interest of their shareholders and for managers to seek to maximize shareholder value. This ideological tension renders contemporary CSR ineffective.Originality/valueThe paper offers a fresh insight or analysis into the transformation of corporations from quasi-social institutions to purely private enterprises in the middle of the nineteenth century. It does this by engaging in a historical narrative of the evolution of the corporate form and how contemporary ideas of shareholder value have resulted in the emergence of a contemporary CSR devoid of the radical spirit of CSR in the 1950s and 1960s.

Pharmacy Benefit Management Companies: Do They Create Value in the US Healthcare System?

Pharmacy benefit management companies (PBMs) perform functions in the US market-based healthcare system that may be performed by public agencies or quasi-public institutions in other nations. By aggregating lives covered under their many individual contracts with payers, PBMs have formidable negotiating power. They influence pharmaceutical insurance coverage, design the terms of coverage in a plan's drug benefit, and create competition among providers for inclusion in a plan's network. PBMs have, through intermediation, the potential to secure lower drug prices and to improve rational prescribing. Whether these potential outcomes are realized within the relevant budget is a function of the healthcare system and the interaction of benefit design and clinical processes-not just individually vetted components. Efficiencies and values achieved in price discounts and cost sharing can be nullified if there is irrational prescribing (over-utilization, under-utilization and mis-utilization), variable patient adherence to medication regimens, ineffective formulary processes, or fraud, waste and abuse. Rising prescription drug costs and the increasing prevalence of 'high deductible health plans', which require much greater patient out-of-pocket costs, is creating a crisis for PBM efforts towards an affordable pharmacy benefit. Since PBM rebate and incentive contracts are opaque to the public, whether they add value by restraining higher drug prices or benefit from them is debatable.

Green Banks: Growing Clean Energy Markets by Leveraging Private Investment with Public Financing

A green bank is a public or quasi-public institution that uses limited public capital to leverage greater private investment in clean energy. Green banks are designed to animate private capital markets and “crowd-in” the private investment needed to rapidly deploy commercial, proven clean energy technologies. As a public or quasi-public institution, a green bank is either directly part of government or an instrument of government. As such, a green bank can be crafted and designed to suit the market needs and policy objectives of the nation or state it is meant to serve. A green bank can be capitalized with any number of public sources. With their public dollars, green banks provide financing for projects in combination with private capital. Among the financing techniques commonly used are credit enhancement, co-investment, and warehousing/securitization. Green banks can use the described financing techniques through a number of structures that the clean energy financing industry has developed as new delivery mechanisms, including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing and on-bill financing/repayment. Green banks have been created in five states and nearly a dozen other states are now considering green banks of some form. Legislation to create a federal green bank has been introduced twice in Congress, receiving broad bi-partisan support and passing the House of Representatives. Additionally, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has hosted two international conferences on green banks, producing materials to help nations create their own green banks.

Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball by Roger Kahn

Reviewed by: Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball by Roger Kahn Robert A. Moss Roger Kahn. Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball. New York: Rodale, 2014. 292 pp. Cloth, $25.99. Roger Kahn, author of The Boys of Summer, now gives us Rickey & Robinson and the breaking of baseball’s color line. A more precise title would be “Rickey, Robinson, and Me,” for this is Kahn’s very personal take on events, more a memoir than a history. A 1982 book with a similar title, Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Barrier (Harvey Frommer, Taylor, reprinted 2003), and based on extensive interviews, is more objective, while Kahn’s version emphasizes his interactions with the protagonists, beginning in 1952 when he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune. His narration is not linear, often circling off to include anecdotes, background history, and speculation. However, the text is so readable that one bears with Kahn’s ramble from one memory or anecdote to another. There is much warmth, as well as more than a little bile, in Kahn’s rendition. The story of baseball’s integration, however, is hardly “untold.” Among many books dealing with the subject are Chris Lamb, Blackout (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment, expanded ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Jonathan Eig, Opening Day (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007); Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson (New York: Ballantine, 1997); and Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). Perhaps sensitive to these “told” stories, Kahn dismisses Tygiel’s classic as “earnestly researched but ultimately plodding” (254), while Eig “does not understand what went on in 1947” (254). What Kahn brings to the table are his relations with Rickey and Robinson over many years and his judgments on their character, motivation, accomplishments, and contemporaries. Unfortunately, the text is not footnoted, sometimes making it difficult to disentangle facts from assertions. Although Rickey is seen as “greed-driven” (2) and “a practicing feudal lord” (10), Kahn holds that, in the matter of integration, Rickey performed a “monumental deed of moral courage,” (13) defying “centuries of whites-only tradition . . . against wide and ferocious opposition” (15) and the negative front presented [End Page 174] by fifteen other team owners. Earlier, when Rickey ran the Cardinals, he did nothing about integration. St. Louis was a southern city; the time and place were not right. Brooklyn was different: “Baseball should lead by example because it is a quasi-public institution,” said Rickey, “and, particularly in Brooklyn, I am not so sure about the quasi” (25). Robinson himself was eloquent on Rickey: “He spoke of barriers to be broken and how to break them. He spoke of bigotry and hate and how to fight them. He spoke of great things to be done and how to do them” (104). Robinson stated another time, “Vicious men may insult him, foolish men may make fun of him and petty men may not understand him. But when the vicious, the foolish and the petty men are forgotten, Mr. Rickey will be remembered” (185). Notwithstanding these paeans, Kahn details the relentless attacks on Rickey by Daily News columnists Dick Young and Jimmy Powers, both of whom he rightly castigates. Bizarrely, however, he questions whether Rickey, building the Pirates in 1954, might have expressed antisemitic tendencies in not tendering Sandy Koufax a more competitive contract than Brooklyn. Athletes like Jesse Owens, Mack Robinson (Jackie’s older brother), and Joe Louis prepared the nation for integrated sports, but it was the death of obstructionist commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that enabled the integration of baseball. One year after his death, Rickey signed Robinson in 1946 and sent him to Montreal. Opposition came from the Sporting News, which editorialized that Robinson was too old and unskilled; from Bob Feller, who maintained that Jackie would not hit; and from various nimby (“not in my backyard”) team owners. In Montreal, Robinson paced the International League in hitting (.349) and stolen bases (50) and led the Royals to victory over Louisville in the Little World Series. Kahn maintains that Robinson’s Montreal season...

Unternehmen und beschäftigungspolitische Verantwortung – eine historisch-genetische Annäherung / Corporate Responsibility and Employment: An Historical-Genetic Approach

Zusammenfassung Wenn es zum Arbeitsplatzabbau oder zur Arbeitsplatzverlagerung bei Großunternehmen kommt, werden zumeist erbitterte Moraldebatten in der Öffentlichkeit geführt. Daher ist es das Ziel dieses Beitrages, das Verhältnis der verschiedenen Verantwortungsträger - Individuen, Unternehmen und /oder Staat - zueinander auszuloten. Es wird eine historisch-genetische Vorgehensweise gewählt, um die für die Debatte relevanten ethischen Kategorien aus dem historischen Kontext verständlich zu machen. Darauf aufbauend wird nach der Anschlussfähigkeit dieser Überlegungen an moderne wirtschaftsethische Ansätze gefragt. Es erweist sich, dass die Corporate-Responsible-und Corporate-Citizenship-Ansätze mit der hier entwickelten Position nicht kompatibel sind, da aus der Sicht eines methodischen und normativen Individualismus letztlich ungeklärt bleibt, warum und unter welchen Bedingungen ein aus privaten Interessen errichtetes Unternehmen zu einer „quasi öffentliche Institution“ oder einem Good Citizen werden sollte. Vielmehr kann die hier gewählte historisch-genetische Vorgehensweise den institutionenethischen Ansatz weiter fundieren, um die Verantwortlichkeiten der Verantwortungsträger angemessen zu bestimmen und abzugrenzen.

