Legally Defensible vs. Organizationally Sensible: Avoiding Legal-Centric Employment Decision Making

Managers and human resource professionals express grave concern about the increasing influence that the law and lawyers are having on their ability to manage employees effectively. Blame is typically placed on growing governmental regulation of the employment relationship, a “litigation mentality” among workers, and overly aggressive lawyers pursuing selfish interests. Much less common, however, is attention focused on the role that organizational decision makers play in contributing to the perceived problem. This article is intended to help address that limitation by alerting managers to the likelihood that they are unnecessarily contributing to the impact of legal considerations on the management of employees as a result of “legal-centric decision making”, and by providing information and guidance that will assist them in formulating better informed, more strategic responses to employment issues that have potential legal implications. Keys to implementing the strategic approach are identified and discussed, and the approach is illustrated by applying it to a decision that American employers continue to confront: how to respond to the eroding employment at-will doctrine. The analysis strongly suggests that the extent of the law’s negative influence on the management of employees can be moderated significantly if organizational decision makers recognize their contribution to “the problem”, focus on what is organizationally sensible rather than what is perceived to be legally defensible, and adopt a more strategic (less legal-centric) approach to the challenges posed by employment decisions that raise legal concerns

Trafficking in Persons: U.S. Policy and Issues for Congress

[Excerpt] This report focuses on international and domestic human trafficking and U.S. policy responses, with particular emphasis on the TVPA and its subsequent reauthorizations. The report begins with a description of key TIP-related definitions and an overview of the human trafficking problem. It follows with an overview of major foreign policy responses to international human trafficking. The report then focuses on responses to trafficking into and within the United States, examining relief for trafficking victims in the United States and discussing U.S. law enforcement efforts to combat domestic trafficking. The report concludes with an overview of current anti-trafficking legislation and an analysis of policy issues

Border Security: Understanding Threats at U.S. Borders

[Excerpt] The United States confronts a wide array of threats at U.S. borders, ranging from terrorists who may have weapons of mass destruction, to transnational criminals smuggling drugs or counterfeit goods, to unauthorized migrants intending to live and work in the United States. Given this diversity of threats, how may Congress and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) set border security priorities and allocate scarce enforcement resources? In general, DHS’s answer to this question is organized around risk management, a process that involves risk assessment and the allocation of resources based on a cost-benefit analysis. This report focuses on the first part of this process by identifying border threats and describing a framework for understanding risks at U.S. borders. DHS employs models to classify threats as relatively high- or low-risk for certain planning and budgeting exercises and to implement certain border security programs. Members of Congress may wish to use similar models to evaluate the costs and benefits of potential border security policies and to allocate border enforcement resources. This report discusses some of the issues involved in modeling border-related threats

Thematic Regional Paper: Latin America

human development, climate change

Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, The Extended State, And The Search For Trust

In an Academy partnership with the Kettering Foundation, National Academy of Pubic Administration Fellows Melvin J. Dubnick and H. George Frederickson have completed a study of accountability. The study, Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, The Extended State, and the Search for Trust, is a treatment of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary applications of accountability to public affairs. The working title of the study was Public Accountability: From Ambulance Chasing to Accident Prevention, but that title was thought to lack the dignity such an important subject deserves. Dubnick and Frederickson challenge the often assumed relationship between performance measurement and accountability. They give special attention to accountability challenges associated with the outsourcing of government work, what they call the Extended State. And, they provide examples of effective public accountability in the context of high trust public-private partnerships

Disaster resilience and children: managing food security in Zimbabwe's Binga District

The growing recognition of the vulnerability of children to disasters has added a new impetus to the concept of their involvement in disaster risk reduction programs. Involving children in disaster risk reduction is among those aspects promoted in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 to enhance the resilience of disaster-affected communities. This article presents the results from a research study which investigated the involvement of children in disaster risk reduction programs in Binga District, Zimbabwe, focusing on food security. The results suggest that children are an invaluable part of human agency in disaster contexts, especially in view of increasing numbers of children orphaned by HIV and AIDS. Yet their involvement is still contested. Unless family and cultural pressures imposed on children are recognized and managed in disaster risk programming, the potential of children’s involvement is likely to be missed in building disaster-resilient communities

