Traditional Governance Structures Research Articles

Sensemaking, sensegiving and strategic management in Danish higher education

Strategic management and leadership has been a vital catchphrase in most European higher education reforms over the past decade, and has in many countries resulted in a strengthening of the top level management tiers. Rectors and Deans are increasingly tasked with the responsibility of turning HEIs into more active, entrepreneurial actors in society, and are in this way required to take on and inhabit the role as strategic managers to a much higher degree than ever seen before in higher education systems. This role, apart from being new to many of the managers, is at the same time complicated by the upending of the traditional governance structures, and the rigorous defence of the very same structures stemming from the academic staff. The article examines how these strategic managers simultaneously attempt to make sense of these changing circumstances, and how new and old ideas, values and norms play into these sensemaking processes. The findings suggest that while traditional academic norms may still be very influential, new ideas about HEIs have found their way into both sensemaking and sensegiving efforts, and that both old and new ideas significantly affect the goal construction and strategic management practice.

Challenges in achieving leadership structures for repositioning the destination Cyprus

Purpose – The aim of this contribution is to present the structural constraints faced by the Cypriot tourism industry on its path to changing its product portfolio, previously dominated by the beach-tourism segment. Design/methodology/approach – Using a heuristic approach, the current processes are viewed from the angle of the change from a Fordist to a post-Fordist production scheme. Findings – The persistence of traditional governance and power structures hinder the transition and the emergence of new leadership structures and stakeholder interaction patterns. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this paper are that the findings are only preliminary because they result from a research project that is about to commence. Originality/value – The paper is based on a fact-finding mission and deals with a topic that has transfer potential for other Mediterranean destinations.

Governance versus government: Drug consumption rooms in Australia and the UK

AimTo evaluate, through a case study, the extent to which elements of governance and elements of government are influential in determining the implementation or non-implementation of a drugs intervention. MethodsComparative analysis of the case of a drug consumption room in the UK (England) and Australia (New South Wales), including 16 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and analysis of relevant documents according to characteristic features of governance and government (power decentralisation, power centralisation, independent self-organising policy networks, use of evidence, top-down steering/directing, legislation). ResultsCharacteristic features of both governance and government are found in the data. Elements of governance are more prominent in New South Wales, Australia than in England, UK, where government prevails. Government is seen as the most important actor at play in the making, or absence, of drug consumption rooms. ConclusionsBoth governance and government are useful frameworks in conceptualising the policy process. The governance narrative risks overlooking the importance of traditional government structures. In the case of drug consumption rooms in the UK and Australia, a focus on government is shown to have been crucial in determining whether the intervention was implemented.

The Seminole Tribe and the Origins of Indian Gaming

The Seminole Tribe of Florida has played perhaps the most important role in the origins and development of Indian gaming in the United States of any single tribe. The tribe opened the first tribally owned high stakes bingo hall in 1979. The tribe in 1981 was involved in one of the earliest lower court decisions forming the basis of the legal theory excluding most states from the regulation of high stakes bingo, a theory that Congress largely codified in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) years later. The tribe was a party to the Supreme Court decision in 1996 that radically altered the bargaining power between tribes and states over the negotiation and regulation of casino-style gaming under IGRA. And more recently, the tribe has been a leading participant in negotiations and litigation over the regulatory landscape of Indian gaming after the 1996 decision. The Tribe is one of the most successful Indian gaming tribes in the nation.This paper traces that history, but also offers thoughts on how the culture and traditional governance structures of the Seminole Tribe played a part in its leadership role in the arena of Indian gaming.

Vietnam: Rapports Entre Sociitt Civile Et Parti--tat Dans Le Post-Doi Moi (The Dynamism of Relationship Between Civil Society and the Party-State in Post-Doi Moi Vietnam)

French Abstract: Au Vietnam, le parti communiste developpe diverses strategies pour tourner le developpement du secteur associatif a son avantage, en le transformant en nouvel instrument de controle societal. La cooptation, les controles et les ingerences de toutes sortes n'ont cependant pas empeche l'emergence de nouveaux espaces informels d'autonomie, au sein desquels se developpe un contre-discours hegemonique. English Abstract: In Vietnam, the Communist Party develops diverse strategies in order to control the associational life to its advantage and use the associational sector as a new instrument for societal control. However, the symbiosis of a traditional Leninist governance structure and a market economy has created space for elements of the civil society to come back into being. This political space has facilitated the struggles for social and environmental justice, economic, cultural and democratic rights in various forms. The party-state has employed both a co-optation, coercion, and concession in a strategic way to maintain its existing hegemony over popular ideas, values, and norms in governance.

