Substantial Discretion Research Articles

Who Gets Denied Telework in the U.S. Federal Service?

Discretionary rewards can motivate employees but increase social inequity. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, when supervisors had substantial discretion over whether and how frequently U.S. federal employees teleworked, those who did so several times a week liked most aspects of their jobs more than those who teleworked less, especially those who were denied telework. Though telework became a necessity rather than a reward during the pandemic, supervisor discretion is increasing during the return-to-the-office period, making unequal access to telework a potential site of social inequity. Using logit analysis on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) before and during the pandemic, we examine how race, sex, disability status, and sexual orientation affected who was denied telework and how job characteristics affected those decisions. Black, Latino, and younger employees and employees with disabilities were more likely to have telework requests turned down; differences by gender and sexual orientation barely existed.

Invisible and indispensable: Using the lowly request for proposals to advance public value

AbstractRequests for Proposals (RFP) may be the pinnacle of bureaucratic mundanity. Yet, hidden within this apparent monotony are powerful tools to advance public values. Federal, state, and local government grants deploy staggering sums, reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. With these distributions, the executive branch is often delegated substantial discretion. These are choices of consequence, but little support exists for public managers tasked with this work. This article examines the potential to improve administrative decision‐making by enhancing our understanding of how discretion is authorized and applied regarding RFPs. Drawing from professional experience, we create a framework to identify dimensions of discretion in these proposals and apply it to a Minnesota case. We end with a call for academics and practitioners to better partner on empirical inquiry that improves RFP administration; in doing so, there is immense potential to help civil servants to improve outcomes for the public.

Executive action that lasts

AbstractUnilateral presidential action is thought to be limited by the ability of successors to easily reverse past decisions. Yet, most executive actions are never formally revoked. We argue that because of presidents’ unique position as chief executive, some actions create outcomes that make policy reversal more difficult or even infeasible. We develop a novel measure of policies with more immutable consequences and analyze the revocation of executive orders issued between 1937 and 2021. We find the degree of outcome immutability reduces the influence of political conditions on policy revocation. We further examine these dynamics in three cases in which presidents have substantial discretion – diplomacy, non-combatant detention, and police militarization. Scholarship has long highlighted the president’s first-mover status relative to other institutional actors as a key source of their power. Collectively, our argument and evidence demonstrate this applies to their relationship with successors.

Tone management and stock price crash risk

Managers have substantial discretion over qualitative disclosures. At the same time, disclosure tone is an important source of information to investors. In this study, I examine the relation between tone management and future stock price crash risk. Consistent with the view that managers use their discretion over disclosure tone for intentional information management, I find that tone management in the Management Discussion and Analysis of 10-K files is, on average, positively associated with future stock price crash risk, even after controlling for quantitative crash determinants and financial disclosure readability. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the effect is more pronounced when managers have more incentives and are less constrained in manipulating disclosure tone. Collectively, my results suggest that tone management can have greater and broader capital market consequences than previously documented.

Harmonising Shareholder Protection Laws for Related Party Transactions

Abstract 701 Related party transactions have gained significant importance in Europe as a result of the reformed Shareholders’ Rights Directive (SRD). Previously, only a few Member States had created regulatory regimes governing such transactions, yet as of the reform of 2019, detailed procedural and disclosure requirements are compulsory in the European Union today. The Directive’s specifications in Article 9 c grant national legislators substantial discretion to implement new safeguards into national law. This article compares the implementations chosen by Member States and assesses the degree of harmonisation that countries have achieved. It advocates for a more balanced approach and increased coordination with accounting laws. Furthermore, it argues that the new legal regime should be regarded as a significant part of European Corporate Group Law. 702

Principal-agent relations, politics of discretion, and the Africa-EU Partnership on Peace and Security

ABSTRACT Interregionalism constitutes a main feature of EU external policy and unfolds specifically in Africa-EU-relations. However, research has merely focused on the EU as a coherent actor, although many EU institutions implement cooperation with African partners. Likewise, principal-agent research, a prominent path to unpack the internals of EU policies, on the EU´s interregional relations is nascent. This paper seeks to fill these research gaps by applying a principal-agent framework to internal processes of the EU in its Africa relations. After analyzing acts of delegation, it analyzes the discretion of the agents. Pointing specifically to the EU-Africa Partnership on Peace and Security, the study investigates on principal-agent relations from a non-principal-related perspective that puts forward structure-induced and interest-induced factors for increased agent discretion. The results suggest that agents enjoy substantial discretion enabled by the specific environment and agent actions in a policy field of high importance to the principals.

