Economics,Politics and Nations: Resistance to the Multidivisional Form in France,Germany and the United Kingdom, 1983–1993*

ABSTRACT This paper assesses economic, political and national institutional explanations for continued resistance to the multidivisional form in France, Germany and the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s. It finds that the economics of different diversification strategies play a significant but changing role in the structural choices of large corporations. The political interests of personal, banking and government owners are exercised variably. There remain strong national influences on structural choices, with resistance to the multidivisional form particularly pronounced in Germany. Overall, our results call for an increased contextual sensitivity in management research while acknowledging the possibility of convergent processes in business organization, represented here by the slow progress of the multidivisional firm.     

The iron cage exposed: Institutional pressures and heterogeneity across the healthcare supply chain

The healthcare industry has been known to operate in a strong institutional environment (i.e. government regulations), and the implementation of inter-organizational systems (IOS) has followed an institutional process. Extending this perspective across different tiers in the healthcare supply chain, we investigate how organizations in different tiers in the supply chain (i.e. hospitals, distributors and manufacturers) respond to institutional pressures when implementing IOS. How institutional dynamics unfold across multiple tiers of a supply chain is an uncharted area of research, and we take the theory-building case study approach using data collected from ten organizations. Because organizations are embedded in their respective tiers, our within-tier analyses are equivalent to cross-organization analyses. In this regard, the cross-case analyses occur at two different levels: at each tier level (i.e. across multiple hospitals, multiple distributors and multiple manufacturers) and across the supply chain (i.e. across all three tiers). The study shows how different institutional pressures such as coercive, mimetic, and normative manifest across the tiers. It also demonstrates how a differential mix of endogenous and institutional pressures lead to mixed organizational responses across the tiers. The propositions developed from the study enrich institutional theory arguments within the information systems and supply chain management disciplines. They highlight how the IOS implementation dynamics within and across different tiers in a supply chain result in heterogeneous rather than isomorphic consequences, thereby exposing the “iron cage” of institutionalization.     

武汉市江汉区社区建设目标模式、制度创新及可行性

社区建设的根本问题是体制创新 ,是探索一种全新的城市基层社会管理体制 ,以替代已经失效的单位管理模式 ,这是一个关乎社会稳定与政权巩固的重大问题。本文论述了武汉市江汉区利用国家民政部社区建设实验区这一难得机遇 ,探索出一种社区治理模式 ,并取得了初步的社会政治效果。     

Beyond the Anglo‐Saxon and North European models: social partnership in a Greek textiles company

Much of the literature examining social partnership focuses on either Anglo‐Saxon or North European countries, differentiating between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). These studies argue, quite correctly, that the institutional forces shaping partnership in the two types of economy differ markedly, with the consequence that partnership takes somewhat different forms at the workplace. By contrast, there is only limited research on social partnership in Mediterranean economies—such as Greece—even though there are strong reasons to suggest it may be quite different from both LMEs and CMEs because of relatively recent military influence at state level and less well‐developed systems of industrial relations at organisational level. This article examines the forces operating both at national and at local level that facilitate or hinder the development of social partnership. It is based on the results of interviews with government, industry and union officials and a case study of partnership in a textiles company in northern Greece. It concludes that institutional forces provided workers with more protection than they would have achieved in an LME but that ultimately competitive pressures and a lack of effective workplace representation limited the degree to which the state can influence the processes and outcomes of social partnership at local level.     

Human resource management – a national business system perspective

Abstract

Although a sizeable body of academic literature has attempted to explain the role of national business systems in the context of human resource management (HRM), there is still little research on the extent to which institutional features explain patterns of HRM in the emerging economy of Dubai. Different institutional settings tend to generate their own organisational arrangements to manage their employees, and it is important to understand how this interplay works. From an economic perspective, Dubai is important, mainly due to its promising diversification of its economy and its political stability. From a national business system perspective, the institutional environment represents a peculiar case, because it differs from many other emerging markets with respect to the strong co-ordinating role of the state, the strong segmentation and specialisation of tasks, roles, skills and authority, especially between nationals and expatriates, and a unique employment system. Thirty-two in-depth interviews with HR managers, and extensive document reviews, reveal that these elements of the institutional environment are related strongly to specific patterns of HRM practices, including distinctive policies for national employees and expatriates. The insights generated in this study explain the particularities of HRM in Dubai from a national business system perspective.     

