Comparative Public Administration/Management Research Papers (original) (raw)

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- by and +3
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- Comparative Politics, Comparative Public Administration, Kamu Yönetimi, Siyaset Bilimi

Wang Anshi (1021–1086) is well known as one of the greatest statesmen of classical China, but it is rarely recognized that his 1058 ‘Wan Yan Shu’ is one of the first texts of public management in the modern sense. This is because Wang addressed still current concerns of a civil service—selection, training, motivation, remuneration—often presenting solutions that are completely in line with today’s perspectives. Wang’s work is particularly relevant now given the current global state of public management—post-NPM but with no clear new paradigm having emerged.

- by Wolfgang Drechsler
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- Public Management, History of Public Administration, China, Song Dynasty

This essay argues that, although for an important part of the “second world”, Islam is a key paradigm both historically and currently, Islamic Public Administration studies have been neglected in the region. This is highly problematic if there are, as is proposed, (at least) three paradigms of governance and especially public administration: Chinese, Western and Islamic, and if we arrive more easily at good public administration if we realize that there are different contexts and thus, potentially at least, different ways thither, as well as legitimately different goals. After the development of a model, the essay deals with Islamic Public Administration and then specifically with that of the Ottoman Empire, as this had both a highly sophisticated administrative system that is often underrated and forms the main legacy of most “second-world” Islamic countries. In conclusion, pros and cons of such a perspective are discussed, and a research program is suggested.

- by Wolfgang Drechsler
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- Central Asian Studies, Ottoman Studies, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Empire

The Theory Z was invented by the American economist and management professor William Ouchi, following the X and Y theory by Douglas McGregor in the 1960s. The theory Z was introduced in the 1980s by William Ouchi as the Japanese consensus style. He argued that western organisations could learn from their Japanese counterparts. In 1981 William Ouchi, of Japanese heritage, wrote his book ‘Theory Z: How American Business can meet the Japanese Challenge’. According to Ouchi, the theory Z promotes stable employment, high productivity and high morality and employee satisfaction. The loyalty of employees is increased by offering them a job for life with a strong focus on employee well-being both on the job as well as in their private lives.
Theory Z represents a humanistic approach to management. Although it is based on Japanese management principles, it is not a pure form of Japanese management. Instead, Theory Z is a hybrid management approach combining Japanese management philosophies with U.S. culture. In addition, Theory Z breaks away from McGregor's Theory Y. Theory Y is a largely psychological perspective focusing on individual dyads of employer-employee relationships while Theory Z changes the level of analysis to the entire organization.
According to Professor Ouchi, Theory Z organizations exhibit a strong, homogeneous set of cultural values that are similar to clan cultures. The clan culture is characterized by homogeneity of values, beliefs, and objectives. Clan cultures emphasize complete socialization of members to achieve congruence of individual and group goals. Although Theory Z organizations exhibit characteristics of clan cultures, they retain some elements of bureaucratic hierarchies, such as formal authority relationships, performance evaluation, and some work specialization. Proponents of Theory Z suggest that the common cultural values should promote greater organizational commitment among employees.
This paper discusses Ouchi’s Theory Z and its relevance in comparative management.

تتعدد الأطر النظرية للمقارنة في الإداراة العامة, ففي بحثنا هذا سنستخدم المنهج القانوني، كأساس لتحليل
انظمة التعيين و الترقية و الترفيع بين الولايات المتحدة الأميركية و فرنسا، من الناحية القانونية لجهة
السلطات المختصة بهذه الوظيفة، محاولين تبيان اوجه الشبه و الاختلاف، فهل تكون الادارات متشابهة بين
دولتين تعرف انهما مؤسستين للمدرسة الفرنكوفونية و الانجلوساكسونية؟

Stakeholders’ concern about how energy activities pollute the environment has increased. Despite how popular the concept of environmental sustainability has become in developing countries, environmental pollution control measures have not successfully protected the environment. The study probed how the regulation of renewable energy could achieve a balance between economic needs and environmental concerns in Nigeria. The claim of the dissertation was that positioning Nigerian energy policies, laws, and regulations to encourage the use of renewable resources for the production of energy is essential for ensuring environmental sustainability. The specific objectives of the study included: showing that environmental sustainability could only be achieved by regulating the energy sector of countries; showing how laws regulating non-energy sectors could contribute to promoting environmental sustainability; and showing that technology-specific renewable energy support mechanisms or strategies have been most effective and efficient, and that production-based support mechanisms or strategies are better for the development of renewable energy projects than investment-based support systems
Compared to previous research, this study was novel because it evaluated specific measures by which law, in order to achieve environmental sustainability, could introduce renewable resources into the Nigerian energy stream predominantly dominated by crude oil. The study discussed how suitable these strategies are to the peculiar conditions of Nigeria.
The study was analytical, relying on laws, policies, statistics and facts; it was also comparative as it analysed the Nigerian situation vis-à-vis that of the fastest growing countries of the global south: China, India, and Brazil. To justify the claim, it relied on primary sources such as statutes and treaties, and secondary sources such as books and articles.
The study discovered that Nigeria’s economy is crude oil dependent, making environmental pollution control difficult. Most energy laws in Nigeria do not sufficiently protect the environment, and this causes environmental problems. The study concluded that, in order to achieve environmental sustainability, Nigeria should introduce renewable sources into her energy mix through strategies that discourage carbon energy.

