Dynastic Management

The most striking difference in corporate-governance arrangements between rich and poor countries is that the latter rely much more heavily on the dynastic family firm, where ownership and control are passed on from one generation to the other. We argue that if the heir to the family firm has no talent for managerial decision making, dynastic management is a failure of meritocracy that reduces a firm's Total Factor Productivity. We present a simple model that studies the macreconomic causes and consequences of dynastic management. In our model, the incidence of dynastic management depends, among other factors, on the imperfections of contractual enforcement. A plausible calibration suggests that, via dynastic management, poor contract enforcement may be a substantial contributor to observed crosscountry differences in aggregate Total Factor Productivity.Meritocracy, Family firms, Financial Development, TFP

"Levelling Up and Social Mobility: The Role of Higher Education", in 'Levelling Up: What it is and can it work?'

The University of Derby's contribution on social mobility to the Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up's (CEILUP) report on what the policy of Levelling Up means for different sectors and regions of the UK

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Research and Policy 3 ; CFS Publications 3 ; CFS Financial Center Index 10 ; Events 12 ; CFS Visitors Program 12 ; CFS Colloquium 13 ; CFS Lectures 14 ; The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 22 ; The ECB and Its Watchers 25 ; News from CFS 2

Teacher accountability policy and sociocultural context: A cross-country study focusing on Finland and Singapore

In this thesis, I address two polarised debates in education policy: how teachers should be held accountable, and whether ‘best practices’ from high-performing education systems should be adopted in other countries. I construct a conceptual framework that maps the intended effects of teacher accountability instruments on student outcomes, via changes in teacher motivation. In this framework, the efficacy of any teacher accountability instrument depends partly on its compatibility with sociocultural context. This is partly because an accountability instrument will only influence a teacher’s motivation if the teacher regards the instrument as sufficiently meaningful, legitimate, or otherwise persuasive—and perceptions of meaning and legitimacy can be shaped by sociocultural patterns. To test this framework, I draw on two sets of empirical sources. Firstly, I use multilevel modelling to analyse cross-country survey data on education (e.g. PISA) and culture (e.g. the World Values Survey). I find that the relationship between teacher accountability instruments and student outcomes in these datasets varies with one aspect of sociocultural context, i.e. the strength of adherence to civic norms. Secondly, I analyse semi-structured interviews that I conducted with 12 lower secondary school teachers in Finland and 12 in secondary school teachers in Singapore. I find that teacher accountability instruments can have considerable effects (and side effects) on teacher motivation. However, interview participants’ responses to accountability instruments are strongly influenced by sociocultural context, and Finland’s and Singapore’s contrasting but comparably effective approaches to teacher accountability are each compatible with their respective sociocultural contexts. Based on these findings, I argue that the efficacy of teacher accountability instruments is contingent on sociocultural context (among other factors). Consequently, an accountability instrument from a top-ranked education system may have null or negative effects if transplanted elsewhere. Instead, teacher accountability policymaking needs to accommodate local sociocultural patterns. To my knowledge, this is the first study to combine cross-country educational and cultural surveys to explore the relationship between teacher accountability and sociocultural context. It is also the first study to conduct a fieldwork-based comparison of teacher accountability in Finland and Singapore.This PhD was funded by the Gates Cambridge Trust, with additional fieldwork and conference funding from the Faculty of Education and the Tunku Abdul Rahman Fund, St Catharine's College

Examining bureaucratic performance of South African local government: local municipalities in Limpopo province

