Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'New governance theory'

Includes bibliographical references.
This thesis proposes a new counter-narrative to the neo-liberal agenda that combines two seemingly disparate bodies of work: New Governance and Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice. New Governance is a new and rapidly growing strand of legal thought and practi ce that has simultaneously developed a following in Europe and the United States. In short, legal scholars in this field of research are advocating a shift away from long-standing command-style, fixed-rule regulation toward more collaborative, bottom-up, and flexible modes of regulation.

This thesis provides a sociological exploration of the politics of new agricultural technologies in the United Kingdom. It addresses some of the key issues involved in these politics, as well as how they are discussed and fought over. Conceptually it addresses these questions by focussing on issues of risk, science and governance. In doing so, this thesis situates the politics of GM crops and foods in relation to wider normative concerns about the cultural values, relationships and institutions shaping agriculture, and British society more generally. Empirically, this thesis applies a qualitative methodology, primarily relying on data generated from a series of in-depth interviews. Through these interviews active participants in the debate were able to express a variety of opinions about the risks and benefits of agricultural biotechnology. The interview data is further supplemented by some documentary evidence, particularly as relates to several government led initiatives addressing agricultural debates in terms of contestations over risk and knowledge. Key chapters in this thesis look at the way in which the debate over GM crops and foods has been shaped by perceptions of the role and values of the life-industry, science and the Government in developing and regulating biotechnology. Finally, this thesis also addresses how society, and practices of governance in particular, are able to accommodate these political issues in managing risk and regulating technological change.

This study examines ways in which Australian governments, at national and state level, have developed policy responses to the issue of regional service delivery in the post new public management environment. It argues that new public management has changed many institutional arrangements in Australia and led to new public policy approaches based on those reforms. The study compares the approaches taken by federal and state governments in determining service levels for regional communities. The period under consideration is 1996-2001, coinciding first with the election of new NSW and federal governments and their subsequent re-election. Four cases studies are used to analyse a range of activities designed to provide services at local and regional levels, identifying key indicators of policy successes based on coordinated and integrated regional services combined with technology-based solutions that can be adapted to local community needs. The research draws on new governance theory and principles of effective coordination to propose a new model for determining appropriate service delivery. This model highlights the importance of local participation in decision-making, a regional planning focus, social and environmental sustainability, and the engagement of local communities as key determinants of regional policy success.

Administrative reform as we have known it has been constrained by the ontological and epistemological premises and assumptions of Newtonian physics and the positivism of the early behavioral sciences, leaving constructs vital to a democratic polity impoverished and problematized by power inequities and distorted communication. If public administration could be liberated from those ontological limits through adoption of concepts from the new sciences - quantum theory, chaos theory, complexity theory, and today's ecological sciences - it might be possible to restore to the practices of citizenship and governance appropriate institutional structures which will preserve and nurture them. This dissertation develops lessons and activities pertinent to the practices of citizenship and governance drawn from the life work of John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett - lessons clarified by the premises and assumptions of the new sciences and activities congruent with those lessons. This dissertation is comprised of four broad components: a history of administrative reform as told through the literatures of the fields of public administration and public space philosophy; a history of science in two parts - the development of classical science and the development of the new sciences - from which defining ontological and epistemological characteristics of each are abstracted; case studies from American history that demonstrate the influence of classical science on political and social thought and action; and lessons and activities for public administration and its practitioners, framed in the context of the new sciences, drawn from the life work of John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett. The argument this dissertation makes is twofold. First, it is argued that, given the pervasiveness of the influence of modern thought in American society, it is unlikely that early reformers could have conceptualized administrative structure differently than they did. The modern worldview still dominates our thinking, despite the new understandings of how the world works that are available to us now. The second argument is that it is possible, if we choose to do so, to overcome the modern worldview and the structure it imposes on how we think and act, and that this could lead to alternative practices for public administration. The lessons that are our heritage from Dewey and Follett, and from the traditionalists of our own field, if viewed through the lens of the new sciences, resonate with the ontological perspectives of those sciences and provide a starting point for a reconceptualization of democratic administrative practice.
Ph. D.

The purpose of this thesis is to rationalise the law on contractual joint ventures, in the sense of rendering it consistent with its own fundamental tenets and declared objectives. The declared objective of contract law is to give effect to the intentions of reasonable persons, whom the law presumes to be self-interested by default. To this end, this thesis argues for a new legal model to govern the contractual (project-specific) joint venture, which centres on the joint venture contract but is fundamentally augmented through the application of default, mutually binding, fiduciary duties. By applying David Gauthier’s take on rational choice theory in the context of cooperation, the thesis demonstrates that submitting to default duties of this type is the long-term utility maximising strategy for self-interested commercial parties who have chosen to cooperate. For this reason, it argues that English law should imply fiduciary duties into the joint venture contract by default on the basis that this is what the co-venturers would have intended had they properly reflected on what their long-term self-interest requires.

The International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners has been actively engaged in the development of a new, legally binding international framework for privacy and data protection. Given the existence of three international privacy and data protection regimes (i.e. the OECD Privacy Guidelines, the EU data protection framework and the APEC Privacy Framework) and the availability of other bilateral venues to resolve transnational data flows issues (e.g. the EU-US Safe Harbor agreement, the Umbrella Agreement and the latest, the Privacy Shield arrangement), the thesis asks whether the development of such a new regime is feasible. The main finding of the thesis is that in an era of a globalized society driven by the internet and information-communications technology, where all three of the leading international privacy and data protection regimes are consistently updating and modifying their respective frameworks, and where there is persistent divergence between the European Union and the United States approaches towards transborder data flow, the emergence of a new, legally binding international framework is unlikely, at least under the prevailing circumstances. Therefore, the thesis calls for a shift towards an institutionalized arrangement that is founded on existing international co-operation and convergence and that further expands ongoing inter-regime collaboration. The approach recommended in the thesis is an effective alternative to the development of a new, legally binding international framework, and even offers strong prospects for the evolution of a legalized arrangement for international privacy and personal data governance in due course.

In today’s society of increased globalization and digitalization openness has become a buzzword. This raises questions about what we mean by openness and how it is interpreted in various contexts. This thesis has two aims; to explore how openness is interpreted in planning, politics and political decision-making, and to develop an analytical tool to assess openness in different contexts. A new institutional theory framework that centers on the interplay between institutions and actors has been used, and three empirical case studies in a Swedish context were conducted to analyze how openness is interpreted in planning in metropolitan regions, in politics through the political parties and in political decision-making in the Stockholm region. The research concludes that openness in planning, politics and political decision-making is interpreted along two inter-linked narrative lines: ’openness to people’ and ’openness to knowledge, information and ideas’. It was more common to talk about peoples’ accessibility to public services and participation in different parts of society (’openness to people’) than to talk about issues of transparency and ’openness to knowledge, information and ideas’. The institutional framework shows how openness is interpreted at different institutional levels. To what degree openness is expressed at different institutional levels vary by context. In planning for instance, openness is mainly interpreted in terms of governance, whereas in politics and political decision-making, openness is interpreted in an inter-play between culture and norms, institutions, governance and practice. The institutional framework complementary context-specific theories and elaborated into an analytical model, was found useful to explain what mechanisms are at play when dealing with openness in planning, politics and political decision-making, and can be applicable in future research of openness in other geographical or organizational contexts.

QC 20170914

The research presented in this thesis explores the governance within Islamic thought in the case of the institution of hisbah as well as exploring the episteme that is the cause of the recognised and unrecognised incoherencies and inconsistencies in the theories, regulations, and laws associated to the institution of hisbah. The analysis is based on conducting an epistemological examination in moral philosophical dialect in relation to the historical regulative institution of hisbah. Institution of hisbah constitutes the focus of this research, because this institution was politically structured, theologically positioned and theoretically entrusted to maintain public law and order, with the objective of supervising the behaviour in society and market from an Islamic perspective by using Islamic legal theories within its own theoretical framework with the aim of subscribing good and forbidding evil. The analysis presented found that the institution of hisbah was subject to continuous institutional failures throughout its history. In advancing the analysis, the research deconstructs the theoretical framework upon which the institution of hisbah located its operations for the moral governance of the market and the society. The deconstruction of theoretical frameworks point to the use of Islamic legal theory and juristic subjectivity for judging the moral conduct of activities as the root cause of the problem. The study further deconstructed the Islamic legal theory along side exploring for the alternative episteme within the broader view of Islamic thought, given the diversity of philosophical standpoints on good and evil within Islamic discourse. However, the result of this exploration suggests that epistemological crisis embodies the whole of Islamic tradition, which pave the way to a rise in crisis in morality and crisis in legitimacy within the tradition, which resulted in institutional failures, such as the ones witnessed in the operations of institution of hisbah. The study further discovers that consequent to the crisis in the Islamic tradition, the key questions on good and evil, within the realm of governance can no longer be settled by using the historically established tradition’s epistemological sources, because within the current settings of tradition, there is insufficient or no method of enquiry, form of argumentation and episteme that can address the crises, or through which a solution for the crises can be derived. By using MacIntyre’s work as a conceptual structure, this research attempts to construct a new epistemological source that may address the crises by specifying a model justified through model-dependent realism with the objective of creating a new point of orientation through which reality and dichotomy of good and evil can be objectively understood, whilst safeguarding the life form of the fabric of belief that is central to the traditional Islamic thought. Such episteme can then be used as an ethical theory by the institution of hisbah for judging the moral conduct of activities in the market and society. The new episteme is constructed, while preserving the tradition’s consequential essence. The consequential essence is inferred down to morality based on objectiveness and universality, and away from public choice, along with the notion of survival as episteme for philosophical perspective and theological stance. The consequential essence of tradition is maintained by using objectivist ethics and environmental sustainability within the outlines of classic theories on sovereignty of internal and external realm, as a foundational framework to construct the proposed model of ‘objective subjectivism’ as a theory of normative ethics. This proposed episteme as an Islamic ethical theory asserts that standard of value is life and measure of value and purpose of life is sustainability, and through this notion good and evil can be objectively distinguished for each realm, and therefore institutionally subscribed or prohibited for that realm, thus providing a workable framework for the operations of hisbah. As a research methodology and model construction process, the research presented in this research utilises discursive reasoning to conduct an epistemological enquiry based on critical discourse analysis, which is ontologically justified by model-dependent realism and epistemologically framed under consequentialism.

