PRODUCTIVITY AND THE ENACTMENT OF A MACRO CULTURE

This paper reports the puzzling results of a study which examined IT capital investment and productivity at three of the largest IT user sites in the U.S. for the period 1970-1990: Social Security Administration (SSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Based on detailed IT investment, employment, and output data over twenty years, we found that only one agency had achieved significant productivity benefits, a second agency had modest results, and a third agency achieved no results whatever. These results cannot be explained by traditional theories of productivity of how productivity is produced. We argue that IT-induced productivity results not simply from strategic choice, nor the operation of the invisible hand in the market place, nor simply from keen managers adjusting their organizations to an "objective" environment. Instead we propose instead a new theory in which productivity benefits derive from a larger macro-culture enacted by powerful institutions in an organizational field. We extend this analysis to the larger economy and examine how this new theory helps us understand recent claims that IT is finally having positive productivity benefits at the sector level, and also helps us understand how the current fascination with reengineering and downsizing may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

PRODUCTIVITY AND THE ENACTMENT OF A MACRO CULTURE

This paper reports the puzzling results of a study which examined IT capital investment and productivity at three of the largest IT user sites in the U.S. for the period 1970-1990: Social Security Administration (SSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Based on detailed IT investment, employment, and output data over twenty years, we found that only one agency had achieved significant productivity benefits, a second agency had modest results, and a third agency achieved no results whatever. These results cannot be explained by traditional theories of productivity of how productivity is produced. We argue that IT-induced productivity results not simply from strategic choice, nor the operation of the invisible hand in the market place, nor simply from keen managers adjusting their organizations to an "objective" environment. Instead we propose instead a new theory in which productivity benefits derive from a larger macro-culture enacted by powerful institutions in an organizational field. We extend this analysis to the larger economy and examine how this new theory helps us understand recent claims that IT is finally having positive productivity benefits at the sector level, and also helps us understand how the current fascination with reengineering and downsizing may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Access to multiliteracies: A critical ethnography

This paper reports the key findings of a critical ethnography, which documented the enactment of the multiliteracies pedagogy in an Australian elementary school classroom. The multiliteracies pedagogy of the New London Group is a response to the emergence of multimodal literacies in contemporary contexts of increased cultural and linguistic diversity. Giddens' structuration theory was applied to the analysis of systems relations. The key finding was that students, who were culturally and linguistically diverse, had differential access to multiliteracies. Existing degrees of access were reproduced among the student cohort, based on the learners' relation to the dominant culture. Specifically, students from Anglo-Australian, middle-class backgrounds had greater access to transformed designing than those who were culturally or socio-economically marginalized. These experiences were influenced by the agency of individuals who were both enabled and constrained by structures of power within the school and the wider educational and social systems

Fifty Years of Farm Policy: What have we Learned?

Agricultural and Food Policy,

The Psychosocial Work Environment, Employee Mental Health and Organizational Interventions: Improving Research and Practice by Taking a Multilevel Approach

Although there have been several calls for incorporating multiple levels of analysis in employee health and wellbeing research, studies examining the interplay between individual, workgroup, organizational and broader societal factors in relation to employee mental health outcomes remain an exception rather than the norm. At the same time, organizational intervention research and practice also tends to be limited by a single-level focus, omitting potentially important influences at multiple levels of analysis. The aims of this conceptual paper are to help progress our understanding of work-related determinants of employee mental health by: (i) providing a rationale for routine multilevel assessment of the psychosocial work environment; (ii) discussing how a multilevel perspective can improve related organizational interventions and (iii) highlighting key theoretical and methodological considerations relevant to these aims. We present five recommendations for future research, relating to using appropriate multilevel research designs, justifying group level constructs, developing group-level measures, expanding investigations to the organizational level, and developing multilevel approaches to intervention design, implementation and evaluation

A gender perspective on entrepreneurial leadership:female leaders in Kazakhstan

The paper proposes a conceptual model to understand female entrepreneurial leadership through an exploration of the perceptions and experiences of women entrepreneurs within their leadership roles. The paper addresses an existing knowledge gap on entrepreneurial leadership by bringing together three key constructs of gender, leadership and entrepreneurship. We apply Stewart's model of role demands-constraints-choices (DCC) to women entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan in order to understand their perceptions of the demands, constraints and choices they experience within their leadership roles. The results of in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs present deeper conceptualization of their leadership enactment as a co-developing, co-constructed relational activity between leaders and others in their wider business environments and context