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Public Management) at Wits school of governance Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management University of the Witwatersrand South Africa 2016In democratic South Africa, power regarding the provision of public goods and services is decentralised to local government level simply because municipalities are the coalface of service delivery and are closer to the people than national and provincial spheres of government. As a result, municipalities are assigned service delivery responsibilities by the Constitution. To discharge these constitutional responsibilities and functions in terms of public goods and service provision effectively and efficiently, municipalities are, firstly, expected to have high institutional capacity to deliver and be held accountable to their municipal councils and to behave in a fiscally responsible manner. Secondly, they are further expected to be characterised by strong and powerful municipal councils to exercise their formal powers of oversight function over municipal administration. Despite huge and continuous resource investment in terms of funding and capacity building and training interventions from the centre to build and strengthen the local government capacity to fulfil its public goods and service delivery responsibilities, South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, continues to be afflicted by persistent poor bureaucratic performance in relation to water and sanitation provision as well as financial management. In Limpopo Province, there are, however, a very few pockets of good performance (e.g. the Waterberg District Municipality) pertaining to financial management. Generally, manifestation of these governance problems is illustrated by high rates of negative audit outcomes, high levels of underspending, high levels of financial misconduct, high consumer debt and increasing sporadic community protests against poor municipal service delivery. Using a qualitative research approach and methods (i.e. interviews, observations, focus group discussions, questionnaire and document review), this study has explored the determinants of bureaucratic performance of South Africa’s local government with specific reference to Limpopo local government. A multiple qualitative case study approach, consisting of five municipalities (i.e. Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities, and Fetakgomo, Greater Tubatse and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities) was, thus, applied. This multiple case study approach assisted in enhancing the validity and reliability as well as replication of the study results to the entire system of Limpopo local government. Both purposive and random sampling techniques were used to sample the above mentioned five case studies and select the research participants. The added value of this study is, of course, the new dimension it has suggested such as theory of bureaucracy and the principal-agent model to explore and analyse the determinants of municipal bureaucratic performance in Limpopo Province. In effect, these two theories have rarely been tested together in analysing local government bureaucratic performance, but, in this study, they are used together to analyse the phenomena. In spite of their commonalities and variations, the study has discovered that not all bureaucratic performance failures within Limpopo local government are related to the lack of meritocracy, especially at managerial level. In effect, the level of meritocracy is very low at operational and implementation level in municipalities. The study, for example, has found that the percentage of the total municipal workforce with university or college qualifications at National Qualification Framework level 6 and above stood at 17 percent in the Greater Tubatse Municipality as compared to 58 percent and 76 percent in Fetakgomo and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities respectively. At the management level, the study, in contrast, found that the percentage of senior managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above stood at more than 80 percent in all the above-mentioned local municipalities. At the district level, the study further found that the percentage of total municipal workforce with university qualifications at NQF level 6 and above, as prescribed by municipal regulations on minimum competency level requirements and qualifications, stood at 7.4 percent and 59 percent respectively in the Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities in the period the study was undertaken. The study, however, has revealed serious paradoxes at management level regarding the possession of university qualifications by senior managers. For instance, the study found that the percentage of section 54A and 56 managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above in the Waterberg District Municipality was 86 percent as opposed to 33.3 percent in the Capricorn District Municipality. On the matter of the municipal council oversight function over municipal administration, the study findings confirmed the initial study proposition that strong and independent municipal councils, as opposed to weak or less-independent councils, play a vital role in determining bureaucratic quality or performance of municipalities. In effect, the study found that municipal councils or their council oversight committees in selected case studies were ineffective in exercising their formal powers of oversight. According to the study, the ineffectiveness of municipal council oversight committees was attributed to the following; institutional instability that characterised these municipalities between 2011 and 2014; the influence of political parties; or the prolonged and sustained single dominance of the municipal councils by one political party. Given the parliamentary governance system generally adopted by the South African state, the study further observed that municipal councils are effectively rendered inefficient by the fusion of both legislative and executive powers in the same person, being the municipal council. In contrast, this is, however, not the case in national and provincial spheres of government where the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive is clear and unambiguous compared with the local sphere of government. The study concluded that the persistent poor bureaucratic performance of South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, is as a result of none institutionalisation and none enforcement of a meritocratic recruitment culture at operational and implementation level as opposed to that at a management level. In addition, weak and less-independent municipal councils account for persistent poor bureaucratic performance of municipalities in Limpopo Province. If Limpopo local government is to become more developmental and meet the minimum service delivery expectations of communities, the study suggests that institutionalisation of meritocracy must be enforced by well-resourced and independent municipal councils vis-a-vis mayoral executive committees.MT 201

Curbing Tax Evasion in Singapore: The Role of Governance and Corporate Governance Standards in the Tax Agency

This article introduces a simple framework to link corruption, corporate governance and tax evasion. It argues that attempts to mitigate tax evasion have to incorporate measures to curb corruption in the public sector and raise the standard of corporate governance in the tax agency. The proposition is tested by means of a case study, involving Singapore’s tax agency, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. The article makes recommendations so that tax compliance could be encouraged with the greatest possible benefits

Victims and survivors of symbolic violence: an examination of the lived experiences of 'near-miss' pupils within an academically selective education system

Eleven of the 151 Local Education Authorities which contain secondary schools in England are classified by the DfE as being ‘highly selective’. Pupils who live in such areas take a test (‘the 11+’) in their final year of primary school which determines whether they gain access to an academically selective school (‘a grammar school’). This thesis focuses on the lived experiences of three pupils who took but did not pass the 11+, but whose Key Stage 2 attainment (as measured by statutory testing administered to all pupils across England in the final year of primary school) categorised them as ‘higher attainers’ (‘near-miss pupils’). This thesis draws upon Bourdieu’s thinking tools to explore the relationship between the subjective lived experience of an individual pupil and the objective, but often unseen structures of the education system they were part of. I draw upon the Mosaic approach as a means of centralising the participant within this research and use a multi-method approach to create an overall ‘picture’ of their lived experiences. Using an analytical framework centred around a narrative approach, I construct and analyse thematic narratives based on the stories which emerged from the participants’ data and then use these to re-present the lived experiences of the participants. The synthesis of the re-presentations leads to the findings of this research. These demonstrate that in addition to falling victim to symbolic violence, the participants’ survival was also evident, resulting from their knowledge of the ‘game’ and its rules. This therefore presents a more nuanced perspective on academically selective education than the dominant/dominated binary within Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of symbolic violence. In addition, this thesis highlights that qualitative engagement with pupils’ perspectives on academically selective education has, to date, been largely underused within both education policy and academic literature. This thesis argues that centralising such perspectives serves to raise important considerations for the relationship between education and social justice by demonstrating what can be learned from engaging with the nuances within the lived experiences of pupils

Equity and Inclusion for Leaders in the School District: Exploring Gender

There are increasing expectations that educational leaders attend to social justice. However, little attention is paid to their own experience of equity and inclusion, and there is an ongoing omission of gender from organizational discourse. This problem of practice identifies the lack of attention to the experience and implications of gender for leaders in a school district. The organizational improvement plan aims to prioritize gender on the organization’s agenda, bridge the gap between representation and equity and inclusion, and create a gender-inclusive leadership climate. Feminist frames for change establish the underlying change strategy and Lewin’s change model structures the change process, outlining the goals of each phase and the roles and responsibilities of senior leaders, school leaders, and human resources leaders. Transformative and inclusive leadership approaches and a model of climate for inclusion inform solutions and approach. Based on an evaluation of impact, readiness, success factors, and driving and restraining forces, gender-based analysis of human resource practices is selected for development of a change implementation plan. An intersectional, non-binary approach is incorporated, and psychological safety and meaningful participation are emphasized throughout the change process. The change plan is strengthened by corresponding communication, knowledge mobilization, and monitoring and evaluation plans that facilitate individual and social learning, reflection, and collective action