4,749 research outputs found

    Multilingualism and the Public Sector in South Africa

    Get PDF
    This book contributes to the discourse on language in South Africa with a specific focus on multilingualism and the public sector

    The regulation of digital platforms: the case of pagoPA

    Get PDF
    How can EU regulation affect innovation. Digital revolution: How big data have changed the world and the legal landscape. The regulation of digital platforms in Europe. Digital revolution: How distributed ledger technologies are changing the world and the legal landscape. Regulation of digital payments: the case of pagopa

    Health Leadership and Management Practices That Support Accountability for Results

    Get PDF
    Although leaders are expected to nurture and sustain a culture of accountability for results, little is known about how health leaders in developing countries perceive, interpret, demonstrate, and promote accountability in their day-to-day practices. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the management and leadership practices that leaders of public and non-profit health support organizations in Uganda utilize to embody and support accountability for key stakeholders’ results. Data from in-depths interviews with 13 participants at the governance, senior management, and middle management levels were analysed using thematic data analysis. Riggio\u27s conceptualization of using multiple perspectives and disciplines to understand leadership guided the study. The findings indicate that the combination of management and leadership practices that promote accountability results are motivated and sustained by the leaders’ ethical and moral values, character and soft skills; majorly driven by task, relations, change, and externally-oriented leadership behavior; aligned with the leaders’ perceived primary management and leadership roles and responsibilities; and focus on enabling others to identify the right problem to address, recognize and navigate the eclectic ecosystem-wide interests, and mandates. These findings add to knowledge on managing and leading accountability in low-income settings. Implications for positive social change included understanding how to identify, select, develop, promote, and retain managers and staff with the relevant skills, enduring positive intrapersonal accountability motives and practices; this results in building effective organization systems that shape, strengthen, and sustain a culture of accountability for results

    The Russian Empire, Slaving and Liberation, 1480–1725

    Get PDF
    The monograph realigns political culture and countermeasures against slave raids, which rose during the breakup of the Golden Horde. By physical defense of the open steppe border and embracing the New Israel symbolism (exodus from slavery in Egypt/among the Tatars), Muscovites found a defensive model to expand the empire. Recent debates on slaving are introduced to Russian and imperial history, while challenging entrenched perceptions of Muscovy

    Public sector accounting and financial management in the context of a developing country: an empirical study of the Volta River Authority in Ghana

    Get PDF
    Using the Volta River Authority, a major Ghanaian corporation responsible for the generation and distribution of electricity in Ghana and neighbouring countries, as a case study, this thesis seeks to gain an empirical understanding of the nature and effectiveness of accounting and financial management systems in the context of a public sector organisation in a developing country. The principal rationale of the thesis is an attempt to substantiate and illuminate major issues and concerns about the nature of accounting and financial management systems in public sector organisations of developing countries today. The thesis problematises an overly simple view that developing countries have deficient accounting and financial management systems in their public sector organisations. The methodological, epistemological, and ontological orientations of the thesis are consistent with what Chua (1986) labels the “interpretive” paradigm. A recognition of multiple realities in the functioning of accounting enables an exploration of the claim that developing countries have deficient public sector accounting and financial management systems in a three-dimensional fashion. Firstly, the perceptions of organisational actors are drawn upon to aid evaluation of the basic deficiency claim. The research at this level emphasizes the technical-rational view of accounting as a tool for control over organisational financial resources. Thick descriptions of the systems for managing financial resources (including planning, budgeting, pricing, extent of computerisation, financial reporting and audit practices) of the VRA are gathered from organisational actors together with perceptions of the accounting and financial management systems by external constituencies such as the World Bank and the Authority’s multinational audit firms as a basis for evaluating the deficiency claim in the context of the VRA. Secondly, the thesis draws upon social theory (the view of organisations as negotiated orders) to further interpret the deficiency claim by bringing into the analysis the socio-historical circumstances of the organisation and how they help to provide insights into how the systems for financial resource management arise at the VRA. At this level of analysis, the thesis provides an interpretive construction of the technical procedures for financial resource management against the backdrop of the institutional setting within which the Authority conducts its operations. To this end, the influence of external constituencies such as the World Bank and the Volta Aluminium Company (VRA’s major customer) on the Authority’s accounting and financial management systems are explored. Thirdly, the thesis evaluates the effectiveness of the Authority’s accounting and financial management systems with reference to the extent to which they assist in the accomplishment of the principal rationale for establishing the organisation (i.e. socio-economic development of Ghana). At the third level of analysis, the Brundtland Commission’s notion of sustainable development is drawn upon as an alternative to the dominant economistic notion of development to provide a benchmark for the analysis. Employing the Commission’s perspective, the thesis attempts to understand the extent to which VRA’s systems of financial resource management reflect the notion of people-centredness and environmental awareness (i.e. the two major strands of the Commission’s notion of sustainable development). Multiple methods, including interviews, observation, document analysis and survey are employed to collect empirical evidence for this study. The major conclusions of the study are that from a technical-rational perspective, the claim that developing countries generally have deficient public sector accounting and financial management systems could not be established in the context of the VRA. This conclusion derived from the overwhelming positive perception of the Authority’s financial resource management systems by organisational actors, international funding agencies such as the World Bank, and the Authority’s multinational accounting/audit firms. Indeed, the claims about the lack of published annual accounts, inadequate information for managerial decision making, poor budgetary practices, and lack of independent auditors in developing country public sector contexts could not be supported in the case of the VRA. However, by going behind the technical procedures (façade) to uncover the forces which explain how the systems arise, the thesis argued that the deficiency claim might be supported in another sense; a sense which appreciates and problematises the socio-historical and institutional setting which are strongly responsible not only for the nature of the Authority’s current systems but how they have changed over time. In particular, the thesis argues that the systems of financial resource management are constructed partly to legitimise outcomes of prior negotiations between the Authority and its external constituencies. The constraints presented by these prior agreements and contracts render some of the Authority’s systems of financial resource management inconsistent with explanations grounded in conventional accounting and financial management logic. The thesis also finds, however, that some of the inadequacies observed with VRA’s systems of financial resource management reflected general limitations of conventional accounting with its over-emphasis on the entity concept rather than a peculiar organisational or even developing country problem. By employing an interpretive methodological approach to gain an understanding of the nature and effectiveness of accounting in a third world public sector organisational context, this thesis illuminates hitherto relatively unappreciated issues, including furthering an appreciation of accounting as a socio-political artefact in this context, and thus contributes to the critical and interpretive accounting literature