ВЛИЯНИЕ САНКЦИЙ И АНТИСАНКЦИОННЫХ МЕР НА РАЗВИТИЕ КОРПОРАТИВНОГО ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВА, ПРАКТИКИ ЕГО ПРИМЕНЕНИЯ И НАУЧНОЙ ДОКТРИНЫ

The article is focused on the influence of sanctions and anti-sanctions measures on the development of corporate legislation, practice of its application and scientific doctrine. With respect to duration of antisanctions measures the author believes that it is more appropriate to define period of applicability of the special rule before introduction into the legislation of other changes (and not to determine specific period of application of the anti-sanctions measure). The author concludes that public companies in the course of antisanctions regulations were granted with substantial discretion with respect to the internal corporate procedures and disclosure of information. They are already not fully compliant with the ordinary legislation requirements. The article critically evaluates legislative initiatives on possibility of membership of the legal entities in the boards of directors because this decreases professional level of the board and personal liability of its members. In general, the author concludes that corporate law in the period of sanctions requires special attention. Keeping the achieved level of corporate governance and its subsequent increase is necessary not for foreign rankings but to secure economic stability of the Russian economy and to increase effectiveness of entrepreneur activity.

What are the Priorities of Bureaucrats? Evidence from Conjoint Experiments with Procurement Officials

A well-functioning bureaucracy is a precondition for efficient public goods provision. However, bureaucratic decision-making is still largely seen as a black box. We provide novel insights into the preferences of bureaucrats regarding their work outcomes. We focus on a major public sector activity and survey more than 900 real-life procurement officials in Finland and Germany. The questionnaire includes hypothetical choice experiments to study the relative importance of multiple features in tender outcomes. First, bureaucrats state to have substantial discretion at work but no important incentives. Second, our experimental results show that procurers are particularly worried about avoiding negative risks concerning prices and supplier reputation. Third, an avoidance of bidders with prior bad performance appears to be an extremely important factor. Fourth, procurers value a certain degree of competition, while litigation concerns and regional favoritism play only a small role. The striking lack of heterogeneous effects points towards the role of intrinsic motivation among public buyers in countries with high public sector capacity.

Categorizing clients with disabilities

Governments across Scandinavia have continuously proclaimed goals of raising the employment rate for people with disabilities. However, the employment rate for people with disabilities has been significantly lower than that of people without disabilities for more than two decades. The municipal employment centres and as such the individual caseworkers have substantial discretion in categorizing clients with permanent impairments. Earlier studies have largely focused on employment at the stage when the impairment has been categorized. This study offers new insight by exploring the process by which people with permanent impairments are categorized in Danish job centres. Results from a survey (n=69) and qualitative interviews (n=9) with caseworkers show a very low degree of formal categorization as well as a low degree of attention to disability as a target group. However, a lack of focus in job centres does not mean that no classification is performed as caseworkers use categories from adjacent political or social categories e.g. the flexi-job scheme. One consequence of the lack of classification could be that job centres do not identify impairments in unemployed thereby lowering the possibilities to assist them. However, a higher level of classification also entails possible downsides such as stigmatization.

Participatory Budgeting and Fiscal Transparency of Local Governments : Moderating Effect of Political Competition

The goal of allowing citizens to participate in local government’s decision-making process is to enhance fiscal transparency and accountability. Under the accrual-based accounting system, however, mayors of local governments have substantial discretion in estimating accounting numbers, as well as political incentives to manage performance in order to appease voters. Accordingly, such participation may fail to achieve its intended objective. Utilizing a unique dataset of 220 Korean local governments’ accrual-based financial statements for 2015-2018, we examine the effect of citizens’ participation in the budgeting process on financial reporting quality and how the effect varies with political competition in local municipalities. We first do not find any significant association between the level of participatory budgeting institutions and financial reporting quality measured by the allowances for uncollectible taxes. This finding is consistent with the countervailing effects involved in the participatory budgeting system (i.e., citizens’ enhanced access to accounting information versus mayors’ opportunistic incentives). However, we find that this relation hinges on the level of municipal political competition, captured by the gap in votes obtained by the incumbent mayor and the second-place candidate in the election. The relation becomes significantly positive when political competition is weaker. This evidence implies that mayors’ political incentives and concerns about re-election dominate the monitoring role of citizen councilors, consequently reducing fiscal transparency. Overall, our results suggest that political competition dampens the positive effect of participatory budgeting on the financial reporting quality of local governments.

Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015‒2019.