Why is it Difficult to Grasp the Impacts of the Portuguese Quality Assurance System?

This article analyses the impacts of the Portuguese quality assurance system on academic cultures, using the Cultural Theory proposed by Douglas (1970, 1982) and developed by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky (1990) as an explanatory framework for Portuguese academics' preference formation in relation to quality assessment.The Portuguese higher education system has been undergoing a change of paradigm by moving from traditional collegial system to a legal framework influenced by New Public Management. The former institutional context, where academic collegiality was the basis of democratic decision, promoted the egalitarian way of life, where the group dimension is stronger.However, recent legislation has promoted two different logics. On the one hand it has decreased the influence of the group dimension by favouring individualistic values and beliefs. On the other, it has reinforced the grid dimension through greater centralisation of power and separation of roles of universities and polytechnics, thus promoting the hierarchic way of life. The new legislation framework has produced changes that have strongly modified traditional governance structures and mechanisms and are likely to affect academics' perceptions of quality assurance processes and impacts as much as they influence the development of beliefs and values.

The Making of Institutions of Information Governance: The Case of the Internet Governance Forum

Histories of information systems are inseparable from the histories of their governance. In the case of the Internet, governance structures informally developed during its early design were substantially different from the typical mechanisms resulting from public policy decision-making. Traditionally, global information systems, such as telecommunication systems, were governed through state-centric mechanisms that would set treaty-based framework for non-state actors to operate within. Legitimate participation in these traditional governance structures was the prerogative of states that possessed sole decision-making authority. In the case of the Internet, non-state-actor-driven governance frameworks were developed outside of those traditional mechanisms. They relied on a different conception of legitimacy and authority. This paper discusses how the state and non-state actors were forced to cooperate around the creation of institutions that could accommodate the variety of views on authority, legitimacy, and decision-making processes in Internet governance. It tracks the creation of the Internet Governance Forum as a case where notions of legitimacy and authority were redefined for policy deliberations of complex information systems. The paper concludes with whether those changes lead to the emergence of new institutions that contribute to the sustainability of the network by enabling coexistence of competing political interests and values; and what this could mean for the future of the network.

The trouble with deficits

In their recent paper, “Misperceptions of climate-change risk as barriers to climate-change adaptation: a case study from the Rewa Delta, Fiji,” Lata and Nunn (2012) argue that “lack of awareness” and “cultural impediments ... such as short-term planning perspectives, spiritual beliefs, traditional governance structures” are barriers to climate change adaptation in Fiji’s Rewa Delta (p. 169). Understanding how vulnerable, often marginalized people can or will adapt to the future effects of climate change is a core concern of human dimensions of climate change scholars and the policy community more broadly. We thus feel obliged to point out that this paper has substantial methodological and conceptual shortcomings. These shortcomings seriously undermine the authors’ conclusion that public deficits, in their many manifestations in this paper, are barriers to climate change adaptation in the Rewa Delta. We begin with the methodological shortcomings by asking: Of whom can the authors legitimately speak? The study focuses on one urban (Nausori Town, population approx. 25,000) and one rural location (Vutia, population approx. 900, distributed across three villages) in the Rewa Delta, Fiji. 32 inhabitants from each location were selected for interview in a non-random manner (both samples were purposive, and apparently haphazard), rendering the authors’ generalisations to each population invalid. Equally troubling, one criterion for inclusion in the study—eligible participants had to have lived in the area continuously for at least 30 years—excluded 92 % of the rural population from the study. Those excluded were “foreigner” family groups, those who in the past 20–30 years had Climatic Change (2013) 118:501–504 DOI 10.1007/s10584-013-0750-3

Technology Adoption in Online Social Networks

With the advances of information technology, online social networks are becoming increasingly important venues for technology adoption. However, although the dynamics of technology adoption in real world social networks have been well documented, technology adoption in online social networks remains relatively under-explored. This study identifies the differences between online and offline social networks and proposes a framework to investigate the dynamics of technology adoption in online social networks. To illustrate the proposed research framework, this study employs behavior-link panel data obtained from an open source software (OSS) development network to examine how online social networks affect the adoption of Subversion, the latest OSS version control technology. Based on social network theory, co-membership is used to construct online social networks within the OSS development network. Methodologically, this study takes advantage of the panel dataset and addresses the issues of simultaneity and individual heterogeneity that frequently confound the relationship between network structure and adoption decision, and as a result it demonstrates a more compelling relationship between social networks and technology adoption. The results of this study reveal that social networks are major conduits for technology adoption in an online social network in terms of imitation, leadership, lock-in, similarity, recency, and team size effects. In online social networks, one's decision to adopt a new technology is strongly influenced by the actions of the connected others. Project leaders have a stronger influence over other members in technology adoption decision making, even in informal virtual teams where traditional governance structures do not apply. Older projects exhibit stronger inertia and thus lack innovativeness. Similarities among projects facilitate faster adoption, and the effect of leadership attenuates in the networks with increasing project dissimilarity. Recent adoptions of technology within the networks, rather than more distant ones, have a stronger impact on subsequent adoption, implying the salience of memory over usage confidence, and increased size of a project team accelerates the rate of adoption. These results help in understanding the dynamics of technology adoption in online social networks, and provide useful guidelines for firms to promote technology and product innovation.