The use of renewable energy as part of the solution for stabilising global warming has been promoted in industrialised countries for the past three decades. In the last ten years, China, a non-democratic and less-developed state, has implemented non-hydro alternative energy sources through top-down, technology-oriented measures and expanded its renewable energy capacity with unprecedented speed and breadth. This phenomenon seems to contradict to the principle of orthodox environmental governance, in which stakeholder participation is deemed as necessary condition for effective policy outcomes. Given that little research has been conducted on environmental politics in an authoritarian context, I first set out to explore the role of the Chinese state in enabling transformation of the renewable energy sector and to understand the ways in which policy elites seek to introduce developmental state and ecological modernisation strategy in the policy area. Second, by adopting principal-agent theory, I explicate how the governance mechanisms have been deployed and how challenges of the expansion of the sector in the governance system with a large territory have being mitigated. Based upon news reports, policy documents, and interviews with 32 provincial officials, business leaders, academic researchers, and NGO practitioners in two subnational governments, I argue that the renewable energy development in China is governed through a hybrid mode of environmental policy model that uses, upon the existing developmental state regime, ecological modernisation as a policy paradigm, which is partially incorporated in the process. Ultimately, I examine in this thesis the possibility of an alternative form of environmental governance in which renewable energy can be diffused in a less-participatory manner, with more direct controls and target-oriented state intervention measures. This thesis challenges the orthodox assumption that the inclusive mode of governance are the only capable form of environmental governance that reaches desired policy outcomes of renewable energy deployment.

The development of a transgenerational orientation is one of the most significant challenges that family businesses face and only a small number actually survive across generations. While prior research has focused on the business unit to provide us with a solid understanding of how corporate governance affects business performance and continuity, the role of the business family in the development of a transgenerational orientation has received less attention. To address this gap, this article applies a new systems and social identity theory framework to examine how family governance and business family identity can contribute to strengthening the transgenerational orientation of the business. A transgenerational orientation is defined as a decision premise to maintain the family's control over the business across generations. Using a large data set, findings show that the presence of family governance measures and the business family's identity are positively related to a transgenerational orientation of the business, with business family identity acting as a mediator. Thus, the development of family governance measures can foster communication within the business family and enhance the family members' emotional investment in the business which strengthens the transgenerational orientation in the business. (author's abstract)

This research is about local actors' response to problems of uneven development and unemployment. Policies to combat these problems are usually connected to socio-economic regeneration in England and economic and employment promotion (Wirtschafts- und Beschäftigungsförderung) in Germany. The main result of this project is a description of those factors which support the emergence of local socio-economic initiatives aimed at job creation. Eight social and formal economy initiatives have been examined and the ways in which their emergence has been influenced by institutional factors has been analysed. The role of local actors and forms of governance as well as wider regional and national policy frameworks has been taken into account. Socio-economic initiatives have been defined as non-routine local projects or schemes with the objective of direct job creation. Such initiatives often focus on specific local assets for the formal or the social economy. Socio-economic initiatives are grounded on ideas of local economic development, and the creation of local jobs for local people. The adopted understanding of governance focuses on the processes of decision taking. Thus, this understanding of governance is broadly construed to include the ways in which actors in addition to traditional government manage urban development. The applied understanding of governance lays a focus on 'strategic' forms of decision taking about both long term objectives and short term action linked to socio-economic regeneration. Four old industrial towns in North England and East Germany have been selected for case studies due to their particular socio-economic background. These towns, with between 10.000 and 70.000 inhabitants, are located outside of the main agglomerations and bear central functions for their hinterland. The approach has been comparative, with a focus on examining common themes rather than gaining in-depth knowledge of a single case. Until now, most urban governance studies have analysed the impacts of particular forms of governance such as regeneration partnerships. This project looks at particular initiatives and poses the question to what extent their emergence can be understood as a result of particular forms of governance, local institutional factors or regional and national contexts.
Viele Klein- und Mittelstädte in Ostdeutschland und Nordengland stehen derzeit vor großen Herausforderungen, die durch demographische und ökonomische Umbrüche hervorgerufen worden sind. Insbesondere die altindustriell geprägten Städte außerhalb der großen Agglomerationsräume sind unter Zugzwang, weil ihre ökonomische Basis in Zeiten verschärfter Globalisierungsprozesse nicht mehr wettbewerbsfähig ist. Gleichzeitig können diese Städte nicht von den Standortvorteilen der Agglomerationsräume profitieren und müssen daher eigene Qualitäten entwickeln. Welche Chancen haben diese Städte vor dem Hintergrund anhaltend hoher Arbeitslosenzahlen und stetiger Rationalisierungsprozesse in der lokalen Industrie? Mit welchen Strategien können neue Potenziale erschlossen werden, die die Stadtentwicklung insgesamt voranbringen? Wie gehen Entscheidungsträger mit den Problemen um und inwiefern passen sie aktuelle Entwicklungsstrategien an neue Rahmenbedingungen an? Wie kann die soziale und ökonomische Entwicklung langfristig stabilisiert werden? Welchen Beitrag können dabei lokale Initiativen der Wirtschafts- und Beschäftigungsförderung leisten, und wie können solche Initiativen verstärkt gefördert werden? Diese Fragen stehen im Zentrum der empirischen Arbeit "Institutional perspectives of local development in Germany and England", die anhand von vier altindustriell geprägten Beispielstädten in Nordengland und Ostdeutschland Entstehungsfaktoren dieser Initiativen untersucht. In allen vier Städten gibt es eine Vielzahl lokaler Initiativen der Wirtschafts- und Beschäftigungsförderung (insgesamt über 40). Durch diese Initiativen verändert sich die lokale Wirtschaftsstruktur und wird dadurch weniger anfällig für negative Begleiterscheinungen der Globalisierung. Neben einer direkten Förderung solcher Initiativen liegen entscheidende Unterstützungsfaktoren vor allem im informellen Bereich. So tragen Netzwerke, die auf gemeinsamen Zielen und Wertvorstellungen basieren, maßgeblich zum Erfolg lokaler Initiativen bei. Die Arbeit zeigt dabei, dass für die Entstehung lokaler Initiativen vor allem auch lokale Faktoren ausschlaggebend sind und der Einfluss nationaler Politik letztlich weniger entscheidend ist. Allerdings kann die nationale Ebene wichtige Debatten anstoßen, die dann auch auf die lokale Ebene einwirken. Dies zeigt sich beispielsweise im Bereich der sozialen Ökonomie, wo die größere Zahl an Initiativen in Großbritannien mit einer verstärkten Förderung auf nationaler Ebene einhergeht, wohingegen die geringe Relevanz solcher Initiativen in Deutschland auf eine fehlende nationale Förderung der sozialen Ökonomie zurückgeführt werden kann.

The inability of the public sector to satisfy social needs - like poverty alleviation, social inclusion of disadvantaged groups, unemployment, health and education - are redefining the relationship between the governments and their citizens by making the latter play an active role as the provider of the welfare state. Citizens through their entrepreneurial activity have been pulled to the third sector leading to the emergence of new organizational forms like social enterprises and social franchises. The main focus of this research study is the investigation of the new interorganizational format of social franchising which has received ‘scunt’ research attention up to now. The behaviour of actors and organizations in the social economy sector are influenced by the properties and dynamics of elements coming from the political, social, organizational and individual level. We have adopted a systems approach of social network theory. A grounded theory named Social Franchise Model (SoFraM) has been induced from an exploratory empirical mixed method study conducted at various stages and from different sources during a time frame of thirty months. Primary data were raised through six case studies in the UK and Greece, more than 143 interviews with social entrepreneurs and various stakeholders and three action research projects which were the subject of analytic induction supported by archival analysis of secondary data coming from governmental, European Commission, local authority and other sources. Our findings indicate that the formation, growth and success of social franchises is heavily shaped through: firstly, law, regulations, and incentives introduced by centralized or formal institutions- both supranational and national- as well as their driving logics; secondly, the relational and structural embeddedness of actors in networks and the social norms that subsequently emerge; thirdly, the characteristics of the individual social entrepreneurship profile; and finally elements of the social innovation model adopted. The properties of the system of informal or decentralised institutions of networks have been further explored through a pilot quantitative study on mainstream franchises in the UK and Greece. An online self-administered questionnaire has been created based on our conceptual framework of the Franchise Network Model (FNM) drawn from existing scales from literature. The findings indicate that relational and structural embeddedness of actors and organizations in networks determine choices of formation, partner selection, governance mode and the subsequent performance of franchise systems.