Objectives. To determine the frequency of loaded handgun carrying among US adult handgun owners overall and by state concealed carry law status. Methods. Using a nationally representative survey of US firearm-owning adults in 2019, we asked handgun owners (n = 2389) about their past-month handgun carrying behavior. Results. A total of 30.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 28.0%, 32.6%) of handgun owners carried handguns monthly, of whom 38.1% (95% CI = 33.6%, 42.7%) did so daily. In permitless carry states, 29.7% (95% CI = 25.9%, 33.9%) of handgun owners carried handguns in the past month, compared with 33.1% (95% CI = 29.9%, 36.3%) in shall issue states and 19.7% (95% CI = 14.9%, 25.5%) in may issue states. Of handgun owners without a permit, 7.5% (95% CI = 4.1%, 13.3%) of those in may issue states and 11.5% (95% CI = 8.5%, 15.4%) of those in shall issues states carried handguns in the past month. Conclusions. In 2019, about 16 million US adult handgun owners carried handguns in the past month (up from 9 million in 2015), and approximately 6 million did so daily (twice the 3 million who did so in 2015). Proportionally fewer handgun owners carried handguns in states where issuing authorities had substantial discretion in granting permits. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(12):1783-1790. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307094).

Utilized discretion: a vignette study of social assistance assessments in Sweden

ABSTRACT Swedish social assistance (SA) is administered with substantial discretion among both municipalities and social workers. Although such discretionary power has its merits, it also comes with potential disadvantages. Previous studies show considerable variation in assessments of SA eligibility, not only between municipalities but also between social workers within the same organisation. Further, the differences seem to have increased over time and apply irrespective of the method used for measurement. The present paper analyses eligibility assessments of eight so-called vignettes, collected among just over 1,000 social workers in 19 Swedish municipalities, including Sweden’s three major cities. The assessments are analysed by means of multilevel logistic and linear regression analysis, focusing on the influence that basic social worker characteristics, professional factors and individual attitudes exert over (a) propensity to grant SA in separate vignettes and (b) general tendency to grant applications. The results show that social workers’ caseload and attitudes towards clients and SA in general affect the outcomes of assessments the most. Along with the fact that significant parts of the variations remain unexplained, one main conclusion is that Swedish SA administration seem to be somewhat disengaged from formal rules and regulations.

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

Prosecutors exercise substantial discretion within the criminal justice process, potentially allowing for discrepant treatment of criminal cases. The purpose of this research was to examine the association between prosecutorial implicit biases and victim gender and sexual orientation in an intimate partner violence (IPV) case. Participants, 201 prosecutors from across the United States, completed two Implicit Association Tests to measure implicit gender attitudes and implicit attitudes regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer individuals. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (opposite-sex couple/female victim, opposite-sex couple/male victim, same-sex couple/female victim, same-sex couple/male victim) and read a case file of an alleged IPV arrest. Consistent with our hypotheses, prosecutors were 65% more likely to prosecute under the severest criminal penalty when the victim was female or included an opposite-sex couple. However, we found no evidence that implicit biases related to prosecutorial decisions.

Jail Health Care in the Southeastern United States From Entry to Release.

Millions of people are incarcerated in US jails annually. These individuals commonly have ongoing medical needs, and most are released back to their communities within days or weeks. Jails are required to provide health care but have substantial discretion in how they provide care, and a thorough overview of jail health care is lacking. In response, we sought to generate a comprehensive description of jails' health care structures, resources, and delivery across the entire incarceration experience from jail entry to release. We conducted in-depth interviews with jail personnel in five southeastern states from August 2018 to February 2019. We purposefully targeted recruitment from 34 jails reflecting a diversity of sizes, rurality, and locations, and we interviewed personnel most knowledgeable about health care delivery within each facility. We coded transcripts for salient themes and summarized content by and across participants. Domains included staffing, prebooking clearance, intake screening and care initiation, withdrawal management, history and physicals, sick calls, urgent care, external health care resources, and transitional care at release. Ninety percent of jails contracted with private companies to provide health care. We identified two broad staffing models and four variations of the medical intake process. Detention officers often had medical duties, and jails routinely used community resources (e.g., emergency departments) to fill gaps in on-site care. Reentry transitional services were uncommon. Jails' strategies for delivering health care were often influenced by a scarcity of on-site resources, particularly in the smaller facilities. Some strategies (e.g., officers performing medical duties) have not been well documented previously and raise immediate questions about safety and effectiveness, and broader questions about the adequacy of jail funding and impact of contracting with private health care companies. Beyond these findings, our description of jail health care newly provides researchers and policymakers a common foundation from which to understand and study the delivery of jail health care.

