The Good Samaritan and the Marketer: public perceptions of humanitarian and international development NGOs

• This article reports on a nationwide study investigating public responses to humanitarian communications. Based on focus group data with members of the UK public, the paper discusses two key models through which NGOs identities and activities are understood and judged, both positively and negatively: the Good Samaritan and the Marketer. Thematic analysis of the focus groups extracts exposes the salience of these models in people's thinking, how they speak to each other and how they inform and affect the relationship between NGOs and public. The paper discusses the themes in relation to current debates on organisations' image and trust and confidence in nonprofit organisations and humanitarian NGOs. The data show deep public disillusionment and disappointment deriving from the recognition of the Marketer model being applied to and employed within the realm of humanitarianism. This suggests that NGOs' moving away from traditional notions of charity might be counterproductive and in the long‐term risky. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

     

The Interpretation And Resolution Of Resource Allocation Issues In Professional Organizations: A Critical Examination Of The Professional-Manager Dichotomy*

Professional organizations have long been depicted as rife with conflict between professionals, who are assumed to represent the interests of their profession, and managers, who are assumed to represent the potentially competing interests of the organization. This study examines the validity of this assumption. Based on past research on both professional organizations and knowledge structure development, we predict that to the extent that professionals and managers conflict, they may do so because they interpret 'identical' issues differently. The results of a study of resource allocation decision preferences with 350 chief financial officers, chief medical officers, and physicians revealed strong support for our issue interpretation predictions, and virtually no support for the simple professional–manager dichotomy. Specifically, using structural equation modeling, we found that: (1) single resource allocation issues could be interpreted in multiple ways; (2) issue interpretations were strong predictors of decision preferences; (3) professionals and managers tended to interpret issues differently, although many of the differences were not consistent with past theorizing about professionals; (4) the interpretations and decision preferences of professionals who occupied management positions were like those of other professionals but different from those of managers; and (5) decision maker status (i.e., professional and/or manager) was only modestly related to decision preference. Our findings suggest that the sources and manifestations of a professional–manager dichotomy are more complex than previously reported.     

Trading between agents for a better match

This paper studies externalities that arise when agents can trade outcomes ex post. I show that when agents can trade outcomes ex post, principals are incentivized to contract with agents ex ante to reduce ex post transfers to outside agents with whom the principals do not directly contract. This causes principals to offer agents piece-rates that are inefficiently low and lower than the piece-rates they would offer if trading was not allowed. Although trading reduces an agent's effort and could increase the agent's outside option of rejecting a principal's ex ante contract, principals ultimately gain from allowing ex post trading because such trading results in outcomes that better match their tastes.     

Reply to Frederic Lee's Comment on “The Citation Impact of Feminist Economics”

Abstract

This essay is a response to “A Comment on the Citation Impact of Feminist Economics,” by Frederic Lee, which appears in this issue ofFeminist Economics.

Frederic Lee's comment is a valuable addition to our understanding of the intellectual interactions between feminist economics and other schools of heterodox thought, and demonstrates how much can be learned by studying citation patterns.     

Understanding South African social security through recent household surveys: New opportunities and continuing gaps

The aim of this article is to identify some of the difficult areas in researching the South African social security system, and to offer suggestions as to the kind of further research that is needed to improve our understanding over time. The article starts with a brief ‘tour’ through some of the articles dealing with the subject that have already appeared in Development South Africa, with a view to showing their relationship to each other and to the main data sets which have been used. This is followed by sections on the size of pension income relative to other sources of income; the use of the term ‘transfer income'; the relationship between policy design and socio‐economic behaviour; and some difficulties when comparing different government expenditures on welfare. It is hoped that this will contribute to a more careful analysis and interpretation of existing research, as well as the more precise formulation of social security research in future.     

On complexity of lobbying in multiple referenda

In this paper we show that lobbying in conditions of “direct democracy” is virtually impossible, even in conditions of complete information about voters’ preferences, since it would require solving a very computationally hard problem. We use the apparatus of parametrized complexity for this purpose.