How can political science account for the decision of African states to strengthen their ties with China, often at the expense of other alliances and often in the face of economic risks? This thesis explores this question in the context of relations between Ethiopia and China, especially in the context of investments made by Chinese sovereign wealth funds in the Ethiopian economy. To begin to answer this question this thesis recasts the China-Africa debate to focus on African, i.e. Ethiopian, agency. The focus is on how Ethiopia's political leaders make foreign policy decisions and on the factors that shape their preferences. This focus reveals the influence of cognitive variables on their foreign policy decisions; the influence of their guiding ideology, 'revolutionary democracy,' is especially key. An analysis of Ethiopia's formal institutions demonstrates they are inadequate to explain the policy choices of Ethiopian leaders; they have been designed to reflect the concepts of revolutionary democracy. Using the language of prospect theory, a descriptive theory of decision-making under risk, this thesis contends that Ethiopian leaders select foreign policy options by weighing their possible outcomes as gains or losses relative to revolutionary democracy as their reference frame. Ethiopian leaders sanctioned China's finance of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation despite the monopoly it gave to China and its impact on Ethiopia's debt. They formed a front company between Ethiopia and China's military industrial complexes despite its negative effects on economic development. They opened Ethiopia’s regions to Chinese capital although capital flows only to state-owned enterprises. Yet in each case, ideological objectives were advanced. This examination demonstrates how non-structural factors play a critical role in a bureaucratized state. Theoretical frameworks that account for these factors, like prospect theory, are therefore valuable to more robust understandings of Ethiopia, and Africa's, deepening relations with China.

This thesis examines the location and role of the runanga institution. As a prominent contemporary organization for Maori development, relevant theory locates runanga with regard to a broader developmental framework and their potential to function within it. The position of runanga, as a facilitator of Maori development, is assessed with reference to Dependency theory, World Systems theory and Modes of Production. These theories highlight the systematic historic dis-empowerment of Maori through the processes of colonisation with particular regard to runanga. The thesis also considers the evolution of the runanga since its migration from Hawaiki, its utilisation as a forum of colonial resistance, its co-option into the governmental system and its contemporary resurgence. This provides a historical overview of the runanga as an institution. In addition, Te Runanga 0 Ngati Whitikaupeka has been used as the case study which considers the issues of becoming a runanga and includes what the structure of the runanga might look like for Ngati Whitikaupeka as an iwi. The theories of Community Development and Empowerment are offered as means to counter the further dis-empowerment of Maori, where institutions such as runanga can utilise these notions to facilitate positive outcomes for iwi and Maori development. Field research contained in this thesis identifies some of the specific concerns and aspirations of Ngati Whitikaupeka iwi members. In utilising the notions of empowerment and community development the field research provides an explicit statement of Iwi aspirations to maintain the connection between Ngati Whitlkaupeka Iwi members at the flax-roots and Te Runanga 0 Ngati Whitikaupeka as a representative body that can facilitate those aspirations. Supplementary to this the iwi aspirations that have been identified in this study are intended to provide some direction for the runanga as the representative decision-making body moving into the future.

My thesis addresses how Christianity can constitute itself as a creative force and a form of governance across different scales. I carried out 12 months of fieldwork between 2013 and 2015 in Papua New Guinea's National Parliament (Port Moresby). My interlocutors were bureaucrats, liberal professionals and pastors who formed a group known as the Unity Team. The Unity Team, spearheaded by the Speaker of the 9th Parliament, Hon. Theodor Zurenuoc, were responsible for controversial initiatives, such as the destruction and dismantling of traditional carvings from Parliament in 2013, which they considered ungodly and evil, and the placement of a donated KJV Bible in the chamber of Parliament in 2015. My interlocutors regard Christianity as central to eliciting modern subjects and institutions. They consider Christianity to be a universal form of discernment, contrasted to particularistic forms of knowing and relating which are thought to create corruption and low institutional performance. I show how the Unity Team regarded Christianity as more than a way of doing away with satanic forces and building a Christian self. They expected Christianity to be a frame of reference informing work ethics, infusing citizenship and, finally, productive of a public and national realm. By exploring Christianity ethnographically, I offer a contribution to Anthropological discussions concerning politics, bureaucracy, citizenship, and nation-making.

Corporations are increasingly being expected to be responsible to not only shareholders, but also to employees, society and for the environment. This expectation increases as business crises, such the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Enron collapse, continue to occur. In New Zealand several umbrella organisations were established to aid organisations in the quest to become sustainable or corporately responsible, such as New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development, New Zealand Businesses for Social Responsibility, and the Sustainable Business Network. A number of high profile companies such as Hubbard Foods Ltd, Landcare Research, Fonterra and Telecom belong to these umbrella organisations and have produced reports that reflect not only economic prosperity but also environmental quality and social equity. The aim of this research is to identify how organisations are implementing corporate responsibility issues into the operations, and using this information to construct a maturity model. The value of a maturity model is as an analytic tool, where an organisation can be benchmarked against the best in the field. Developing a maturity model for integrating corporate responsibility into an organisation enables managers to identify at which stage the organisation is currently situated and then provides an action plan of where to progress in the future. A preliminary maturity model is developed based on previous models from the fields of corporate responsibility, environmental management and sustainability. This exploratory study used the case study method to analyse six organisations that are members of the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development and are producing annual sustainability reports. Using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines for sustainability reporting, 10 years of annual reports from each case company were analysed and compared against these guidelines. The results were used to identify what corporate responsibility areas businesses are currently reporting on and therefore implementing within the organisation, and identifying if there is an evolutionary pattern applicable to all organisations thereby enabling the construction of a maturity model. The findings show that although there was an increase in the GRI indicators included the reporting is poorly developed. The major areas of change have been in the reporting of governance and management structures, the development and inclusion of vision statements and changes in management policies. There was increased reporting in some environmental and social indicators, but no clear patterns of change emerged. Using the data and analysis a refinement of the proposed maturity model was made.

Product labelling schemes have become one of the most prominently used instruments to facilitate more Sustainable Consumption and Production. But with a plethora of labelling schemes having been implemented, many now accuse them of being confusing rather than facilitating. As a result, governments in France, UK and Germany, as well as businesses, such as Walmart, and non-governmental organisations, like WWF, have begun to consider seriously the implementation of some form of ‘Sustainability Meta Label’ that condenses existing product-labels and other communication measures into a more coherent overarching scheme. Yet so far, in depth studies on the potential institutionalisation of a Sustainability Meta Labelling Scheme are missing.Based on case study research of four existing product labelling schemes (EU eco, EU energy, Fairtrade and MSC label), this study addresses this gap by developing a novel theoretical framework to study the causalities behind product labelling institutionalisation processes. Combining theoretical arguments of constructivist institutionalism and institutional entrepreneurship with concepts of legitimacy from the governance and organisational studies literature, this framework establishes the institutionalisation of product labelling schemes as contingent on an interactive legitimacy construction between actors involved in the initiation and organisational structures of a labelling scheme and other actors within the production and consumption system. This construction tends to cluster around aspects of tradition, regulation, charisma, knowledge, consequences, and procedures.By concretizing this framework in the context of the studied cases, it is shown how legitimacy constructions are highly complex and how in particular procedural and consequential legitimacy can give rise to fundamental conflicts. The potentially large scope, focus and area of application of a Sustainability Meta Label with the need to find agreements in regard to the very contested notion of Sustainable Development, seems to make the task of managing such conflicts even more difficult. While the mobilisation of knowledge, traditional, regulatory and charismatic logics can circumvent some of these conflicts, they have also demonstrated to be anything but a silver bullet. In a sense, this study shows that the very issue that is claimed to drive the establishment of a Sustainability Meta Labelling Scheme-the different interpretations of the Sustainable Development concept through different product labels-might in fact pose one of the main challenges for its institutionalisation and effectiveness in facilitating more Sustainable Consumption and Production.With these findings this study makes important contributions not only to an increasingly prominent policy making discussion but also to the wider product labelling and new institutional literature. After further empirical testing, the developed theoretical framework could guide future research into the institutionalisation of product labelling schemes and potentially also other ordering mechanisms. While the focus of this study is on commonalities across product labelling schemes such further research could especially expand on how micro, meso, and macro level factors can shape institutionalisation processes in diverse ways.

Mestrado em Economia e Políticas Públicas
O presente estudo tem por objectivo analisar e perceber em que medida as novas relações contratuais estabelecidas entre o Ministério da Saúde e os hospitais empresarializados contribuem para alinhar os interesses de ambas as partes, no quadro de um novo modelo de governação, através de um sistema de incentivos. O exposto enquadra-se, do ponto de vista teórico, na denominada Nova Gestão Pública bem como na problemática da teoria da agência, na análise económica dos contratos e nos modelos de governação. Procedeu-se, ainda, a uma breve caracterização do financiamento do sistema de saúde no nosso país, factor impulsionador, na nossa opinião, da mudança entretanto ocorrida no referido sector. Em termos empíricos, efectuou-se um estudo de caso comparado entre dois hospitais EPE, utilizando dados das suas demonstrações financeiras e dos seus contratos programa celebrados com o Ministério da Saúde. Os resultados obtidos permitiram concluir um conjunto de aspectos positivos que são visíveis nesta nova relação contratual e no modelo de governação, mas também um conjunto de limitações que sugerem recomendações concretas para o futuro.
The aim of the present work is to analyze and understand to which point the new contractual relationships established between the Health Ministry and the Hospitals -company contributes to align interests of both parts in light of the new government model, through a system of incentives. The theoretical framework is the New Public Management, as well as the agency theory, the economic approach to contracts and corporate governance. It is also performed the characterization of the financing of the health sector in Portugal, which is, in our opinion, the most important factor that contributes to produce changes in this sector. In empirical terms we developed a comparative case study between two Hospitals -company, using data of their financial demonstrations and their contracts with the Health Ministry. The results obtained allowed to observe a group of positive aspects, which are visible in the new contractual relationship and in the governance model, although a set of limitations were also identified to which concrete suggestions are proposed for the future.