The Goals and Promise of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act

The primary goal of the SarbanesOxley Act was to fix auditing of U.S. public companies, consistent with its full, official name: the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. By consensus, auditing had been working poorly, and increasingly so. The most important, and most promising, part of SarbanesOxley was the creation of a unique, quasi-public institution to oversee and regulate auditing, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). In controversial section 404, the law also created new disclosure-based incentives for firms to spend money on internal controls, above increases that would have occurred after the corporate scandals of the early 2000s. In exchange for these higher costs, which have already fallen substantially, SarbanesOxley promises a variety of long-term benefits. Investors will face a lower risk of losses from fraud and theft, and benefit from more reliable financial reporting, greater transparency, and accountability. Public companies will pay a lower cost of capital, and the economy will benefit because of a better allocation of resources and faster growth. SarbanesOxley remains a work in progress -- section 404 in particular was implemented too aggressively - but reformers should push for continued improvements in its implementation, by PCAOB, rather than for repeal of the legislation itself.

The Process and Side-Effects of the Harmonisation of European Welfare States

This paper describes the ways in which EU law forces Member States to reorganise their welfare states, focusing on the effects of free movement and competition principles on health care, education, and social insurance. It then considers the consequences of such reorganisations for national identity and social cohesion, for domestic and foreign policy and European integration, and as the creation of a new welfare industry. The thesis of the first part is this: that the negative harmonisation of welfare services via judicial application of free movement rules is potentially further reaching than often realised, and difficult to reverse. As a result of changes in welfare provision many services are now provided 'for remuneration'. Moreover, legal, policy, and philosophical factors make it difficult to create a wholesale exemption for welfare. On the other hand, positive harmonisation remains politically unpopular and difficult to achieve, and at more than a very abstract framework level would probably be economically and organisationally undesirable too. Hence Europe is moving towards a continent-wide market for welfare services. The thesis of the second part, considering the consequences of such a development, is that this probably has far greater implications for national identity and social structure than it does for welfare itself. It is possible to achieve high quality universal welfare service provision in regulated markets, but the absence of the huge public or quasi-public institutions which are a part of European life will change the texture of society. This is potentially threatening to social cohesion, and also to the European sense of our place in the world, in which contrasts with the US, in which welfare states often play a role, are prominent. Any such changed sense of self could - indeed should - have wide-ranging effects on state behaviour, even extending to foreign policy. As well as this, the creation of a European market for welfare provides opportunities for deepening European integration and involving the EU in central aspects of individual life. Finally, welfare is potentially the world's largest industry. However strange it may be to see it that way, privatising provision in Europe may create actors who can and will become global, perhaps using their expertise to help build welfare states around the world.

From Substitution to Complementarity: Some Econometric Evidence on the Evolving NGO-State Relationship in Pakistan

This paper investigates the relationship between government policies and quasi-public institutions such as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). In particular, it attempts to identify under which conditions they can act as complements or substitutes. The case of Pakistan is used to motivate three sets of research questions: (a) Is there credible evidence of government policy failure in Pakistan? (b) If so, have any NGOs emerged in response to this, to act as either complements to or substitutes for policies? (c) What are the key characteristics of any such NGOs and how might they contribute to overall NGO success? Drawing upon the experience of the Aga Khan Rural Support Program in northern Pakistan, the paper uses both qualitative and econometric techniques to help answer these questions.