Misperceptions of climate-change risk as barriers to climate-change adaptation: a case study from the Rewa Delta, Fiji

While increasing research is focusing on the effective adaptation to climate change in richer (developed) countries, comparatively little has focused specifically on this subject in poorer (developing) countries such as most in the Pacific Islands region. A significant barrier to the development of effective and sustainable adaptive strategies for climate change in such places is the gap between risk and perceived risk. This study looks at a vulnerable location in Fiji—the densely populated Rewa River Delta where environmental changes resulting from shoreline retreat and floods are expected to increase over the next few decades and entail profound societal disruption. The numbers of people living in the Rewa Delta who know of climate change and could correctly identify its contributory causes are few although many rank its current manifestations (floods, riverbank erosion, groundwater salinization) as among their most serious environmental challenges. While lack of awareness is a barrier to adaptation, there are also cultural impediments to this such as short-term planning perspectives, spiritual beliefs, traditional governance structures. One way forward is to empower community leaders in places like the Rewa Delta to make appropriate decisions and for regional governments to continue working together to find solutions that acknowledge the variation in sub-regional trans-national vulnerability to climate change.

The 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic in the United States: Lessons Learned and Challenges Exposed

The 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic in the United States: Lessons Learned and Challenges Exposed

Leadership in a network of communities: a phenomenographic study

PurposeCanada's Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI) uses an operating model that is unusual in government. It is created to enable cross‐boundary capability and capacity building and learning. Some consider it a model for other federal science initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of leadership – and its relationship to perceived effectiveness – in this complex network of counter‐terrorism communities, where parts of the network are functioning better than others. At a more academic level, it explores whether complexity theory can inform leadership theory.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative, empirical study uses phenomenography and elements of ethnography as methodologies. Data are gathered through interviews and observation.FindingsCRTI personnel refer to their initiative as a counter‐terrorism network of communities. The leader of each community works – without positional authority – with participants from many organizations and locations. The paper reveals qualitatively different ways of understanding leadership. Even though CRTI groups have much in common, participants' ways of understanding that work vary greatly. Some understand their work environments as complex systems rather than as traditional government structures; this way of understanding is associated with perceptions of effectiveness. This finding can change the ways in which science and technology professionals make sense of their work in complex, trans‐disciplinary fields such as counter‐terrorism and global warming.Originality/valueThis qualitative, empirical research complements and supports some of the conceptual work about leadership and learning in complex environments.

Sustainable workforce reform: case study of Victorian nurse practitioner roles

Nurse practitioner (NP) roles have been identified as a key strategy in the development of a sustainable and responsive health workforce. To date, the focus of research related to NP roles has been on implementation and short-term evaluation of aspects of NP care; however, little is known about the sustainability of NP roles. A major challenge for the healthcare sector is to demonstrate long-term outcomes of NP care and shift the research focus from individual NPs to the effectiveness of healthcare teams that incorporate NPs. This paper draws on a framework of the following domains of sustainability in primary care: political, institutional, financial-economic, workforce and client (or patient) and applies these domains to NP planning in the Victorian context.

Keeping Pace with Nanotechnology: A Proposal for a New Approach to Environmental Accountability

The rapid growth of the nanotechnology industry that challenges traditional governance structures also calls for new approaches to accountability. Using a broader range of accountability mechanisms could help avoid adverse effects of the evolving technologies, foster public confidence in nanotechnology, and encourage the development of new, beneficial technologies. In this Article, the author illustrates some of the tools of environmental accountability that may be employed in the context of nanotechnology. The article discusses how traditional accountability mechanisms already inherent in the federal environmental statutes may be applied, emphasizes the need for flexibility in permitting, encourages broader public involvement, greater public access to information, the use of voluntary accountability programs, and expansion of industry self-regulation. The author concludes by suggesting the creation of a Nanotechnology Council to bring stakeholders together to address accountability issues.