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Since the international financial and food crisis that started in 2008, strong emphasis has been made on the importance of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) (or 'transgenics') under the claim that they could contribute to increase food productivity at a global level, as the world population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in the year 2050 and food demand is predicted to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. GMOs are now at the forefront of the debates and struggles of different actors. Within civil society actors, it is possible to observe multiple, and sometime, conflicting roles. The role of international social movements and international NGOs in the GMO field of struggle is increasingly relevant. However, while many of these international civil society actors oppose this type of technological developments (alleging, for instance, environmental, health and even social harms), others have been reportedly cooperating with multinational corporations, retailers, and the biotechnology industry to promote GMOs. In this thesis research, I focus on analysing the role of 'international civil society' in the GMO field of struggle by asking: 'what are the organizing strategies of international civil society actors, such as NGOs and social movements, in GMO governance as a field of struggle?' To do so, I adopt a neo-Gramscian discourse approach based on the studies of Laclau and Mouffe. This theoretical approach affirms that in a particular hegemonic regime there are contingent alliances and forces that overpass the spheres of the state and the economy, while civil society actors can be seen as a 'glue' to the way hegemony functions. Civil society is then the site where hegemony is consented, reproduced, sustained, channelled, but also where counter-hegemonic and emancipatory forces can emerge. Considering the importance of civil society actors in the construction of hegemony, I also discuss some important theories around them. The research combines, on the one hand, 36 in-depth interviews with a range of key civil society actors and scientists representing the GMO field of struggle in Brazil (19) and the UK (17), and, on the other hand, direct observations of two events: Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and the first March Against Monsanto in London in 2013. A brief overview of the GMO field of struggle, from its beginning and especially focusing in the 1990s when the process of hegemonic formation became clearer, serves as the basis to map who are the main actors in this field, how resource mobilization works, how political opportunities ('historical contingencies') are discovered and exploited, which are the main discourses ('science' and 'sustainability' - articulated by 'biodiversity preservation', 'food security' and 'ecological agriculture') articulated among the actors to construct a collective identity in order to attract new potential allies around 'GMOs' ('nodal point'), and which are the institutions and international regulations within these processes that enable hegemony to emerge in meaningful and durable hegemonic links. This mapping indicates that that the main strategies applied by the international civil society actors are influenced by two central historical contingencies in the GMO field of struggle: 1) First Multi-stakeholder Historical Contingency; and 2) 'Supposed' Hegemony Stability. These two types of historical contingency in the GMO field of struggle encompass deeper hegemonic articulations and, because of that, they induce international civil society actors to rethink the way they articulate and position themselves within the field. Therefore, depending on one of those moments, they will apply one specific strategy of discourse articulation, such as: introducing a new discourse in hegemony articulation to capture the attention of the public and of institutions; endorsing new plural demands; increasing collective visibility; facilitating material articulations; sharing a common enemy identity; or spreading new ideological elements among the actors in the field of struggle.

Standardisation of professional work is a major policy concern to ensure quality and efficiency of services and a number of hospitals are now focusing on the use of clinical pathways as an important tool to standardise their work. This study sheds light on the processes set in motion when notions of standardisation meet local practice. In order to gain insight into what clinical pathways mean for professional work in mental health care, the focus of the study was to explore the contexts in which standardisation by “rule production” takes place. Two empirical cases from Norwegian mental health care show how dedicated professionals are in charge of carrying out the standardisation work, strongly influenced by a steering framework of defined governmental policies where employee involvement and responsibility ensured loyalty to the idea.  Along with a “package” of ideas, new bodies and techniques, clinical pathways contribute to the institutionalisation of prima facie knowledge in demonstrating that evidence basing is linked to steering and control of employees. Thus, professional autonomy is threatened in an insidious way: through the institutionalisation of evidence-based knowledge as ‘prima facie’ knowledge in combination with professionals who standardise and control their own work. The thesis therefore concludes that the control of professional work has now become a complex and sophisticated process where professional work is “controlled by knowledge”.

Esta tese tem o objetivo principal de demonstrar empiricamente que as companhias abertas brasileiras "gerenciam" os seus resultados contábeis como resposta a estímulos do mercado de capitais. Inicialmente, é elucidado o significado de alguns conceitos, tais como "gerenciamento" dos resultados contábeis e acumulações discricionárias. Discute-se o perfil do mercado de capitais brasileiro e as circunstâncias ambientais nas quais são gerados os relatórios contábeis financeiros das companhias abertas brasileiras, enfatizando-se o papel dos órgãos reguladores e da legislação comercial e tributária. A seguir, depois da revisão da literatura brasileira e estrangeira na área de "gerenciamento" dos resultados contábeis, documentaram-se evidências para as companhias abertas brasileiras do "gerenciamento" dos resultados contábeis para: a) Evitar reportar perdas, b) Sustentar o desempenho recente e c) Reduzir a variabilidade dos resultados. O período de estudo foi os anos entre 1995 e 1999, tendo como base de dados principal a Economática. Empiricamente, foi implementado um modelo de regressão múltipla para estimar as Acumulações Discricionárias, que são proxy do valor discricionariamente alterado dos resultados contábeis. Com base na pesquisa, verificou-se que as empresas brasileiras com resultados muito ruins os manejam de maneira a piorá-los ainda mais, visando melhores resultados no futuro. Em termos de desempenho no mercado, constatou-se que empresas que manejam "artificialmente" os resultados conseguem no curto prazo seduzir os investidores; entretanto, no longo prazo, o mercado identifica o procedimento e essas ações são penalizadas com os piores desempenhos acumulados. Nos apêndices, é estudada a influência da Governança Corporativa e da Auditoria Independente na propensão à prática do "gerenciamento" dos resultados contábeis, bem como é estimado o coeficiente de resposta dos retornos das companhias abertas brasileiras aos resultados contábeis.
This thesis has the main purpose to present empirical evidence that Brazilian public companies practice earnings management as a response to capital market incentives. Initially, some important concepts are elucidated, such as earnings management and discretionary accruals. In addition, specific aspects of Brazilian capital market, as well as its financial reporting environment are briefly discussed. After a literature review in this area of Earnings management, it will be documented evidences that Brazilian public companies manage their earnings to: a) Avoid reporting losses; b) Sustain recent performance and c) Income smoothing. The study period of the empirical analysis is between 1995 and 1999, and the most important source of information is Economática. As part of the research, It was implemented a multiple regression model to estimate discretionary accruals, that are used as proxies for the amount of earnings management. Among several observations, it was verified that Brazilian companies practice big bath accounting, so in case of bad results, the companies manage their earnings to report even worse losses, in order to have better future earnings. In terms of performance in the stock market, it was documented that companies that artificially manage their results, towards income decreasing or income increasing, can fool the market in the short run, but in the long run the investors realize the procedure, and their stocks will underperform the market. In the appendixes of this thesis some factors that can reduce earnings management are discussed, such as Corporate Governance and Independent Auditing. Other short analysis is the estimation of the earnings response coefficient for Brazilian public companies.

This thesis focuses on the changed governance of the public sector and what it can entail for professional work in substance abuse treatment. The point of departure is one of these new forms of governing, namely ‘knowledge governance’, which refers to a policy-driven process for promoting the use of evidence-based practice.  The overall aim is to contribute to understanding and knowledge of the meaning and the conditions for knowledge governance in substance abuse treatment. The thesis studies how knowledge is interpreted by professionals and adapted to local practice in relation to organizational and professional conditions. The thesis also highlights the implications that   these conditions may have for knowledge development on a professional and organizational level. The empirical material comprises three studies. Study 1 included a document analysis and a literature review. The document analysis examines how knowledge governance is described in official documents, while the focus of the literature review is on the concept of knowledge management. In Studies 2 and 3 focus group interviews were conducted with professionals who participated in a specific project, and professionals who use structured interview methods in their work (Addiction Severity Index, ASI, or Documentation of clients, DOC). The theoretical perspectives used in the thesis are neo-institutional theory, professional theory and perspectives on workplace learning.   The results of Study 1 showed that knowledge governance embodies a steering of organizations, in comparison with knowledge management as a means for steering in organizations. The analyses from the focus group interviews demonstrate that knowledge governance becomes the subject of translations and edits to a local context. This process was affected by both organizational and professional conditions. The thesis is concluded with a discussion of the conditions that must be present if knowledge governance can lead to development of knowledge. The main result is that strategies must be tailored to each organization's specific condition and must be anchored throughout the organization.