    Freedom in and out of work: platforms, precarity, and the democratization of work

    Get PDF
    This project explores and defends a seemingly simple proposition: if democracy is to be radical, the democratization of work should be a priority. Two contrasting observations motivate this exploration. The first is that a logic of work has extended into more and more areas of life while the place of formal employment has become increasingly precarious. Low pay, long hours and insecure working arrangements are now hallmarks of otherwise wealthy societies. The second is that despite this development, and despite resurging interest in some quarters of democratic theory, work is relatively neglected as a concern within much contemporary democratic theory. As such, this project explores 1) the conceptual resources contemporary democratic theory offers for a normative understanding of relationships of power connected to contemporary forms of work, and 2) its potential for envisioning a more emancipated organization of work. The methodological approach is one of ‘grounded normative theory’, with a commitment to tie in political theorizing with existing social critiques. As such, throughout the thesis I draw on original qualitative research carried out in the form of in-depth interviews with members of the grassroots union the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) who work as on-demand couriers in the platform economy. This thesis advances three specific contributions. The first is a methodological critique that ties in with the approach just outlined. Namely, that the most common approaches to democratic theorizing (agonist and deliberative) suffer from a ‘socially weightless’ style of thought that, in different ways, has informed a neglect to think about work and the economy as important sites to be democratized. Secondly, and more positively, this thesis contributes to contemporary democratic theory by bringing the latter’s insights on freedom, equality, and agency in conversation with issues such as trade union organizing and resistance, conceptions of workplace democracy, post-work proposals for freedom from work, and models of a democratic economy. Lastly, a central argument that the thesis advances is that to democratize work implies democratizing the economy. For work to be democratic, it needs to be decommodified, serve deliberatively constituted social interests, while retaining worker autonomy at the level of the workplace

    Stabilitocracy in Practice: An Analysis of the EU’s Policy towards the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue

