Best Practice Application: Identifying High and Low Behavior and Performance Using

How can we identify best-practice providers? Under the combined influence of GPRA 1, the NPR, the state and community benchmarking efforts, and GASB SEA reporting requirements, most federal, state, and local government agencies, private for-profit and nonprofit organizations delivering government programs under grants and contracts, will become involved in performance measurement. Once governments begin routinely collecting and reporting performance measurement data, policymakers and policy evaluators will be faced with the task of identifying best-practice providers. How can governments go about making comparisons among service providers using performance measurement data? Can best-practice providers actually be identified? Based on previous analysis using a Quantile Regression and SWLS model for estimation and inference, this article introduces a new approach to estimating models of extreme behavior. Quantile Regression and SWLS are investigated to lay a foundation for putting forward the new analysis technique: Segmentation Strategy. Then, some preparatory work for Monte Carlo Simulation, including determining the structure of simulated data sets, is described. Thirdly, the computational results are displayed and analyzed. Finally, some conclusions and future research directions are provided

US cities’ buy-green schemes reduce their environmental liabilities and costs

Researchers suggest five actions they should take to increase their success rate - by Nicole Darnall, Justin Stritch, Stuart Bretschneider, Lily Hsueh, and Won N

Advancing Green Purchasing in Italian Municipalities

Italy was the first European country to create a full mandatory plan known as the National Action Plan on Green Public Procurement. This plan established a framework through which green purchasing polices can diffuse throughout Italian municipalities. A primary reason for this action is that green purchasing policies have the potential to significantly reduce carbon impacts across the globe and can help Italy achieve its carbon emissions goals. However, at the local level, many municipal governments have struggled to implement green purchasing policies. Consequently, green purchasing has not reached its full potential to help municipalities mitigate their environmental impacts. These are significant concerns that the United Nations Environmental Programme, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC), and others suggest must be resolved if Italy is to move toward an environmentally sustainable economy. Researchers at Sant’ Anna School of Advance Studies’ Institute of Management and Arizona State University’s (ASU’s) Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative have sought to address these issues. Our three broad objectives are to: 1) Determine the facilitators and barriers to adoption and implementation of green purchasing policies in Italian municipalities 2) Recommend actions for advancing green purchasing practices more effectively 3) Encourage Italian municipalities that lack green purchasing policies to adopt and implement them within their jurisdictions. To accomplish these objectives, we conducted a national survey of finance, environmental, and municipal engineering directors in Italian municipalities. The survey generated 152 individual responses from 395 municipalities with 25,000 residents or more. These municipalities were representative based on their population size, income, and geographic dispersion by prefecture

Plant-arthropod interactions: who is the winner?

Herbivorous arthropods have interacted with plants for millions of years. During feeding they release chemical cues that allow plants to detect the attack and mount an efficient defense response. A signaling cascade triggers the expression of hundreds of genes, which encode defensive proteins and enzymes for synthesis of toxic metabolites. This direct defense is often complemented by emission of volatiles that attract beneficial parasitoids. In return, arthropods have evolved strategies to interfere with plant defenses, either by producing effectors to inhibit detection and downstream signaling steps, or by adapting to their detrimental effect. In this review, we address the current knowledge on the molecular and chemical dialog between plants and herbivores, with an emphasis on co-evolutionary aspects

A Three-Stage Adoption Process for Social Media Use in Government

Social media applications are slowly diffusing across all levels of government. The organizational dynamics underlying adoption and use decisions follow a process similar to that for previous waves of new information and communication technologies. The authors suggest that the organizational diffusion of these types of new information and communication technologies, initially aimed at individual use and available through markets, including social media applications, follows a three-stage process. First, agencies experiment informally with social media outside of accepted technology use policies. Next, order evolves from the first chaotic stage as government organizations recognize the need to draft norms and regulations. Finally, organizational institutions evolve that clearly outline appropriate behavior, types of interactions, and new modes of communication that subsequently are formalized in social media strategies and policies. For each of the stages, the authors provide examples and a set of propositions to guide future research.publishe