Muddy Waters: The Political Construction of Deliberative River Basin Governance in Brazil

Over the last two decades, numerous international conferences and organizations have espoused managing water as an economic good, involving participatory forums in systems of decentralized management at the river‐basin level. In the 1990s, Brazil adopted such a model. More than a simple transfer of power from the national to the local level or from bureaucratic to deliberative decision‐making, however, this process requires multi‐directional power transfers among a variety of policy arenas and actors and among national, state, municipal and river‐basin institutions, as well as a complex — and ongoing — negotiation over the meanings of both water pricing and participation. Focusing on the politics of reform legislation in the state of São Paulo and nationally, the article examines how political‐institutional features of federalism and executive‐legislative relations constrained the passage of reform legislation, and how pro‐reform actors attempted to surmount such institutional limitations with networking strategies and by fostering incremental changes in practices on the ground.     

Paying for Pipes,Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery

This article interrogates the nature of political agency deployed at sites of market‐oriented water reforms. It presents a case study from Bangalore, India of a water project mandating significant ‘beneficiary’ cash contributions from lower‐middle‐class dwellers for the capital cost of extending piped water to the city's peripheries. Drawing on quantitative and ethnographic data, it illustrates why property owners who lack formal water access and land tenure — groups referred to in this article as the ‘peripheralized middle class’ — consent to paying for pipes rather than resist all together despite the high cost involved. It argues that far from reflecting an internalization of a ‘willingness to pay’ or ‘stakeholder’ ethos celebrated by development practitioners today, payment for water provides an insurgent means to bargain for greater symbolic recognition, respectability and material benefits from the state. In particular, payment for pipes enables peripheral dwellers to strengthen their claims to secure land tenure in an era of exclusionary and punitive spatial policies. Payment thus comprises a terrain of contested meaning making and political struggle, at the heart of which lie the stakes of urban citizenship. In documenting the process by which property related interests and tenure claims are advanced under a scenario of reforms, this article contributes to Gramscian political‐ecological conversations on subaltern political agency and the lived character of hegemony in urban environments.     

The role of institutional and intermediary forces in shaping patterns of employee involvement and participation (EIP) in Anglo-American countries

Most studies of employee involvement and participation (EIP) focus on organisation level, which is understandable given that employers have plenty of choice about how it should be implemented. However, even the most lightly regulated economies do not operate in a complete institutional void as some forms are regulated while government-funded initiatives also promote EIP. Employers' organisations, professional associations and other specialist organisations also operate as intermediary forces between the state and individual employers to shape EIP. However, these forces have not been analysed, an omission which seems strange given the ‘space’ available for occupation in lightly regulated economies. This paper compares the role these different forces play in shaping patterns of EIP at organisation level in four Anglo-American countries (the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) through interviews and documentary evidence at national, intermediary and organisation levels. While ‘hard’ institutional forces have some influence on representative EIP, ‘soft’ institutional and intermediary forces are more likely to shape EIP because they allow employers choice and flexibility in implementation and fit with national business systems in these countries. However, given such interventions are voluntary, they are also susceptible if government priorities change or employers are attracted by the next management fad.     

Caught in organized ambivalence: institutional complexity and its implications in the German hospital sector

Worldwide, public service-providing organizations confront regulatory hybridization. While their societal mission persists, they are expected to become more business-like. Drawing on theory concerned with institutional complexity and ambivalence in organizations, this article illuminates the case of German acute care hospitals. We depict the emergence of market orientation in this industry, its structural impact and major sensemaking patterns at the site level. In our multiple case study, we find ‘organized ambivalence’ shaping the institutional context and affecting the undertakings’ internal life. Thus, regulatory hybridization tends to create certain traps – which challenges ideas according to which it helps improve public management.     