Shaoul et al. (2012) state that the accounting, scrutiny and oversight of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) remain areas of concern. Also, there have been calls for a more socio-technical and multidisciplinary approach to accounting and governance studies (Broadbent, 2012; Broadbent and Guthrie 2008), especially in relation to the empirical study of PPPs (Hodge et al., 2010). This thesis responds to these calls in part by drawing on Giddens’ structuration theory to examine the financial accountability and governance concerns that are created in PPP joint venture structures. The empirical work focuses on the health sector, which is identified as one of the sectors inundated by PPP activities, particularly in the UK (Treasury, 2012; Whitfield, 2010). It adopts a case study approach, based on qualitative methodology, which involves documentary analysis of secondary data and interviews in relation to two PPP schemes under the Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) scheme in the UK’s health sector.The thesis investigates: the extent to which the corporate structures of the LIFT scheme do complicate financial accountability and governance including external scrutiny; the extent to which the LIFT scheme does enhance partnership working between the public and private sector partners; the structures in financial accountability and governance in the LIFT scheme; the human agents that provide agency in financial accountability and governance in the LIFT scheme and; whether and in what ways structures and human agency in financial accountability and governance interact in the LIFT scheme and what the implications are.The thesis finds firstly that the complex corporate structure of the LIFT scheme is very complicated and the joint venture mechanism cannot be relied upon to deliver transparency of reporting. Secondly, as limited companies, all financial reporting follows private sector accounting regulations and Company Law and there is minimal disclosure in terms of information available to the general public. This is worsened by lack of information sharing between partners as evidenced in one case study group. Thirdly, there was considerable inconsistency in the reporting due to multiplicity of interpretive schemas between the two case study groups. Fourthly, there was considerable change in the reporting due both to changes in accounting regulations and changes in organisational structure and interpretive schemas throughout the period. Fifthly, there is lack of continuity of public sector oversight and monitoring as the public sector, in practice, restricts its activities to pre-operational phase and limited oversight after construction phases. Moreover, partnership working is very difficult in the context of profit seeking under the LIFT structure. Partnership working and success of the LIFT scheme may depend on trust, key personalities working together as well as leadership. From the structuration perspective, the study finds structural contradictions and conflicts of interests in financial accountability and governance practices. Therefore, transparency, public accountability, oversight and scrutiny are necessarily undermined and, policy makers should pay attention to not only the private sector technologies but also the manner in which they are used to benefit finance capital.

L’objectif de ce travail de recherche a été de contribuer à répondre à la question suivante : dans quelle mesure les médias constituent-ils un mécanisme de gouvernance d’entreprise ? Après avoir réalisé une revue de littérature, trois questions de recherche ont été formulées. Tout d’abord, la question du rôle de la presse en tant que mécanisme de gouvernance d’entreprise disciplinaire a été posée, puis, plus précisément, celle de son rôle en tant que mécanisme de gouvernance disciplinaire partenariale, et enfin celle de mécanisme de gouvernance normative au sens néo-institutionnel. Chaque question a fait l’objet d’un essai. Tout d’abord, l’efficacité de la presse dans la révélation des fraudes commises par les entreprises, avant qu’une autorité officielle ne la sanctionne, a été examinée au moyen de régressions logistiques et d’analyse d’articles de presse. Ensuite, l’influence de la presse sur les dirigeants du groupe Danone a été analysée, par une étude de cas, de 1996 à 2008. Enfin, une étude de cas portant sur les liens entre divers types de presse a permis d’étudier leur rôle et leur influence dans la normalisation et la diffusion d’idées et de pratiques en matière de gouvernance d’entreprise. Premièrement, l’efficacité de la presse en tant que mécanisme de gouvernance disciplinaire doit être relativisée. Sous l’hypothèse de maximisation de ses profits, la presse française choisit les entreprises qu’elle couvre et les fraudes qu’elle révèle. Elle est plutôt une presse informative qu’une presse investigatrice. La complémentarité des mécanismes de gouvernance est confortée comme facteur d’efficacité du système de gouvernance. Deuxièmement, la presse est un mécanisme efficient de gouvernance partenariale : elle parvient à inciter les dirigeants d’entreprise à chercher à créer de la valeur partenariale plutôt qu’actionnariale. Troisièmement, l’homogénéisation actuelle de formes organisationnelles concernant la gouvernance d’entreprise semble s’expliquer par le rôle de la presse en tant que mécanisme de gouvernance d’entreprise normative au sens néo-institutionnel
The objective of this research had to contribute to the question: are media a corporate governance mechanism ? After doing a literature review, three research questions were asked. First, the question about the role of press as a corporate governance disciplinary mechanism was asked, then as a corporate governance mechanism with a view to creating stakeholder value, lastly, as a corporate normative governance mechanism in a neo-institutional view. Each question was the subject of one essay. First, the efficiency of press to reveal frauds of firms before an official authority was analyzed. In this purpose, logistic regression and an examination of articles of press was done. Second, the influence of press on the Danone Group’s direction was studied with a case study between 1996 and 2008. Third, to understand the influence between several kinds of press and their role in the normalization and the circulation of ideas and practical experiences about corporate governance, a case study was done also. First, the efficiency of press as a corporate disciplinary mechanism is not always perfect. By assuming that press maximizes its profits, the French press chooses the firms to cover and the frauds to disclose. It’s more a press which informs as a press which investigates. The complementarity of corporate governance mechanisms is confirmed in the efficiency of the governance system. Second, press is an efficient mechanism in a stakeholder value creation perspective. It manages to influence CEOs to search to create stakeholder value rather than shareholder value. Third, currently we notice an homogenization of organizational forms about corporate governance. It could be explained by the role of press as a corporate governance normative mechanism in a neo-institutional perspective

Notre objectif est de comprendre comment les acteurs qui prennent part à la gouvernance d’une méta-organisation interviennent dans l’émergence et le maintien d’un contexte institutionnel favorable à la confiance dans les relations inter-organisationnelles (RIO). Nous réalisons deux études de cas qualitatifs de clusters des industries culturelles et créatives, en France et au Canada. Pour le cas français nous pointons les difficultés relatives à la confiance et le travail postérieur de construction de nouvelles frontières, avec une conciliation entre besoins économiques et esprit de création artistique. Pour le cas canadien : un climat initial peu propice à la confiance et un travail postérieur d’institutionnalisation de l’idée que le cluster agit dans l’intérêt de toute l’industrie. Nous proposons un cadre conceptuel pour analyser les pratiques de création et maintien d’un contexte institutionnel favorable à la confiance dans les RIO, dans une perspective structurationniste (relation récursive institutions/action). Nous distinguons des dimensions du contexte et deux types de pratiques : « d’activation » (les acteurs font intentionnellement appel à des éléments institutionnels jugés pertinents vis-à-vis de la confiance par rapport à l’interaction) ; et « de structuration », (ils structurent progressivement les bases institutionnelles de la confiance pour des interactions, actuelles et futures). Nous proposons des éléments pour une « compétence liée à la confiance », comme une capacité liée au déploiement, dans une manière perçue comme authentique, de comportements liés à la confiance et jugés appropriés vis-à-vis du rôle de l’acteur dans un contexte institutionnel donné
The aim of the research is to understand how the actors involved in the governance of a meta-organization intervene in the emergence and maintenance of an institutional context favorable to trust in inter-organizational relations (IOR). Following a qualitative approach, we carried out two embedded case studies of clusters operating within the cultural and creative industries in France and Canada. Regarding the French case, we highlighted the difficulties of trust and later work by some actors aimed at adopting new boundaries that involves new sectors, which included the search for conciliation between economic needs and the spirit of artistic creation. As for the Canadian case, we highlighted the initial climate not propitious to trust and the subsequent institutionalization work of the idea that the cluster acts in the interest of the whole industry. We propose a conceptual framework to analyze the practices of creating and maintaining an institutional environment favorable to trust in IOR, within a structurational perspective (recursive relation institutions/action). We distinguish dimensions of the context, and two types of practices: of “activation” (actors intentionally call upon institutional elements considered as relevant to trust in the current interaction); and of "structuration" (actors gradually structure the institutional bases of trust for current and future interactions). In the conclusion, we propose elements for a "trust-related competence" as a capacity related to the deployment, in in a manner perceived as authentic, of behaviors related to trust and considered as appropriate regarding the role of the actor in a given institutional context