Japanese Lifetime Employment: A Century's Perspective

This paper examines the origins and dynamic evolution of the lifetime employment system in Japan from the beginning of the 20th century to present. Based on the historical perspective developed in the paper, we derive implications to the future course of the Japanese employment system. In this paper, we view lifetime employment as an economic as well as social institution, characterized by an implicit contract and reciprocal exchange of trust, goodwill, and commitment between employers and workers. We argue that this institution emerged as an equilibrium outcome of the dynamic interactions among management, labor, and government and became an integral part of the nation's employment system over the past hundred years, reinforced by complementary institutions such as state welfare policies, labor laws, corporate governance, social norms, family values, and education system. Based on our long-run historical analysis, we reevaluate the cost and benefit both in terms of economic and social of the lifetime employment system and explore the factors that determine its efficiency and stability. We emphasize the importance of understanding labor market conditions, technology and the nature of human capital, interactions between social and economic aspects of employment relations, and the role of complementary institutions. The paper concludes by assessing changes in these factors in the post-bubble period, offering some insights to the future course of the Japanese employment system.Japan; institutional change; lifetime employment; implicit contract; labor laws; social norms; war; zaibatsu; state welfare policies; division of labor; gender; demand-side shocks; supply-side shocks.

Theories of managerial action and their impact on the conceptualisation of executive careers.

In this paper I outline one of the developments in the social sciences and macro organizational theory that could be of special profit for academic work on careers. I argue that a theory of action perspective is timely because its assumptions fit extremely well with the heterogeneity and lability of today’s structures and the plurality and unpredictability they bring to careers. I suggest there are two basic potential contributions of theories of action to the field of careers. First, they endorse the relevance of the shift in the basic image of managers’ careers, from the analogy of an ascendant trajectory of positions, to that of an idiosyncratic sequence of experiences loosely related to an organisational architecture. Second, they reinforce Weick’s arguments (1996) that careers cannot be conceived of merely as a dependent variable, as just “following” structures. Both contributions spring from a notion of management work in theories of action as essentially local, tactical, and pragmatic, with enacting or social constructionist effects on structure and organizations.executive careers; structure; organizations;

A review of concepts from policy studies relevant for the analysis of EFA in developing countries

This paper aims to give an introduction to the central concepts and the literature of Policy Studies in education. The first part of the paper addresses the questions of what policy is. How is it made and why is it relevant? It looks in particular at the role of the state and the Policy cycle framework which is an analytical tool that helps to analyse how policy is made and later implemented. The second part then focuses on the central concepts. The two main paradigms of education policy studies relate directly to these central themes. On the one hand a series of policy concepts cluster around social justice, inclusion and the fight against discrimination on the basis of race, gender and disability. On the other lie the debates raging around efficiency, effectiveness and quality of education. These include the issues of accountability and measurement of pupil achievement. The role of the market is discussed and a short section on globalisation explains how the nature of education policy is changing in light of globalisation. The last part of the paper four studies were chosen to look at how the concepts elaborated in the earlier part have been used in studies relating to EFA. The works chosen are: Myron Weiner’s The Child and the State in India (1991), Operation Blackboard, Policy Implementation in Indian Elementary Education by Caroline Dyer (2000), Michael Sanderson’s Education, Economic change and Society in England 1780-1870 (1991) and Social Origins of Educational Systems by Margaret Archer (1984). The paper concludes that the transferability of the concepts discussed above and their related debates to the context of EFA in developing countries require a re-contextualisation which takes into account the EFA priorities of equity and access. The basic question remains of how governments will manage to reconcile expanding the educations system and creating a true EFA system, while maintaining high levels of quality. The role of education policy analysis is key in looking at this debate from a different vantage point. v

Building Up and Improvement of the Institution of the Socialist Oriented Market Economy in Vietnam

The market oriented economic reform direction has been officially affirmed since the VI Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (1986) with the approval of the economic reform plan towards doi moi. This direction was then legalized in the Constitution (1992) and further developed in official documents of Communist Party Congresses and legal documents of the Government of Vietnam . In the past years, to specify this political direction, the Government and people of Vietnam have made endless efforts to establish a new economic institution system called the socialist oriented market economy.Vietnam, Transitional Economy, Socialist Oriented Market Economy