Strategic Cost Management and Institutional Changes in Hospitals

Accounting research raises the concern that firms in the health care and defence contracting industries, when facing a dual payment system with both cost-based and fixed-rate payments, have an incentive to reallocate overhead costs through increasing inputs used in cost-based operations. However, prior literature reports contradictory empirical evidence regarding such real activity manipulation. Drawing on the institutional perspective, we hypothesise that firms' market power and interorganisational dependence affect their cost-management strategies and choice of overhead allocation in response to dual payment systems. Analysing the data of California hospitals from 1980 to 1991, we find that when facing a dual payment system, dominant (strong market position) hospitals adopt a cost-revenue-enhancing strategy, increasing direct costs for cost-based services without containing costs in fixed-rate services. In contrast, nondominant hospitals choose a cost-reduction strategy and improve operation efficiency on fixed-rate services. We also find that nondominant hospitals shift more overhead costs away from fixed-rate services to cost-based services by reclassifying the allocation bases across services; combining this cost shifting with the cost-reduction strategy, nondominant hospitals demonstrate the compliance with the regulation expectation of cost containment.     

The management of variable pay in European banking

Banking is a major employer in most large European countries, facing common pressures in terms of competition and technological change. Traditional pay systems have been revised in response to changing business objectives and new forms of work organisation. This paper examines variable pay schemes (VPS) in banking in four countries with very different institutional contexts: Austria, Norway, Spain, and the UK. It finds extensive use of VPS in each case and shared managerial objectives in terms of performance management and cost control. Forms of VPS vary, with Norwegian banks in particular favouring collective forms of bonus, but overall there is a common drive towards individual (merit) pay and multiple bonus arrangements providing increased scope for management discretion. In broad terms, what the case of pay-setting in banking suggests is a course of fading path dependency at national level.     

A labour market perspective on management training and development in Europe

This paper uses recent survey data to undertake a comparative analysis of management development across six Western European countries. Unlike most studies that compare management development practices, we rely on an institutional labour market perspective to compare managerial skills development and training. We suggest that, while there are few differences in terms of the priority firms from different countries give to developing managers, the methods that are used and skill profiles can differ considerably. Furthermore, institutional change may also challenge some conventional views of how managers are being developed. We conclude by distinguishing four country systems that reflect a series of common characteristic strengths and weaknesses of national managerial training systems.     

Performance evaluation,public management improvement and democratic accountability

The results-oriented management reforms fostered by the New Public Management movement are often argued to emphasize the search for efficiency, quality and other typical market values at the expense of democratic accountability. On the other hand, challenging this view, some authors claim that results-based management reforms have the potential to enhance political accountability and representative democracy. There is however, limited empirical evidence of this relationship. This article uses some of the findings from a comparative study of public management evaluation systems in four Latin American countries to illuminate this relationship in practice. We discuss the fact that, in two of the four countries surveyed, the design features of the new systems were based on the explicit search for increased political accountability and the deepening of democracy. We also discuss the possible causes for the finding that the outcome and performance information generated is not being applied for decision-making purposes yet, as expected.     

Changing employment relation systems in Japan: cases of the Mitsubishi Chemical Group and the Federation of Shinkin Banks

Over the past decade or so a number of changes have been observed in traditional Japanese employment relations (ERs) systems such as an increase in non-regular workers, a move towards performance-based systems and a continuous decline in union membership. There is a large body of Anglo-Saxon and Japanese literature providing evidence that national factors such as national institutions, national culture, and the business and economic environment have significantly influenced what were hitherto three ‘sacred’ aspects of Japanese ERs systems (ERSs). However, no research has been undertaken until now at the firm level regarding the extent to which changes in national factors influence ERSs across firms. This article develops a model to examine the impact of national factors on ER systems; and analyses the impact of national factors at the firm level ER systems. Based on information collected from two different groups of companies, namely Mitsubishi Chemical Group (MCG) and Federation of Shinkin Bank (FSB) the research finds that except for a few similarities, the impact of national factors is different on Japanese ER systems at the firm level. This indicates that the impact of national factors varies in the implementation of employment relations factors. In the case of MCG, national culture has less to do with seniority-based system. Study also reveals that the national culture factors have also less influence on an enterprise-based system in the case of FSB. This analysis is useful for domestic and international organizations as it helps to better understand the role of national factors in determining Japanese ERSs.     