For many years, Sweden has had a reputation for having a comprehensive and women friendly welfare state. However, as in many other European countries during the past few decades, the organization and governing of welfare has undergone profound changes. Through interviews with social workers and the application of theories of governmentality, this thesis analyzes the expressions and consequences of such current organization and governing. One result is that the introduction of meticulous documentation practices of social workers contact with clients, regulate their interaction and constitute a control over both client and social worker. Another result is that the current organization fragments labor and awards more authority to managers, which functions to produce loyalty to the organization and management, rather than clients. This is expressed in demands not to voice protest, as it is said to create a bad mood. It is also expressed in demands to spend as little as possible on clients; short duration of treatment, preference for outpatient treatment and by making it difficult to receive financial support. This austerity is legitimized through the intermeshing of different ideals; budget awareness, evidence that supports short and outpatient treatment and that clients in order to change their course of life should to be allowed or coerced into taking individual responsibility. Another important finding is that the current governing and organization of social work produce distance and detachment, and thus discourage caring subjects. This is a complex process in which an assemblage of different techniques and rationalities undermines the cultivation of a relationship between social worker and client. 1) The ideal of evidence-based practice favors rigid methods over a flexible and holistic approach. 2) Ideals of rationality, closely connected to notions of masculinity and professionalism, value objectivity and devalue and deter the surfacing of emotions. 3) Meticulous practices of documentation reduce the amount of time available to meet clients. 4) Ideals and particular methods designed to promote individual responsibility in clients legitimize social workers distancing themselves from clients’ dependency and needs. 5) A division of labor, in either assessment or treatment, reduces time spent with clients for those who work with assessment and ultimately engage in the rationing of resources. 6) Standardized digital templates, installed to aid in assessments, regulate and proceduralize interactions with the client. 7) Austerity, heavy workloads, individualized responsibility and stress further accentuate distance, as detachment becomes a means to cope with arduous working conditions. The transformation of social work described above produces alienation and a fragmentation of social workers’ collective subjects. Simultaneously, an ethos of caring makes some social workers work extra hard to provide for clients, which ultimately covers for flaws in the system. Although such an ethos of caring allows for the further exploitation of social workers, it is also understood as a means of resistance, which in turn also forms the basis for organized resistance.
Sverige har ett internationellt rykte för att ha en omfattande och kvinnovänlig välfärd. Även om riktigheten i en sådan uppfattning sedan länge ifrågasatts har på senare år, likt i många andra Europeiska länder, det svenska välfärdssystemet genomgått en omfattande förändring i avseende på dess räckvidd, men också dess organisering och styrning. Fokus för denna studie är just denna organisering och styrning, och mer specifikt, hur detta påverkar ett av välfärdens kanske mest centrala område: socialt arbete. Genom att intervjua socialarbetare undersöks i denna studie uttryck för och konsekvenser av en sådan förändring, bland annat genom att undersöka hur könsbundna föreställningar och förväntningar är sammanflätade med det sociala arbetets organisering och styrning. I studien konstateras att socialarbetare erfar att deras arbete genomgått omfattande förändringar, vilket kopplas ihop med både organiseringen och styrningen av det sociala arbetet. Detta uttrycks både i de ideal som kringgärdar arbetet men också i dominerande arbetssätt. En sådan förändring är införandet av  omfattande dokumentationsprocedurer av socialarbetarens arbete och kontakt med klienter, vilket medför att kontakten med klienterna blir ytligare. Dokumentationsprocedurerna utgör också en sorts kontroll av både klienterna och socialarbetarna själva. En annan förändring som konstateras är att nya organisationsmodeller och en förändrad ledarskapskultur skapar förväntningar på socialarbetarna att vara lojala med organisationen och ledningen snarare än klienterna. Bland annat utrycks detta genom förväntningar att inte protestera och skapa dålig stämning på arbetsplatsen, men också genom uttalade krav att spendera så lite resurser som möjligt på klienterna; korta behandlingstider, öppenvårdsalternativ och orimligt hårda krav för att få ekonomiskt bistånd. Detta legitimeras genom sammanväxningen av flera olika ideal; budgetmedvetenhet, att klienter inte mår bra av långa institutionsvistelser, men också att klienterna ska tillåtas eller bör tvingas att klara att sig själva. Ett av studiens huvudresultat är att den nuvarande organiseringen och styrningen av socialt arbete skapar avstånd och likgiltighet. Genom flera sammankopplade ideal och arbetssätt styrs dagens socialarbetare till att bry sig mindre om de klienter de möter. På så sätt undermineras förutsättningarna för framväxten av en djup relation mellan socialarbetare och klient; 1) Idealet och kravet att socialarbetare ska arbeta utifrån evidens, det vill säga metoder och förhållningssätt som i speciellt utformade utvärderingsmodeller visat sig ha effekt, gör att väl strukturerade och rigida metoder ges företräde. Denna instrumentalisering underminerar ett flexibelt, relationsorienterat och helhetsfokuserat sätt att arbeta. Dessutom gör evidensidealets fokus på enskilda individer och avgränsade utvärderingstider att mer samhällsinriktat kritiskt och långsiktigt inriktat arbete undermineras. 2) Ett rationalitetsideal, tätt sammanbundet med föreställningar om professionalitet och maskulinitet, värderar objektivitet och förmågan att frikoppla socialarbetarens egna känslor från sitt arbete. Detta maskuliniserade professionsideal innebär att empati och solidaritet med klienten undergrävs. 3) Omfattande krav på olika former av dokumentation av det sociala arbetet gör att tiden som socialarbetaren har till sitt förfogande för att besöka och att ha möten med klienten blir knapp. 4) Ett allmänt samhällsideal kring individuellt ansvar och en särskild arbetsmetod (motiverande samtal) som många socialarbetare förväntas lära sig, framhäver klientens eget ansvar för och vilja till förändring. Detta legitimerar ett avståndstagande från klientens behov av hjälp och stöd enligt logiken  ”du måste klara detta själv”. 5) En vanligt förekommande uppdelning av socialarbetarnas arbetsuppgifter i en så kallad beställar-utförarmodell gör att vissa socialsekreterare arbetar med hjälp och stöd, medan andra arbetar med bedömningar av klienters behov. De senare, som också har inflytande över resurstilldelning, blir med en sådan organisering av arbetet alltmer frikopplade från den stödjande och hjälpande verksamheten och kontakten med klienten. 6) Standardiserade digitala bedömningsinstrument, skapade för att på ett likvärdigt sätt bedöma klienters behov och dokumentera det sociala arbetet, reglerar och instrumentaliserar kontakten med klienter. 7) Tunga arbetsbördor, individualiserat ansvar och stress, bidrar ytterligare till att skapa avstånd och likgiltighet eftersom det för vissa utgör ett sätt att genomleva en ohållbar arbetssituation. En allmän åtstramning av socialtjänstens resurstilldelning förstås som en viktig orsak till behovet av att skapa ovan distansmekanismer. Men distansen hänger också ihop med en tendens till ett återupplivande av en tidigare dominerande förståelse av marginalisering och sociala problem; där människors nöd ses som ett utslag av dålig karaktär och ett resultat av dåliga individuella val. De förändringar av det sociala arbetets premisser som beskrivits ovan gör att socialarbetarna alltmer görs främmande inför sitt arbete – de alieneras. Detta främmandegörande uttrycks genom att inte kunna identifiera sig med arbetet självt, sina kollegor eller med sig själv. Ett sådant främmandegörande underminerar, eller fragmentiserar, både relationen till klienten, men också en känsla av gemenskap med andra socialarbetare. En gemenskap som kan utgöra ett ”vi” och ligga till grund för att ställa krav, protestera och göra motstånd mot avhumaniserande ideal och reformer. På så vis är främmandegörandet inte bara en konsekvens av dagens organisering och styrning, utan också något som fyller en viktig funktion för en sådan styrning och organisering, och genomförandet av en allmän åtstramning i socialpolitiken. Samtidigt som dagens organisering och styrning av socialt arbete är främmandegörande, slår vissa socialarbetare knut på sig själva och arbetar extra hårt för att täcka upp för systemets brister och krympande resurser, för att trots det svåra läget ändå försöka ge det stöd som de upplever att klienten behöver. Ett sådant historiskt förankrat femininiserat omsorgsideal, dvs känslor av ansvar och empati inför behövande och en ilska inför oförrätter, utgör därmed på samma gång grund för en fördjupad exploatering av socialarbetarna, och ett vardagligt motstånd mot rådande system. I ett läge när flera upplever att kollegialiteten som grund för motstånd på arbetsplatserna underminerats, utgör ett sådant omsorgsideal samtidigt också grunden för organiserat motstånd utanför arbetsplatsen, bortom chefernas insyn, kontroll och härskartekniker. Medan nuvarande styrningssystem underminerar ett visst sorts motstånd, uppstår samtidigt grunden för nya.

While sustainability-dedicated managers and related titles represent a profession that has hardly existed for more than a decade, it is not surprising that the field of research concentrating on these professionals is in itself relatively new. With an increasing demand for corporations to take their social and environmental responsibility, and a corporate sustainability characterized by tension and paradox, we found it of importance to explore the role and entanglements of these professionals. By analysing 17 in-depth interviews with sustainability-dedicated professionals from the private sector in Sweden, our interpretation is that sustainability managers hold the function of selling sustainability, with talk as their main weapon. Expressly, in the intersection between business-case logics and sustainability logics, sustainability managers have to, above all, make a convincing case for sustainability, inwards and outwards. Therefore, they draw dynamically on different narratives which we conceptualise in three roles: the chameleon, the pragmatic, and the nagging manager. Through these roles, we intend to capture the fluidity with which the managers relate and engage with sustainability, and hence we do not mean to ossify a role’s dynamics within a single, static or stereotypical category. We discuss these findings and concepts to the background of previous studies and existing literature.