Revitalize primary health care for confronting current public health challenges

Revitalize primary health care for confronting current public health challenges

Safeguarding advances in the life sciences

Enhancing public health and safety against biological threats arising from natural or man‐made causes is an overwhelming challenge for traditional governance structures. The rapid advances in the life sciences—although clearly bringing enormous benefits to public health—similarly raise concerns among governments, scientists and the public about potential risks and abuse. As seen in the 2003 SARS outbreak, increased transnational activities in trading, tourism and, in particular, air travel now allow infectious diseases to spread around the world in days. Ethical limits, owing to advances in such areas as genomics and stem‐cell research, are perceived to be under pressure. Similarly, security experts find it difficult to assess the potential implications of biological research, be it deliberate misuse by terrorists and government‐run weapons programmes or a lack of awareness by individual scientists. What is needed is an international and multidisciplinary effort to assess in full the risks involved and to identify methods to manage biological risks effectively. Communicating the results of risk assessment in a balanced and objective way is of equal importance, to ensure that public confidence in science is not undermined, and that sensible and practical regulations are developed and implemented where needed. Moreover, such an effort must be conducted at an international level with active participation—if not leadership—from the scientific community. The International Council for the Life Sciences (ICLS; Washington, DC, USA) was created specifically to help achieve this objective. The full spectrum of biological risks, ranging from emerging infectious disease to premeditated misuse, represents an urgent and global challenge for governments and intergovernmental organizations (Fig 1). Life‐science research and its commercial exploitation are essentially international in nature. They bring important benefits to medicine, public health, the food industry, agriculture and industrial processes; at the same time, potential risks to public safety and security from deliberate misuse or negligence are …

Risk, Recovery and Resilience

From 1999 to 2004, the Child and Youth Care Agency for Development (CYAD), a South African Non-Government Agency (NGO), has been working in partnership with the University of Victoria's International Institute for Child Rights and Development (IICRD) and Aboriginal Liaison Office (ABLO) to identify and reinforce community and cultural assets in supporting child and family resilience. The project, entitled Circles of Care: Community and Support for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS, has developed and piloted a model for community capacity building that supports traditional African community values, beliefs and governance structures (understood as Setso) in reinforcing child resilience through child rights based advocacy that partners children and traditional leaders (identified as Morena) and healers (called Dingaka).

Company Law Reform in Italy: Real Progress?

B. Joint-Stock Companies . 664 I. Corporate Finance. 664 1. Financial Instruments . 664 a) Shares. 664 b) Increase and Reduction of Capital. 667 c) Bonds. 668 d) Hybrids. 670 2. Segregation of Assets. 671 a) Pool of Assets Intended for a Specific Business. 671 b) Insolvency of the Company. 672 c) Insolvency of the Specific Business. 673 d) Non-recourse Financing. 674 3. Leveraged Buy-outs. 674 II. Corporate Governance. 675 1. Governance Models . 676 a) Traditional Governance Structure . 676 b) One-tier Structure . 677 c) Two-tier Structure. 678 2. Conflicts of Interest . 679 3. Directors'Liability. 680 4. Shareholders' Meetings . 682

Balancing strategy and accountability: A model for the governance of professional associations

AbstractAn erratum has been published for this article in Nonprofit Management and Leadership 15(4) 2005, 487 [].Professional associations are operating in a context of uncertainty and change, with which their traditional governance structures struggle to manage. After describing this context and presenting a brief overview of relevant governance literature, a project aimed at supporting the redesign of governance structures and procedures among five professional associations in the United Kingdom is outlined. Three specific governance issues are examined: size of councils (council is the term used for a governing body of a U.K. professional association), their composition in relation to electoral processes, and the development of inner councils, or executive boards, within councils. Finally, we present a normative model, the cupped hands model, that has arisen from the research. This model offers a possible means of balancing the representation required by their status as membership associations with the requirement that professional associations become more strategic and proactive.

Universities and Industry: Does the Lambert Code of Governance Meet the Requirements of Good Governance?

AbstractThe Lambert Model Code of Governance proposes to institutionalise the dominance of governors from commercial and industrial organisations as core members of compact and effective boards controlling UK universities. It is the latest expression of a fashion for viewing university governance as an overly‐simple example of an obsolete system, where overweening and obstructive committee systems inhibit universities from achieving more significant and business‐relevant activity. In this paper university governance is analysed in terms of classic agency analysis, in the Jensen and Meckling tradition. This suggests that governance of and in the system is complex and that, although inherited structures may indeed be deficient, the prescription of the Lambert Review is profoundly flawed and would be unlikely to achieve improvement in UK universities’ competitiveness or attainment of mission.