Cities and Climate Change Challenges: Institutions,Policy Style and Adaptation Capacity in Bogotá

While a growing awareness of climate change has marked the institutional agenda at the national level in Colombia, the capital city of Bogotá has not undertaken actions to include adaptation to climate change within its policies so far. Conceptualizing the central role of city‐level institutions in the successful realization of adaptation policies is a straightforward matter. This is not the case for actions and conditions that may foster adaptation capacity according to varying institutional and social geographies. Using secondary data and a selection of interviews with key stakeholders occupying leading planning roles in important departments of the local administration, this article explores why and how a framework based on incentives and obstacles should be complemented by recent developments in the analysis of policy implementation based on the differentiation between political and programmatic success and failure on the basis of existing local policy styles.     

Designing institutional platforms and arenas for interactive political leadership

ABSTRACT

In response to the urgent need for elected politicians to lead processes of collaborative policy innovation, this paper brings together political leadership theory and theories of collaborative and participatory governance in order to make way for the concept of interactive political leadership. The theoretical framework shows how interactive political leadership relies on platforms and arenas that bring politicians and citizens together in informed dialogues that may contribute to collaborative policy innovation. An empirical case study of institutional reforms in a Danish municipality adds flesh and blood to the theoretical argument about how to enhance interactive political leadership.     

Decentralization is Dead,Long Live Decentralization! Capital City Reform and Political Rights in Kampala,Uganda

African cities are currently experiencing some of the highest population growth rates in the world. Accompanying this growth is constant and continuing pressure on national and local governments to develop political and institutional structures that respond to the multiple demands this demographic change provokes in relation to service delivery, economic development and social wellbeing. In response to these challenges, national governments are reviewing the political and administrative structures of their capital cities, sometimes recentralizing authority. This article examines the reforms to Kampala, capital city of Uganda. The article explains how the national government gradually created the legal conditions necessary to take over the capital city directly, and the political rhetoric and conflict that ensued. We argue that while Kampala had deep internal problems and fared poorly in service delivery, matters were exacerbated by the national government's historical indifference to the city. Moreover, past service delivery failures offered an easy rationale for recentralizing authority. We demonstrate that this recentralization was a well‐planned effort by the central government to regain political control of the capital city. This article illustrates how the national government's recentralization of authority in Kampala is a significant departure from its longstanding policy of democratic decentralization.     

Trade unions,management and European works councils: Opening Pandora's box?

This paper makes a contribution to the ongoing debate on transnational worker representation in light of the European Works Council (EWC) directive. Three issues in particular are highlighted which we believe contribute to the organizational and political developments of EWCs. First, we present some variables which have stimulated worker representatives to 'network' with each other across national boundaries prior and parallel to the EWC directive. Looking at factors other than the EWC directive can give us a greater appreciation of the likely interactive nature of employee representatives, trade unions and management in the new forums. Second, and in particular, we explore whether certain elements of existing national industrial relations systems either stimulate or limit interest by employee representatives in forming and aligning themselves to transnational forums. Given that the German and British industrial relations systems are so different, and that the divergence between them is seen as an impediment to EU attempts to promote the growth of an integrated European system (Crouch, 1993), the research compares developments in these two countries. Third, the paper explains how management is responding to developments in transnational worker representative forums within the context of divergent industrial relations systems. We highlight in particular the way management is able to utilize institutional aspects of national systems in conditioning transnational worker representation in the newly structured forums. Such responses, we argue, raise questions regarding our understanding of convergence and divergence in industrial relations.     

战国时期的户籍制度

战国时期由于生产力的发展,个体劳动的普遍,地域关系的普遍存在及领土国家的形成推动了户籍制度走向成熟。户籍制度的内容包括名字、籍贯、身份、年龄与身高、身体健康状况和婚姻状况、财产、户籍的变动及个人向国家完税服役的情况。乡、里是户籍管理的最基本单位。户籍制度的成熟起到了巩固政权、稳定统治的作用,对后世的影响很大。