This research examines institutional transformation of the board of directors in Canada to a collaborative model in which the board, in addition to its monitoring function, provides a service role by acting as a sounding board to management and providing advice and counsel to management on strategic issues. This thesis also examines how director search, likely initiated by the ‘Enron’ scandals, led to some boards adopting a new model of practice that directors deemed more efficacious and possessing legitimacy, bringing together the old and the new institutionalism in institutional change processes. Legitimacy was drawn from guidance from a professional association for directors that outlined how boards could become strategic asset to the firm that was consistent with a stewardship model of governance that saw boards collaborative with management. It is also argued in this thesis that following the Enron scandal, directors searched for a model of practice that would be more efficacious such that their fears of liability were reduced. In searching for and adopting a new model of practice, the collaborative board, it is also argued that adoption requires coupling to the technical core (enacted), as opposed to symbolic, if it is to be effective. This research studies directors and senior management of public firms of the TSX Composite by way of survey methods. The findings provide support that the board is evolving in Canada to a new collaborative model and that the model of practice appears to be enacted (coupled) as opposed to symbolic (decoupled). Further, the results did not find that collaborative boards are impaired in their monitoring function and support is found that the board’s monitoring role may actually be enhanced. These results are discussed as well as future research directions and limitations of the study.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
政治學研究所
101
In this thesis, the main question is that whether district office can completely replace township in new municipalities yield good regional governance outcomes. Social capital, as a resource to carry out collective action, it’s development after system restructuring, is the main approach to respond this question in the thesis. This thesis divides social capital into three elements including network, norm, and trust. By observing these elements’ change, it provides an instrument to evaluate the development of social capital. On the other hand, this thesis start from “institution-centered model” in the social capital theory to indicate that restructuring of formal institution can have the impact on social capital. Meanwhile, focusing on “relationships with the voluntary sector”, “opportunities for citizen participation”, “responsiveness of decision-making”, and “democratic leadership and social inclusion” four institutional design dimensions. By connecting four dimensions and three elements’ change after system restructuring, the merits and drawbacks of new municipal institutional design can be explored. Xindian district in the New Taipei City is used to be a case study in this research. Through relevant literature analyzing and interviews conducting, this study suggests that after institution restructuring: declining degree of support to local community associations and narrowing of local affairs participating opportunities have negative impact on network element, while recession of reciprocal capability causes norm element to shrink. Finally, the defect of decision-making fairness obstructs the accumulation of trust. Therefore, under the criteria that accumulation of social capital to fulfill good governance, new municipal system cannot be dubbed as a good institution structure. To accumulate social capital, this study suggests that future municipal institution design should improve participating ability of community associations, set up standards to enhance activities’ quality, take Paris as a reference to add district representatives, strengthen district office function , and rationalize allocation of resources between neighborhood office and community development association.

Since the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1951, the European Union has emerged from a limited economic confederation to a supranational federal polity. There is, however, little work based in federal theory that seeks to understand the European Union as a federation nor the process by which that was achieved. Federal theory gives us two means of understanding federal government – federalism as techne and as telos. Federalism as techne informs us of the institutions and structures involved in federal governance. Federalism as telos provides the ideas, norms and values of federalism. Thus it is possible to speak of the federal idea (telos) and the institutions that embody it (techne).The process of federalisation of the European Union has seen the separation of these strands. Federal ideas do not necessarily lead to federal governance regimes; federal governance outcomes are not necessarily based on federal ideas. The European Union has adopted, over time, federal governance structures due to pragmatic concerns with institutional efficiency, bargain implementation, defection from agreement, and the equality of member states. The institutions created by the member states have themselves contributed to the federalisation process. Rarely has the federalisation process moved forward due to a belief in the value of federation itself.

博士
輔仁大學
商學研究所博士班
106
The study aims to provide a clear explanation on non-profit governance. The idea is coming from facts that most current works has not yet succeeds to derive the model from basic characteristic of NPO. Specifically, this thesis is trying to continue the works of Cornforth (2016a, 2014b, 2013c, 2012d, 2004e), Bradshaw (2009), Brown (2005) and Morgan (1989) who are consistently observing the theme through several different angle. Surprisingly, one of the latest works had falsified the current thought by emphasizing that non-profit governance is about the boards’ behavior, causing all previous methods – which popular as the adoption ways has lost its reliability. However, signaled by former studies, this thesis is trying to incorporate two related behavior theories: contingency and complexity theory. The thesis begins with posing four questions relating to non-profit governance using South East Asia’s perspective. As the study is aiming to provide a new concept, model and theory therefore, combinations among qualitative and quantitative perspective is undertake. Consequently, methods such as comprehensive literature review, cross-case analysis and desk research are performed to pose the early model for non-profit governance. The model is then being tested upon participative observation research on two NPO in Indonesia to derive the possible attribute in justifying the final model. As to that point, an empirical test using cross-sectional data from 186 NPO in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore is perform, aiming for generalization of the findings. As results, the study proposes four models of non-profit governance namely (1) collaborative governance model, (2) partnership governance model, (3) compliance governance model and (4) collective governance model. From the empirical study, the study emphasizes variables such as economic uncertainty, board size, expert-diversity, level of openness, knowledge diversity, faith diversity, contingency and bureaucracy as having significant contribution to the overall performance. However, with explanations power more than 52.7%, this study confirms that the proposed model might represent the ideal forms of non-profit governance.

The object of this study is good governance, the context for its consideration is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and the disciplinary perspective from which it is considered is Public Administration. Good governance is a conceptual problematique. It is multi-dimensional, value-laden, trans-contextual and nebulous. The question of what good governance means is a subject of contestation. Good governance is used in NEPAD as a principle without the attempt to clarify its meaning at the conceptual level. Much of the existing body of scholarship on NEPAD also considers good governance largely as a principle rather than a concept. This erroneously presupposes unanimity on its meaning. The African leadership is divided on what good governance means in the context of NEPAD. In this regard scholarship largely fails to provide an intellectual solution. The extent of complexity of the concept in the study lies in the fact that the context of its consideration [NEPAD] is itself a subject of contestation whereas the disciplinary perspective [Public Administration] from which it is considered has not yet reached a consensus with itself about its theoretical base. Against this background the question that the study asks is, what does the concept good governance in the context of NEPAD mean for Public Administration? The study examines this question to make a contribution towards a better insight into, and broadening of, the body of scientific knowledge by engaging in conceptual, theoretical and philosophical studies to understand good governance in the context of NEPAD and determine its meaning for Public Administration. The study finds that the paradigm of engagement in the existing body of literature is framed in the binary logic, which is rooted in realist epistemology or positivism. This approach to scientific discourse is limited in dealing with complex conceptual, theoretical and philosophical questions. The study develops, as a contribution to science, an alternative epistemological framework from which good governance in the context of NEPAD could be understood. Such epistemological framework is, for the purpose of this study, termed the contingent co-existence of opposites. It is used to conceptualise good governance in the context of NEPAD and determine its meaning for Public Administration.
Public Administration
D.Litt. et Phil. (Public Administration)

碩士
臺北市立大學
社會暨公共事務學系公共事務學碩士班
105
Abstract In recent years, due to the changing of environment, the elders are rapidly growing in Taiwan. It is important social problem for care elders. Therefore, the government approved the “implementation plan of community care centers”. For this reason, this case research of community care centers in New Taipei City base on the theory of public-private partnership, to explore the public-private partnership among New Taipei City government, community care centers and community residents from their interactive process. This research methods used in this thesis are literature review and depth interview with cadres of the community development association and non-profit organizations of community care centers in New Taipei City. Findings are as the followings, we aim to explore the interaction among New Taipei City government, community care centers and community residents from three aspects： identity, participation and collaboration from information. Finally, this research examines interaction and the gap between the policy objectives and execution by understanding the implementation of community care centers for the elderly they performed. Lastly, this research offered several recommendations as reference for policy amendments, as well as for future studies.

Yes
We examine the relationships among religious governance, especially Islamic governance quality (IGQ), national governance quality (NGQ), and risk management and disclosure practices (RDPs), and consequently ascertain whether NGQ has a moderating influence on the IGQ–RDPs nexus. Using one of the largest data sets relating to Islamic banks from 10 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries from 2006 to 2013, our findings are threefold. First, we find that RDPs are higher in banks with higher IGQ. Second, we find that RDPs are higher in banks from countries with higher NGQ. Finally, we find that NGQ has a moderating effect on the IGQ–RDPs nexus. Our findings are robust to alternative RDP measures and estimation techniques. These results imply that the quality of disclosure depends on the nature of the macro-social-level factors, such as religion that have remained largely unexplored in business and society research, and, therefore, have important implications for policy makers.