Religious Business Ethics and Political Liberalism: An Integrative Approach

Increasingly many business practitioners and academics are turning to religious sources as a way of approaching and answering difficult questions related to business ethics. There now exists a relatively large literature which attempts to integrate business decisions and religious values. The integration, however, is not without difficulties. For many, religious ethics provides the basis and the ultimate authority for a morally meaningful life. Yet, at the same time, in certain contexts, it is often inappropriate to rely and to publicly justify action on the basis of these ethics. With this difficulty in mind, the main goal of this paper is to answer the following specific question: Is a religiously grounded business ethics consistent with the idea of political liberalism? While this question is fundamental and straight-forward, to date it has received little, if any, careful attention. The characterization of business corporations as quasi-public, discussed in the body of the paper, implies that political liberalism may dictate that there exist situations in which invoking religious business ethics is inappropriate. The point is that once one removes the assumption of business as a purely private matter, the justification of a religiously grounded ethics in the context of a politically liberal democracy becomes problematic. On the other hand, such an assumption should not be taken to imply that all religiously grounded business ethics are always inappropriate. As this paper demonstrates, it is far from obvious that even government officials need observe a complete separation between religion and state in formulating, justifying, or expressing public policies, even policies leading to so-called coercive results. If so, it follows that managers of quasi-public institutions may, under appropriate and limited circumstances, invoke and rely upon a religious, albeit private, world-view.

Formal standards-setting for global telecommunications and information services. Towards an institutional regime transformation?

This paper reviews the nature and economic significance of the activities carried on by standards development organizations (SDOs), focusing in particular upon the telecommunications and information technology standards-setting work of the government-created public and quasi-public institutions, and the international treaty organizations that constitute the formal standards sector. It documents the current sources of tension within this regime and appraises various proposals for organizational reforms. There are especially pressing needs for adaptations of the inherited institutional mechanisms for technical coordination to provide for inter-operability in the development of new telecommunication networks and services. Among the manifold sources of strain on the old structure, those which seem at once most fundamental and potentially most threatening are the recently heightened industrial perceptions of the potential strategic value of standards as tools of business competition and national policy, and the incentives for ‘institutional by-pass’ that have been created by the rapid proliferation of technological possibilities. The paper considers some alternative organizational models for negotiated standard-setting that might be able to withstand, and better harness these forces for the continued production of standards as public goods.

Women and philanthropy in Argentina: from the society of beneficence to Eva Perón

This article focuses on the history of voluntary associations in Argentina over the past 200 years. Argentine voluntary associations have their roots in the alliance of the Catholic church, the state and the country's elites, in which women played major roles. The charitable stage can be divided into two phases: the first (1600–1899) was encouraged mainely by the church, in particular through the Sisters of Charity; the second (1820–1940) took shape under state patronage in a period of centralisation and secularisation. TheSociety of Beneficence, a quasi-public institution run by wealthy women, emerged as the most important institution for public assistance until the formation of the Eva Peron Foundation, which became the paradigmatic form of social assistance in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the approach adopted by the Foundation differed very little from those of its precursors. Within this framework the current social development model attempts to reconfigure the relationships between the public institutions and civil society.

How Fast and Why Did Early Capitalism Benefit the Majority?

How long did it take for early rapid capitalist transformations to benefit the majority of the population? This essay examines three presumed success cases, concluding that rapid capitalist development took at least five decades to benefit the majority. A neglected political force for success was the effectiveness of local public and quasi-public institutions in creating wide networks of transportation and other public investments responsive to changing market requirements. Economists today should pay close attention to distributional benefits and local government effectiveness before urging western brands of capitalism on countries where failures to benefit the majority threaten severe political instability.

Models of the relationship of the firm to society

Authors of books on business ethics and corporate social responsibility fall into two general approaches when they answer the question: ‘Why should a business firm, which represents private property, have greater obligations to the local community than an ordinary citizen?’ Authors generally subscribe to a ‘rights’ approach or to a ‘power’ model. This paper will present four rights approaches and three power models which are used to describe the relationship of the firm to society. Introducing these different approaches and models will be two brief expositions which provide the setting for determining the relationship of a firm to society. The first traces two lines to the development of the contemporary American corporation. The second views the business corporation as a quasi-public institution.