Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Evaluation of Impact on Business Processes

The innovation and development work conducted under the auspices of the Principles in Patterns (PiP) project is intended to explore and develop new technology-supported approaches to curriculum design, approval and review. An integral component of this innovation is the use of business process analysis and process change techniques - and their instantiation within the C-CAP system (Class and Course Approval Pilot) - in order to improve the efficacy of curriculum approval processes. Improvements to approval process responsiveness and overall process efficacy can assist institutions in better reviewing or updating curriculum designs to enhance pedagogy. Such improvements also assume a greater significance in a globalised HE environment, in which institutions must adapt or create curricula quickly in order to better reflect rapidly changing academic contexts, as well as better responding to the demands of employment marketplaces and the expectations of professional bodies. This is increasingly an issue for disciplines within the sciences and engineering, where new skills or knowledge need to be rapidly embedded in curricula as a response to emerging technological or environmental developments. All of the aforementioned must also be achieved while simultaneously maintaining high standards of academic quality, thus adding a further layer of complexity to the way in which HE institutions engage in "responsive curriculum design" and approval. This strand of the PiP evaluation therefore entails an analysis of the business process techniques used by PiP, their efficacy, and the impact of process changes on the curriculum approval process, as instantiated by C-CAP. More generally the evaluation is a contribution towards a wider understanding of technology-supported process improvement initiatives within curriculum approval and their potential to render such processes more transparent, efficient and effective. Partly owing to limitations in the data required to facilitate comparative analyses, this evaluation adopts a mixed approach, making use of qualitative and quantitative methods as well as theoretical techniques. These approaches combined enable a comparative evaluation of the curriculum approval process under the "new state" (i.e. using C-CAP) and under the "previous state". This report summarises the methodology used to enable comparative evaluation and presents an analysis and discussion of the results. As the report will explain, the impact of C-CAP and its ability to support improvements in process and document management has resulted in the resolution of numerous process failings. C-CAP has also demonstrated potential for improvements in approval process cycle time, process reliability, process visibility, process automation, process parallelism and a reduction in transition delays within the approval process, thus contributing to considerable process efficiencies; although it is acknowledged that enhancements and redesign may be required to take advantage of C-CAP's potential. Other aspects pertaining to C-CAP's impact on process change, improvements to document management and the curation of curriculum designs will also be discussed

Does Corporate Culture Matter for Firm Policies?

Economic theories suggest that a firm's corporate culture matters for its policy choices. We construct a parent-spinoff firm panel dataset that allows us to identify culture effects in firm policies from behavior that is inherited by a spinoff firm from its parent after the firms split up. We find positive and significant relations between spinoff firms' and their parents' choices of investment, financial, and operational policies. Consistent with predictions from economic theories of corporate culture, we find that the culture effects are long-term and stronger for internally grown business units and older firms. Our evidence also suggests that firms preserve their cultures by selecting managers who fit into their cultures. Finally, we find a strong relation between spinoff firms' and their parents' profitability, suggesting that corporate culture ultimately also affects economic performance. These results are robust to a series of robustness checks, and cannot be explained by alternatives such as governance or product market links. The contribution of this paper is to introduce the notion of corporate culture in a formal empirical analysis of firm policies and performance.Economics of corporate culture; firm policies; firm performance

Outcome Evaluation of the work of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) on soil and water management in Ethiopia

In 2019, the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) Leadership chose to evaluate WLE’s work in Ethiopia as one of its countries where it has had most success. The objectives of the evaluation are: To determine how and in what ways WLE contributed to the achievement of intended/unintended outcomes; Based on the findings of the evaluation, make recommendations of how WLE (and its partners) can become more effective in supporting soil and water management in Ethiopia; To serve as a participatory learning experience for WLE and its partners. This report describes the evaluation process, findings, conclusions and recommendations

The Role of Civil Society in Decentralisa-tion and Alleviating Poverty: An Exploratory Case Study from Tanzania

This research report gauges Tanzanian civil society's influence in setting the decentralisation agenda, in providing crucial basic services (e.g. health) or to which extent CSOs advocate the rural poor about their rights and obligations

Conceptualizing school effectiveness

The theoretical status of existing school effectiveness models is analyzed by using perspectives from organizational theory and models of classroom effectiveness. This leads to the formulation of a basic framework for conceptualizing school effectiveness that includes variables at the levels of the school, the context of the school and the classroom, while background variables of pupils are also taken into account. One of the conclusions is that hypothesis construction and empirical research on cross-level relationships within this basic framework are of central importance to enhance our understanding of school effectiveness

Democracy: Concepts, Measures and Relationships

This briefing paper reviews the existing research and debates on the causes and consequences of democracy to provide guidance on the key conceptual and methodological issues surrounding democracy promotion and aid conditionality. It provides three working definitions of democracy; a review of the different strategies and efforts to measure democracy; an examination of the empirical findings on the causes and consequences of democracy; and concludes with a discussion of the dimensions of aid conditionality by examining the efforts by the USAID, the World Bank, and UK Department for International Development (DfID) in linking measures and assessments of governance to the allocation of aid

Mobile Privacy and Business-to-Platform Dependencies: An Analysis of SEC Disclosures

This Article systematically examines the dependence of mobile apps on mobile platforms for the collection and use of personal information through an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings of mobile app companies. The Article uses these disclosures to find systematic evidence of how app business models are shaped by the governance of user data by mobile platforms, in order to reflect on the role of platforms in privacy regulation more generally. The analysis of SEC filings documented in the Article produces new and unique insights into the data practices and data-related aspects of the business models of popular mobile apps and shows the value of SEC filings for privacy law and policy research more generally. The discussion of SEC filings and privacy builds on regulatory developments in SEC disclosures and cybersecurity of the last decade. The Article also connects to recent regulatory developments in the U.S. and Europe, including the General Data Protection Regulation, the proposals for a new ePrivacy Regulation and a Regulation of fairness in business-to-platform relations

The institutional character of computerized information systems

We examine how important social and technical choices become part of the history of a computer-based information system (CB/SJ and embedded in the social structure which supports its development and use. These elements of a CBIS can be organized in specific ways to enhance its usability and performance. Paradoxically, they can also constrain future implementations and post-implementations.We argue that CBIS developed from complex, interdependent social and technical choices should be conceptualized in terms of their institutional characteristics, as well as their information-processing characteristics. The social system which supports the development and operation of a CBIS is one major element whose institutional characteristics can effectively support routine activities while impeding substantial innovation. Characterizing CBIS as institutions is important for several reasons: (1) the usability of CBIS is more critical than the abstract information-processing capabilities of the underlying technology; (2) CBIS that are well-used and have stable social structures are more difficult to replace than those with less developed social structures and fewer participants; (3) CBIS vary from one social setting to another according to the ways in which they are organized and embedded in organized social systems. These ideas are illustrated with the case study of a failed attempt to convert a complex inventory control system in a medium-sized manufacturing firm