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Administração
Esta tese procura as percepções da predisposição para participar em mudanças de políticas públicas (policy change), observando as partes interessadas (stakeholders) envolvidas na política previdenciária brasileira por meio de uma intervenção controlada em jeito quasi-experimental, i.e., numa consulta deliberada e de inquérito. A participação tem vindo a apresentar-se como uma possibilidade de mudança de políticas por meio de articulações que incluem a deliberação cívica e o envolvimento dos stakeholders nas outras fases do processo político, na busca do consenso entre as redes de atores. Isto é especialmente o caso no Brasil, em que inúmeras políticas públicas tem vindo a inovar no sentido de aumentar o papel do beneficiário na provisão de bens e serviços públicos. Ora isto tem implicações para os encargos administrativos para todas as partes, uma vez que processos onerosos comprometem a vontade política da participação cívica. Com o enquadramento teórico em Nova Governança Pública (no âmbito da Governação na Era Digital), Teoria das Redes de Políticas, democracia participativa e os encargos administrativos associados, bem como a cada vez crescente literatura do emprego do design experimental nas áreas científicas de Administração Pública e Políticas Públicas e de Ciência Política em geral, investigou-se o efeito do papel da mudança dos encargos administrativos no nível de predisposição das partes interessadas (street-level bureaucrats e cidadãos) para um processo político mais participativo. Proporcionou-se um espaço propício para promover consulta numa intervenção deliberativa, em grupos de discussão e participação de cidadãos e trabalhadores. Para isso realizaram-se inquéritos antes de depois junto dos grupos de controlo e experimental. Apuramos que não há predisposição suficiente ainda para envolver os stakeholders numa tentativa de influência na policy change. Isto porque a sobrecarga administrativa é entendida como sendo muito alta, contribuindo para encargos mais onerosos. Identificou-se que o papel da sobrecarga nesses processos políticos é justamente no sentido de corroborar para um afastamento maior numa interferência participativa.
This thesis intends to seek people’s willingness to participate in public policy changes, observing the interested parties (stakeholders) involved in Brazilian social security policy through a controlled intervention in a quasi-experimental way, ie, a deliberate consultation in a discussion group with survey experiment carried out. Participation has been presented as a possibility for changing policies through articulations which includes civic deliberation and the involvement of citizens and other stakeholders in other phases of the political process, in the search for consensus in the networks of actors. This is especially the case in Brazil, where numerous public policies have been innovating in order to increase the role of the beneficiary in the provision of public goods and services. This has implications for administrative burdens for all parties, for better or worse, since costly processes compromise the political will for civic participation. With the theoretical framework the New Public Governance (within the scope of Governance in the Digital Age), the Theory of Policy Networks, and the participatory democracy and the associated administrative burdens, as well as the increasingly growing literature on the use of design experiences in the areas sciences of Public Administration and Public Policies and Political Science in general, the effect of changing the role of administrative burdens on the level of stakeholder predisposition (street-level bureaucrats and citizens) in the predisposition for a more participatory political process was investigated. A suitable space was provided to promote consultation in a deliberative intervention, in discussion and participation groups of citizens in control groups and experimental groups with workers. For this, surveys were carried out before and after with the control and experimental groups. We found that there is not enough predisposition yet to involve stakeholders in an attempt to influence policy change. This is because the administrative burden is understood to be very high, contributing to more onerous charges. It appears that the role of overload in these political processes is precisely in the sense of corroborating for a greater distance in a participatory interference.

This dissertation uses game-theoretic modeling, statistical testing, and case studies to analyze how authoritarian governments manage the news media to maintain regime stability, control local officials, and make reform. In the first essay, ``Regime Competence and Media Freedom in Authoritarian States'', I explain why some authoritarian regimes allow more media freedom than others, as they tradeoff increased rents when the media is suppressed with the reduced risk of being misjudged by citizens when the media is free. In the second essay, ``Local Media Freedom, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience'', I argue that media reports about citizen protests, which may lead to protest diffusion, do not necessarily destabilize authoritarian rule. If protests are targeted at local governments, the central government of an authoritarian regime can use media-induced protest cascades to force local officials to improve governance. In the last essay, ``Central Rhetoric and Local Reform in China'', I address the puzzle of why the Chinese government would furnish the state media with conservative and dogmatic rhetoric on the one hand and allow reform on the other, by showing that this strategy is used to control local governments' pace of reform.

Dissertation

yes
This study aims to examine the extent to which corporate governance structures and ownership types are associated with the level of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures (CSRD) in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach: Multiple regression techniques are used to estimate the effect of corporate governance structures and ownership types on CSRD using a sample of Libyan oil and gas companies between 2009 and 2013. Findings: First, our results suggest that although the level of CSRD in Libya is low in comparison to its western counterparts, ownership factors have a significant positive influence on CSRD. Second, we find board meetings to have a positive impact on CSRD. However, we fail to find any significant effect of board size and presence of CSR committees on CSRD. Overall, our results support prior theoretical evidence that pressures exerted by the government and external stakeholders have a considerable influence in promoting firm-level CSRD activities, specifically as a legitimising mechanism in fragile states. Research limitations/implications: First, our research is based on the annual reports and it did not examine any other reports or other mass communication mechanism that companies’ management may use to disclose CSR information. Future studies might consider disclosures in other channels, if any, such as the internet, CSR reports etc. Additionally, this research adopts the neo-institutional theory perspective. Future studies might integrate multi-theoretical lense to offer a richer basis for understanding and explaining CSRD determinants. Originality/value: Our research contributes to the literature by first providing additional evidence for existing studies, which suggest that on average better-governed companies are more liable to follow a more socially responsible agenda than poorly governed companies as a legitimising mechanism in fragile states. Also, our study overcomes a major weakness in existing Libyan studies, which have mainly used descriptive data.
The full text will be available on publication.

Text in English with summaries in English, isiXhosa and Sesotho
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-153)
Provision of municipal services to urban residents particularly those residing in small towns across developing countries, is facing challenges. A small town or rural district of Luwingu in Zambia, is no exception. This study provides an analysis of factors that influence provision of municipal services in developing countries with Luwingu town or rural district in Zambia as the case study. Through this study, it has been shown that urban residents in small towns and to some extent, those residing in urban peripheries such as informal settlements, low-income residential neighbourhoods in major cities continues to experience poor provision and access to basic services such as drinking water, sanitation, refuse removal and electricity supply. Influencing effective provision of municipal services in the developing countries including Luwingu district council in Zambia, is a number of factors. Amongst others, is inadequate service infrastructure; lack of human and financial resources in various local municipalities particularly small rural local municipalities including Luwingu district council in Zambia.
Phano ya ditshebeletso ya masepala ho baahi ba diteropo haholo ba dulang diteropong tse nyane ho pharalla le dinaha tse ntseng di tswelapele, e lebane le mathata. Torotswana e nyane kapa setereke sa mahaeng sa Luwingu ho la Zambia, le yona e ya tshwana. Phuputso ena e fana ka manollo ya dintlha tse amang phano ya ditshebeletso tsa masepala dinaheng tse ntseng di tswelapele e sebedisa teropo kapa setereke sa mahaeng sa Luwingu jwalo ka mohlala wa phuputso. Ka phuputso ena, ho bontshitswe hore baahi ba diteropong ba leng diteropong tse nyane le ka tsela e itseng, ba dulang mabopong a diteropo jwalo ka diahelo tse sa hlophiswang, metse ya batho ba kgolang tjhelete e nyane diteropokgolong tse kgolo, ba tswelapele ho fumana phano e fokolang le phihlello ho ditshebeletso tsa motheo tse jwalo ka metsi a nowang, tlheko ya dikgwerekgwere, tlhwekiso ya dithole le phepelo ya motlakase. Ke dintlha tse mmalwa tse amang phano e ntle ya ditshebeletso tsa masepala dinaheng tse ntseng di tswelapele ho kenyelletswa khansele ya setereke ya Luwingu e Zambia. Hara tse ding ke boteng bo fokolang ba disebediswa tsa ditshebeletso; tlhokeho ya ditjhelete le basebetsi dimasepaleng tse fapaneng tsa lehae tse kenyelletsang khansele ya setereke ya Luwingu e Zambia.
Ukunikezelwa kweenkonzo zikamasipala kujongene nemingeni kubahlali basezidolophini, ngakumbi abo bahlala kwiidolophu ezincinci kumazwe asaphuhlayo. Le nto iyenzeka nakwidolophana encinci okanye isithili sasemaphandleni aseLuwingu eZambia. Esi sifundo sihlalutya izinto ezinefuthe kunikezelo lweenkonzo zikamasipala kumazwe asaphuhlayo, kwaye sizekelisa ngedolophana okanye iphandle laseLuwingu eZambia. Ngokwenza esi sifundo, kubonakele ukuba abahlali beedolophana ezincinci kunye nabo bahlala kufuphi nazo, njengabo bahlala kwiindawo ezingekho sesikweni nabahlala kwiindawo zabantu abanemivuzo ephantsi kwizixeko ezikhulu, bafumana iinkonzo ezikumgangatho osezantsi. Ezo nkonzo zifana namanzi okusela, ukugcina ucoceko, ukuthuthwa kwenkunkuma nokunikezelwa kombane. Ziliqela iimeko ezinefuthe ekunikezelweni kweenkonzo zikamasipala ezisemgangathweni kumazwe asaphuhlayo njengeZambia, kwisithili saseLuwingu. Phakathi kwezo meko singabalula ukungafakwa ngokwaneleyo kwezilungiselelo nezibonelelo zeenkonzo, (infrastructure); ukunqongophala kwemali nabantu abaqeqeshelwe umsebenzi koomasipala bendawo abahlukeneyo, ngakumbi abeendawo ezincinci, kuquka nekhansile yesithili saseLuwingu eZambia.
Development Studies
M.A. (Development studies)

S U M M A R Y This submitted dissertation thesis deals with the problematics of social cohesion through effects analysis of cultural values on the development of social and political relations in a society as such. The efforts of the thesis are not only directed towards articulation of Rawls's principals of justice, but they also reveal the desire to connect with the topic of the basic human rights from which questions of a suitable concept of societies derive. It actually means that the suitable concept in which it would be possible to achieve, from the point of view of intersubjective relations, a sufficient level of social cohesion and that way to strengthen an important factor for sustainability of social relations in societies as such. From the point of view of methodology, these thesis are for sufficient review as well as easier orientation in the whole work divided into 4 parts, which split further into 5 chapters. Before the four parts, the INTRODUCTION comes and it tries to be not only practical, but also academic in style to provide an introductory beginning of my work. Then, it is possible to say that every part of the four in my thesis deals with a research area of social sciences that is related to politological research as such. Nevertheless, my intention is to persuade readers that there is a...