A theoretical model for the application of Web 2.0 in e-Government

Government organisations in many countries have started embracing modern technologies such as second generation web (Web 2.0) in an attempt to maximize on the benefits of these technologies as well as keeping up with the current trend. Nevertheless, the advancement and the adoption of these of technologies is in its initial stages in the public sector. Therefore, the research problem is that the literature surrounding the application of Web 2.0 is still highly tentative and exploratory. In particular, there is a lack of research exploring the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the context of local e-Government. This study aims to address this research problem by presenting a comprehensive decision-making tool to aid the effective application of Web 2.0 technologies amongst local government authorities (LGAs). In doing so, resulting in the development of a theoretical model that is underpinned by information systems evaluation criteria and impact factors of Web 2.0 from an internal organizational perspective. By addressing the research problem, this study will make a significant contribution to the normative literature by providing new insights of Web 2.0 technologies within the public sector. This will be of specific relevance to scholars, policy makers, LGAs and practitioners who are interested in the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies in an e-Government context. This paper presents the proposed theoretical model and is largely devoted to an explanation on the development of the model

Science in Sanitary and Phytosanitary Dispute Resolution

The World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS Agreement) relies heavily on science and expert organizations to avoid and resolve trade disputes over measures enacted under the rationale of food safety or plant and animal health protection. However, the state of science for sanitary and phytosanitary risk analysis is highly uncertain, and the SPS Agreement leaves many science policy issues unsettled. The international agencies charged under the SPS Agreement with harmonizing standards and forging international scientific consensus face a daunting and politically-charged task. Two case studies are briefly developed. In the first case, the international scientific consensus strongly supports the U.S. challenge of the European Union’s ban on cattle growth hormones, but the root causes of the dispute go much deeper. The case suggests that establishing a precedent for SPS measures based solely on "sound science" may be a slippery objective. In the second case, domestic avocado producers challenged a U.S. Department of Agriculture assessment which concluded that a partial lifting of the ban on Mexican avocado imports posed a negligible plant pest risk. Although the Department’s phytosanitary risk assessment gained endorsement by independent scientists, a contributing factor to resolving this dispute was the threat of retaliation against U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico. A recent survey of current and proposed technical barriers to U.S. agricultural exports suggests that the trade impacts could approach $5 billion a year and that the most common SPS disputes in the future will be over biological hazards�particularly plant pests and food-borne microbial pathogens. This poses a tremendous challenge, however, because the practice of risk assessment for biological stressors is much less developed than that for chemical substances. The paper concludes with some proposed criteria for evaluating the weight of scientific evidence in SPS risk assessment.

Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice

The term dual-use characterizes technologies that can have both military and civilian applications. What is the state of current efforts to control the spread of these powerful technologies—nuclear, biological, cyber—that can simultaneously advance social and economic well-being and also be harnessed for hostile purposes? What have previous efforts to govern, for example, nuclear and biological weapons taught us about the potential for the control of these dual-use technologies? What are the implications for governance when the range of actors who could cause harm with these technologies include not just national governments but also non-state actors like terrorists? These are some of the questions addressed by Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice, the new publication released today by the Global Nuclear Future Initiative of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The publication's editor is Elisa D. Harris, Senior Research Scholar, Center for International Security Studies, University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. Governance of Dual-Use Technologies examines the similarities and differences between the strategies used for the control of nuclear technologies and those proposed for biotechnology and information technology. The publication makes clear the challenges concomitant with dual-use governance. For example, general agreement exists internationally on the need to restrict access to technologies enabling the development of nuclear weapons. However, no similar consensus exists in the bio and information technology domains. The publication also explores the limitations of military measures like deterrence, defense, and reprisal in preventing globally available biological and information technologies from being misused. Some of the other questions explored by the publication include: What types of governance measures for these dual-use technologies have already been adopted? What objectives have those measures sought to achieve? How have the technical characteristics of the technology affected governance prospects? What have been the primary obstacles to effective governance, and what gaps exist in the current governance regime? Are further governance measures feasible? In addition to a preface from Global Nuclear Future Initiative Co-Director Robert Rosner (University of Chicago) and an introduction and conclusion from Elisa Harris, Governance of Dual-Use Technologiesincludes:On the Regulation of Dual-Use Nuclear Technology by James M. Acton (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biotechnology by Elisa D. Harris (University of Maryland)Governance of Information Technology and Cyber Weapons by Herbert Lin (Stanford University