    Get PDF
    This thesis analyses the evolution of the EU’s foreign policy towards enlargement by focusing on the case of the Brussels Dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. This case study is analysed within the framework of the concept of ‘stabilitocracy’. It asserts that the EU initially interlinked its promotion of democratic reforms and the pursuit of stability but ultimately focused primarily on the latter. The thesis argues that the weakening of the EU’s soft power due to enlargement fatigue, the heightening of geopolitical competition in Europe, and the securitisation of the Brussels Dialogue all contributed to the EU’s shift towards this preference for stability and the status quo. While the term stabilitocracy has been used to explain how the EU trades stability for reforms in the Western Balkans, there has yet to be an in-depth academic study of its application in a specific policy setting such as the Brussels Dialogue. This thesis outlines the impact of the EU’s stabilitocracy approach towards the Brussels Dialogue on the democratic transformation in Kosovo and Serbia by showing how the EU disregarded the lack of democratic reforms within both countries and how the local elites within both gained from manipulating the EU’s focus on stability in the absence of enlargement. More broadly, this thesis extracts lessons from the Kosovo/Serbia case that can be applied to other cases within the Western Balkans and beyond. This issue is particularly important after the role that the EU has assumed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the designation of Ukraine as an EU candidate country in June 2022

    The American Indian Agent, 1791-1861 Questioning the Literary and Cinematic Stereotype as well as Historical Narratives to find the real Indian Agent

    Get PDF
    The American Indian Agent is a known figure in the national drama. Originally defined by nineteenth century political opponents, settlers, frontier business interests, the American military, Indian policy reformers and even Indians, the Indian agent ranges from inept to cupidinous; cruel to inhuman. Western fiction writers, screenwriters and episodic television dramatists of the twentieth century took the agent’s tarnished reputation and created a stereotype stock character for Westerns emphasising all his malevolent attributes. The historical profession has largely perpetuated the cultural and literary perception of the Indian agent, until some historians began to identify individualized exceptions to agent perfidy. As examples of benevolent agents grew, the profession revised its analysis allowing that some agents assisted Indians while most remained obdurately delinquent.Most historical research on Indian agents has focused on the period from 1861–1888, the Civil War to the end of the Apache Wars. Large swaths of history remain lightly explored as the Indian agent existed from 1791–1908. This thesis examines the Indian agent in the early years of the Republic, from 1791–1861, interacting with Indians from New York to Puget Sound, from Georgia to New Mexico and the vast Great Plains in between. Crucially this thesis places the agent in the world of the Indian agency as well as the competing worlds of politics, business, religion, settlement, and government administration of which he was also a part.The results are surprising. Although there were a few criminals and several men overwhelmed by conditions, most agents of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Antebellum America were honest, sincere public servants, many coming to favor the Indians and spending their own money, and in a few cases, their blood to aid Indian development and freedom.This conclusion runs counter to both popular and historical perceptions. It seems almost everyone has adopted the old Aristotelian idea of petitio principii or “begging the question”. The bad and inept Indian agent must be bad and inept. No longer. These are the real Indian agents of 1791–1861

    Conflicting Visions: Political Struggle Over Urban Space in Lawrence Heights

    Get PDF
    This dissertation is a case-study of a public housing district in North York, Toronto known as Lawrence Heights, a so-called “priority neighborhood” undergoing the largest “urban revitalization” project in Canada. Typically, a revitalization is formed through a public-private partnership between a government and private developers, which together direct the razing of a disinvested area, followed by the building of new residential developments, commercial businesses, and public amenities in its place. It happens that government officials, planners, architects, and developers are employing enormous resources towards a revitalization project unfolding in the context of late neoliberalism (as a once revolutionary paradigm) undergoing fracturing since the crisis of 2008. In this situation, however, people continue struggling against, and are actively resisting, the long-standing and increasingly visible consequences of neoliberalism as a market-driven de-democratizing force that has leveled social service provision while also driving up living costs. The research uncovers forms of political conflict that have arisen during the Lawrence Heights revitalization. In so doing, I map out a chronological narrative detailing the past and present of this district as it continues transforming. To this end, I address the following questions: What do ongoing relations between interested parties involved in remaking Lawrence Heights tell us about the capacity for late neoliberalism to absorb and modify the multiple visions put forward for the neighbourhood’s future that align with its principles? What political outcomes arise in the deliberations over the use and distribution of resources associated with the revitalization? How do these interactions in this localized case study fit into larger struggles between different groups to leverage the state to institute certain policies in an environment where neoliberalism’s negative impacts on poorer communities have fueled energetic counter-pressures? Borrowing from Gramscian thought, this dissertation argues that the early stages of the Lawrence Heights revitalization suggests the potential unfolding of a localized passive revolution with grassroots anti-systemic organizers seizing meaningful levels of control over the direction of revitalization planning, as evidenced by their securement of resources for resident-led programs, employment opportunities, and decision making power, while struggling against the prevailing limits and power enforced by neoliberal policy regimes
    • 

    corecore