The benefits and implementation of performance transparency: The why and how of letting your customers ‘see through’ your business

While some organizations swear by the benefits of transparency and are eager to learn and implement transparency practices, many managers are still reluctant or even afraid to use them. Our research reveals that only a few innovative companies have taken steps to leverage a potentially useful form of transparency: the provision of accessible and objective information to customers (e.g., sharing unbiased benchmark data, publishing unfiltered customer comments, or providing candid product reviews that may praise but also criticize the company’s products). Our study also shows that many companies remain wary and view greater calls for transparency as a challenge to be managed rather than an opportunity to be traded upon. This is partly due to limited research into the performance benefits of giving customers access to objective information, and lack of practical guidelines on how to actually implement it. This article addresses these shortcomings. First, we investigate whether performance transparency leads to customer outcomes that can be profitable for an organization and, second, we analyze the characteristics of successful transparency initiatives in a wide range of industries. Our research shows that customers exhibit more trust and are willing to pay a premium to deal with transparent businesses. Also, it uncovers seven effective strategies to leverage transparency. This article provides convincing empirical evidence for the benefits of performance transparency and the ways in which management may implement it successfully.     

Innovation and public procurement: Terminology,concepts, and applications

The growing awareness of public procurement as an innovation policy tool has recently sparked the interest of both policy makers and researchers. While an increasing number of studies is being published every year, an overview of the field is missing. Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers are often using ambiguous wording and have not yet reached consensus on the terminology and concepts involved. This state of affairs leads to research fragmentation and lack of knowledge convergence. For the purpose of contributing to knowledge synthesis and consolidation, this article provides a structured review of the literature on innovation in public procurement. From categorizing publications based on innovation drivers, concepts, and research approaches, the emerging structure of the field is described and synthesized into a framework of innovation in public procurement. The proposed framework differentiates between literature streams on (1) innovations in the public procurement process, (2) innovation of public services by means of procurement, and (3) the use of public procurement as a tool for demand-side innovation policy-making. For each of these streams of literature, different focus areas as well as research gaps and opportunities for future research are identified. Based on analysis of existing research, the proposed framework provides an overview of state-of-the-art knowledge, a unified terminology, and a holistic understanding of innovation in public procurement. The framework is both a point of departure for future research and a source of knowledge for practitioners.     

地方政府债务空间与空间债务——基于地根经济的区位黏性视角

本文从人口流动的区位黏性这一全新视角，将地方政府性债务的李嘉图等价命题纳入新经济地理研究框架进行理论分析。为了进一步揭示理论模型的政策含义，采用空间计量方法验证沿海地区地方政府性债务的局部正相关特征。最优的债务政策取决于经济系统的初始条件，在非对称经济结构已经存在的情况下，单纯建设本地区的基础设施只会降低区域内的交易成本，这对于那些仅着眼于投巨资用于城市“硬件”建设的地方政府来说显然是一叶障目。建议依靠基础设施网络提高区域协同创新能力，培育规模报酬递增的专业化产业集群。     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

Citizens’ e-participation on agenda setting in local governance: Do individual social capital and e-participation management matter?

Although a growing body of literature has touted e-participation as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation in policy decision-making processes, little is known about the driving forces behind citizens’ use of e-participation. Based on a literature review of social capital and citizen participation, this study develops and tests a model proposing that three dimensions of social capital and three dimensions of citizen participation management should be positively associated with e-participation in agenda setting. Using data from a Korean e-participation survey conducted in 2009, we found that citizens tend to be more active e-participants when they have greater trust in government and are weakly tied to offline social groups. We also found that citizen participants’ perception of government responsiveness to their input can facilitate their e-participation. The study findings imply that local governments should pay more attention to the function of public trust in local government and provide quality feedback in response to citizen input. They should also be sensitive to how the social factors of e-participants can facilitate involvement in agenda setting.     

Has local informational advantage disappeared?

This study examines how changes in the information environment affect the informational advantage of geographically proximate agents. The long‐term advantage of local agents disappeared at the turn of the millennium. This is accompanied by the reduction in local bias of institutional investors and equity analysts. However, institutional investors continue to trade local stocks disproportionately more often than non‐local stocks; moreover, their local trades outperform non‐local trades in the short term—even for large and liquid stocks. Our results are consistent with improvements in the information environment shortening the horizon of proximity‐based informational advantage.     

One-sided provision of a public good through bargaining under representative democracy

We examine a trade-off between strategic delegation and the internalization of interregional externalities through bargaining in the context of political economy. We show that in the case of one-sided provision of a public good, if the public good produced by one region generates a sufficiently significant spillover to another region, then interregional negotiation increases the total surplus of the entire economy.     

Viewpoint: Effectiveness or consumer acceptance? Tradeoffs in selecting healthy eating nudges

Governments and companies that want to promote healthier eating must consider both the effectiveness and the acceptance of the ‘nudges’ given to consumers. Our review of the literature uncovers a wide range of nudges towards healthy eating, from nutrition labeling to portion size reductions, which are found to vary greatly in effectiveness and levels of public acceptance (64% of women; 52% of men). Acceptance of a nudge is inversely related to its effectiveness: only 43% of respondents approved the most effective intervention – portion and package size reductions. Approval levels increased with the perceived effectiveness of the nudge and with the perception that the nudge is good for both health and business (as opposed to only one of the two), especially among respondents who identify as conservatives. To encourage acceptance of the most effective nudge strategies, governments and companies should therefore correct misconceptions about which nudges work best, and should underscore the win-win potential for health and business.     

西北生态山岳旅游健康发展评估

生态山岳的旅游健康发展程度对山地旅游资源的可持续利用具有重要的影响。采用层次分析法和熵权法对2018年西北地区的华山、麦积山和天山天池的旅游生态健康进行了分析。结果表明:三大山岳景区旅游健康发展均处于健康状态;在资源健康方面,天山天池表现为非常健康,华山和麦积山处于健康等级;在环境健康方面,麦积山处于非常健康,华山和天山天池处于健康等级;在经济健康和旅游社会方面,三大景区均表现为健康。