- by Temitope Onifade
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- Comparative Law, Comparative Politics, Environmental Law, Human Rights Law

This study examines an empirical link between bureaucratic structures and country-level innovation outputs. Although there has been growing scholarly attention to public sector innovation, we still have a limited understanding of the relationship between the structures of public bureaucracies and country-level innovation. This paper emphasizes the importance of bureaucratic structure in explaining cross-national variations in country-level innovation outputs. It hypothesizes that countries where bureaucrats’ careers are determined by merit-based recruitment rather than political appointees tend to record higher innovation outputs, controlling for other confounding factors. Countries with higher levels of impartiality of bureaucracies in decision-making also tend to have higher innovation outputs. Utilizing cross-national data from the Quality of Government Institute Expert Survey and Global Innovation Index, findings show that levels of innovation outputs are significantly higher in countries that have higher levels of professional and impartial bureaucracies. The results suggest the importance of administrative designs to promote innovative activities.

ABSTRACT
Job satisfaction has proven to be a resilient contributor to employee motivation, productivity, organizational commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. Utilizing cross-national data from five Asian countries/settings and the United States we examine the impact of organizational and psychological factors on job satisfaction. This study contributes to the literature by showing that while organizational factors, such as performance appraisals and leadership behaviours are important sources of job satisfaction, what matters most is whether individuals perceive themselves to be efficacious in their jobs. Self-efficacy was found to be the strongest determinant of job satisfaction in both, the U.S., and the Asian contexts. Based on cultural characteristics of power-distance and collectivism, this study also examines cross-national differences in the level of public employee job satisfaction.

- by Meghna Sabharwal
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- Public Administration, Public Management, Leadership, Self-Efficacy

Introduction to the 2015 volume by Springer

- by Romulo Pinheiro and +2
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- Organizational Behavior, Public Administration, Organizational Change, Higher Education

This article examines the conception and practice of public administration from Islamic perspective. It attempt to achieve this objective through careful identification and discussion of the fundamental values and principles that guided the practice of public administration in the state of Medina under the Prophet and his four immediate successors known as the Caliphs. Further analysis of these fundamental principles and values of public administration shows that they have become, in modern time, the standard indicators of assessing the effectiveness or otherwise of a public organization. By focusing attention on the practices that obtained in the early state of Medina under the leadership of the Prophet (SAW) and the Rashidun Caliphs, it is pointed that public administration, in that period, was not only effective, efficient, and responsive, but was also cost-effective and anchored on the principles of new-managerialism which many states in modern times are presently attempting to adopt. Consequently, modern societies have a lot to learn from the lessons of that period.

This article examines the effects of political, cultural, economic, and technical factors on openness of cabinet-level websites in developing countries. The question is whether these factors affect openness of electronic governments. This paper uses regression analysis of a comparative database of national-level public agency websites that is produced by the Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG). Regression analysis shows that the level of democracy, colonial legacy, and the level of economic development affect openness of cabinet-level websites in the developing countries. Implications of these findings are discussed in the conclusion.

Municipal mergers have been widely used as a tool for administrative reform at the municipal level in various countries. While there are many studies of such reform initiatives, most have overlooked the issue of the unequal distribution of merger benefits among merged municipalities. This article responds to this research gap by assessing the impact of municipal mergers on local population growth in Japan –and, in doing so, appreciates that mergers differ within each of the merger partners,
and also that the extent to which pre-merger municipalities can benefit from municipal mergers is contingent on their size relative to that of their merging partners. A unique dataset of Japanese local governments both pre-merger and post-merger facilitates an analysis of the impact of municipal mergers on local population growth. By employing propensity score-matching, it is found that, in Japan, municipal mergers negatively affect population growth for municipalities if they are not the largest municipalities among their merging partners. This finding suggests
that not all pre-merger areas benefit from municipal mergers; rather, smaller municipalities are likely to incur considerable costs from municipal mergers.

- by Gyula Koi
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- Cultural Studies, Law, Comparative Law, Public Administration

Many organisations oftentimes need to contend with the effects of accountability, religion and ethnicity, which directly and indirectly affect workers' productivity while concerted efforts should be made to manage them to achieve optimal workers' productivity. The main objective of the study is to examine the perceived effects of accountability, religion and ethnicity on workers' productivity in Nigeria. The paper has adopted the Group Behaviour Approach as its theoretical framework, which is concerned with the study of groups and their religions, ethnic and cultural 'patterns' in organisations. The study area is the Odeda Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. This research was designed in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Sixty-five (65) workers were randomly selected from the study area; the basis for the selection was conveniently appraised. A checklist of questions was raised in a well-structured questionnaire while the data collected were subjected to descriptive analysis. Findings show that accountability, religion and ethnicity largely affect workers' productivity in both public and private organisations. The paper recommends that accountability should be encouraged while religion and ethnicity would naturally play out in the affairs of employees but should be curtailed, to avoidable crises and conflicts that could affect workers' productivity.