“Braking” bad: How managers can respond to employee misbehavior

Employee misbehavior can be defined as transgressions that go beyond unintentional mistakes but do not rise to the level of criminal offenses. Managers are often given substantial discretion over how to handle such behavior, but they may be unsure about what their response should be or unaware of the extent to which others will care about their response. We offer a framework to help managers respond to misbehavior, particularly when firing the offender is not an option. We identify types of formal and informal responses that not only deter future offenses but also help to restore perceptions of justice within the organization. We also provide guidance on how managers should select and communicate these responses to other employees. Finally, we highlight two supplementary actions that managers can consider to restore perceptions of justice: victim restitution (that is, providing compensation to or otherwise helping to assuage the distress of the wronged party) and offender reintegration (that is, helping the wrongdoer get back to work within the organization).

Sortition as Anti‐Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture

AbstractRandom selection for political office—or “sortition”—is increasingly seen as a promising tool for democratic renewal. Critics worry, however, that replacing elected and appointed officials with randomly selected citizens would only exacerbate elite manipulation of political processes. This article argues that sortitioncancontribute to democratic renewal, but that its genuine promise is obscured by the excessive ambition and misplaced focus of prevailing models. Casting random selection as a route to accurate representation of the popular will, most contemporary proposals require randomly selected citizens to perform legislative tasks, whose open‐endedness grants substantial discretion to elite agenda setters and facilitators. The real democratic promise of sortition‐based reforms, I argue, lies in obstructing elite capture at critical junctures: a narrower task of oversight that creates fewer opportunities for elite manipulation. In such contexts, the benefits of empowering ordinary people—resulting from their immunity to certain distorting influences on career officials—plausibly outweigh the risks.

Therapeutic content in Swedish residential care for children and youth – managers choices and the reasoning behind

ABSTRACT The field of residential care for children and youth in Sweden is fragmented; there is a diversity both in terms of ownership and in terms of therapeutic content. This article analyses how decisions regarding therapeutic content are made in residential care settings. The data consists of interviews with representatives of different types of residential care organisations. The results indicate that the field is impacted by different logics as well as multiple actors and environmental elements shaping the prerequisites for decisions about therapeutic content. Local managers have substantial discretion in deciding which models and treatments that should be used in their settings and they can in that capacity be viewed as key actors in the field. The decisions of managers are influenced by a mix of professional and market logics, but there are also some traces of a family logic. Signs of a professional logic can be discerned in claims about models and treatments viewed as evidence-based and/or locally evaluated, but such claims are also perceived as competitive on the market. A gap between descriptions of models and treatments and actual practice is acknowledged by managers and believed to be fuelled by procurement processes and market considerations.

Discretion as a double‐edged sword in global work: The perils of international business travel

AbstractInternational business travellers (IBTs) have become omnipresent in multinational enterprises, and yet we know little on how they manage the inherent complexities of their global work. Through a qualitative research design, our study reveals a perturbing job demands‐resources mismatch faced by these individuals. IBTs are afforded substantial discretion with respect to how they carry out their global work and this discretion enables engagement in a series of job crafting actions. The job crafting actions we identify in this study inadvertently intensified rather than eased the demands‐resources mismatch that IBTs confronted. Our study advances job crafting theory through unpacking the potentially dysfunctional nature of job crafting in a global work context. In doing so, we challenge much of the extant literature which tends to overwhelmingly focus on the positive impact of job crafting actions. Our findings lead us to call for greater organisational oversight and configuration of support structures for IBTs.

Discretion as a Double-edged Sword in Global Work: The Perils of International Business Travelers

International business travelers have become omnipresent in multinational enterprises, and yet we know little on how they manage the inherent complexities of their global work. Through a qualitative research design, our study reveals a perturbing job demands-resources mismatch faced by these individuals. They are afforded substantial discretion with respect to how they carry out their global work which enables engagement in a series of job crafting actions. These inadvertently intensified rather than eased the demands-resources mismatch they confronted. We advance job crafting theory through unpacking the potentially dysfunctional nature of job crafting in a global work context and in doing so, challenge the overwhelmingly positive benefits commonly outlined. Our findings lead us to call for greater organizational oversight and configuration of support structures for business travel, alongside increased virtual working.

Relational Egalitarianism and Emergent Social Inequalities

This paper identifies a challenge for liberal relational egalitarians—namely, how to respond to the prospect of emergent inequalities of power, status, and influence arising unintentionally through the free exercise of fundamental individual liberties over time. I argue that these emergent social inequalities can be produced through patterns of nonmalicious choices, that they can in fact impede the full realization of relational equality, and that it is possible they cannot be eliminated entirely without abandoning fundamental liberal commitments to leave individuals substantial discretion in their personal lives. In such cases, I argue that liberal egalitarians should accept fair relational equality—a demanding but nevertheless imperfect form of relational equality.