Moral Courage in Organizations

{Excerpt} Moral courage is the strength to use ethical principles to do what one believes is right even though the result may not be to everyone’s liking or could occasion personal loss. In organizations, some of the hardest decisions have ethical stakes: it is everyday moral courage that sets an organization and its members apart. Courage is the ability to confront danger, fear, intimidation, pain, or uncertainty. Physical courage is fortitude in the face of death (and its threat), hardship, or physical pain. Moral courage, the form the attribute nowadays refers to, is put simply the ability to act rightly in the face of discouragement or opposition,possibly and knowingly running the risk of adverse personal consequences. Springing from ethics—notably integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness—it is thequality of mind or spirit that enables a person to withstand danger, difficulty, or fear; persevere; and venture. Comprehensively—as said by Christopher Rate et al., it is awillful, intentional act, executed after mindful deliberation, involving objective substantial risk to the bearer, and primarily motivated to bring about a noble good or worthy enddespite, perhaps, the presence of the emotion of fear

Digital technology and governance in transition: The case of the British Library

Comment on the organizational consequences of the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) is pervaded by a powerful imagery of disaggregation and a tendency for ?virtual? forms of production to be seen as synonymous with the ?end? of bureaucracy. This paper questions the underlying assumptions of the ?virtual organization?, highlighting the historically enduring, diversified character of the bureaucratic form. The paper then presents case study findings on the web-based access to information resources now being provided by the British Library (BL). The case study evidence produces two main findings. First, radically decentralised virtual forms of service delivery are heavily dependent on new forms of capacity-building and information aggregation. Second, digital technology is embedded in an inherently contested and contradictory context of institutional change. Current developments in the management and control of digital rights are consistent with the commodification of the public sphere. However, the evidence also suggests that scholarly access to information resources is being significantly influenced by the ?information society? objectives of the BL and other institutional players within the network of UK research libraries

The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research

Securing public funding to conduct research and leading it by being a principal investigator (PI) is seen as significant career development step. Such a role brings professional prestige but also new responsibilities beyond research leadership to research management. If public funding brings financial and infrastructure support, little is understood about the inhibiting factors that publicly funded PIs face given the research autonomy offered by publicly funded research. Our study finds that there are three key PI inhibiting factors (1) political and environmental, (2) institutional and (3) project based. Traditional knowledge, skills and technical know-how of publicly funded PIs are insufficient to deal with the increasing managerial demands and expectations i.e. growing external bureaucracy of public funding agencies. Public funding is no longer the 'freest form of support' as suggested by Chubin and Hackett (Peerless science: peer review and US science policy. Suny Press, New York, 1990) and the inhibiting factors experienced by publicly funded PIs limits their research autonomy. We also argue that PIs have little influence in overcoming these inhibiting factors despite their central role in conducting publicly funded research

Community-led Alternatives to Water Management: India Case Study

human development, water, sanitation

From “Clientelism” to a “Client-centred orientation”? The challenge of public administration reform in Russia

The inefficiency, corruption and lack of accountability that afflict public administration in Russia impose substantial direct costs on both entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens. This paper examines the major weaknesses of Russia’s public administration and assesses the government’s recently revised programme of administrative reform. It lays particular stress on the relationship between public bureaucracies and the larger institutional environment within which they operate, as well as on the need for far greater transparency of public bodies and stronger non-judicial means of redress for citizens wishing to challenge bureaucratic decisions. Many of the problems of Russia’s public administration are aggravated by the fact that the Russian state often tries to do too much: the paper therefore explores the link between administrative reform and the scope of state ownership and regulation

Policies and politics: Challenges and opportunities for agricultural and resource economists

This is a broad-ranging discussion of the role of economics and economists in the formation of government policies. The focus is on helping economists who wish to be influential in the policy process. The paper covers rationales for and against economist involvement in the policy process (market failure, government failure, economist failure), a range of theories that attempt to explain aspects of the policy process, and practical advice and insights based on the experiences of policy economists. Many challenges are highlighted, but some clear opportunities are apparent, particularly through explicit advocacy for the public interest.Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Political Economy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Systems thinking and Equity-focused evaluations

Questions about access to resources - who gets what? - ought not to be seen in isolation from related questions of power - who owns what? They also ought not to be seen in isolation from questions of knowledge and expertise - who does what? Moreover these questions relate to important questions regarding legitimacy - who gets affected by what some people get? Such questions are often more easily avoided in a normal evaluation for fear of the ethics and politics involved in addressing them. But such questions as formulated above also may not be easy to grasp or work with in terms of an approach to evaluating an intervention. To the systems thinker C. West Churchman (1913-2004), such ethical and political questions were profoundly important. It was Churchman's life-long task to surface the need to address such questions. One of the most significant insights offered by Churchman in order to address ethical issues was the need to engage meaningfully with different perspectives

Co-governance or meta-bureaucracy? Perspectives of local governance 'partnership' in England and Scotland

This article assesses the nature of partnerships through the research site of local governance in England and Scotland, engaging a range of debates and literature around governance and meta-governance. The research used secondary data of local authority partnership working in England and Scotland as well as primary qualitative data from participant observation and interviews with senior officials of local authorities and partner organisations. There is little to suggest that English and Scottish practices are significantly at variance and the article advances an argument of meta-bureaucracy to describe partnerships' activities: that is to say, partnerships do not represent a growth of autonomous networks and governance arrangements but rather an extension of bureaucratic controls. State actors remain pre-eminent within increasingly formalised systems of 'partnership'