Accounting System Reform and Public Management in Local Governments - Is it possible to integrate the reforms for improving public accountability with those of public management ? -

The new public mangement (NPM) has now been in fashion in many developed countries. The change from cash accounting to accrual accounting is considered an important tool in NPM. The New Zealand Government and the executive agencies in the UK transfered to accrual based budgeting and accounting, while the member countries of EU and the US Government control the expenditures in cash based. This paper aims to explain why the different approaches are adopted in public sector reforms in terms of comparative institutional analysis. Firstly, a multiprincipal and agent model, which expands the contingency model in accounting reforms into the arena of management reforms, is presented. By using the model, the reforms in the Japanese local governments are examined and their possible reforming scenarios are indicated; the reforms have the possibility of improving accountability and efficiency when NPM would be integrated with Planning, Programming and Budgeting System

Agencification of National Museums in Japan

The new public management (NPM) has spread around the world. Agencification, which is a separation of government into policy and execution functions, is not exceptional. While the process of organisation change differs among countries and services, many studies for innovation in the public sector have considered the transition collectively, i. e. a change from traditional administration to public management. This paper develops a new interactive staging model for organisational transition. The model divides the public services into four types in terms of interdependency and measurement objectivity of the composed activities, and also it considers interactions between internal and external actors of the organisation in the initiation, design and implementation stages. The new model is applied to agencification of the national museums in Japan, which is the transformation of cultural organisations providing a service composed of multiple activities

Current Views of Toll-Like Receptor Signaling Pathways

On microbial invasion, the host immediately evokes innate immune responses. Recent studies have demonstrated that Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play crucial roles in innate responses that lead not only to the clearance of pathogens but also to the efficient establishment of acquired immunity by directly detecting molecules from microbes. In terms of intracellular TLR-mediated signaling pathways, cytoplasmic adaptor molecules containing Toll/IL-1R (TIR) domains play important roles in inflammatory immune responses through the production of proinflammatory cytokines, nitric oxide, and type I interferon, and upregulation of costimulatory molecules. In this paper, we will describe our current understanding of the relationship between TLRs and their ligands derived from pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Moreover, we will review the historical and current literature to describe the mechanisms behind TLR-mediated activation of innate immune responses

A DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF HIGH BAR MOVEMENTS WITH BAR STRAIN

The kip movements of two expert gymnasts are simulated using a simple rigid three-link model with taking into account dynamic strain of the bar and the measured time history of joint angles. We show that after some parameter identification this model can reproduce the measured kip movements of the gymnasts and the bar strain to some extent. Moreover, we discuss the identified bar parameters that are not entirely consistent to a range of parameters expected from the standard specification of the Federation of International Gymnastics (FIG)

Political-bureaucratic relationships in Japan and the UK

Political-bureaucratic relationships and bureaucrat's roles are major public concern in Japan. Senior bureaucrats, who decided on many policy issues on behalf of politicians under the people's high confidence, successively failed the treatments for housing loan companies, HIV's infection and FBR's incident etc. since 1995. However political-bureaucratic role relations are never clearly divided into two parts, policy and administration. Senior bureaucrats inevitably take part in policy making process owing to comlexity and professionalization in policy making. They need to have political tolerance, programmatic commitment, democratic sensibilities and acceptance of the concept of ministerial responsibility in cabinet government system. Therefore, this research focuses on the attitudinal orientation held toward various dimentions of their work in Kasumigaseki and Whitehall. The study compares Japanese bureaucrats' attitudes toward political-bureaucratic relationships with UK's in the same system. By principal component analysis of their responses to the written questionnaire, two significant different components are indentified; the first is accountability to ministers and the second is discretion in policy making. The analysis shows that Japanese bureaucrats are lass accountable to their ministers than UK's, while they have more discretion in policy making. Finally some recommendations are made about the reform of Japanese civil service system by considering these findings

Promoting Research Activities and Management Reform in Universities : An Approach from Policy Sciences

Many commentators have insisted without empirical evidence that the heterogeneity of fuculty members promotes the research activities in universities. We have to examine whether or not this assertion would be valid and which element of heterogeneity may contribute to promoting research outputs. This article investigates the relationship between heterogeneity in educational background and research performance, then examines how the Science Research Grant has been allocated to faculties in economics. The result shows that the more heterogeneous faculty members are, the more the research outputs increase. The analysis also indicates that the research performance has been little considered in making decision for adoption while it has made significant effect on the amount of grant for the adopted subject

Effectiveness of Performance Related Pay - Introduction and Its Outcome in the U. K. Civil Service -

In Japan, the introduction of Performance Related Pay (PRP) has been one of the significant changes in employers' approaches to personnel management in the last few years. In PRP the level of pay is defined and made contingent upon certain levels of performance, and its theoretical framework rests on expectancy theory. This theory is based on assumption that individuals will increase their effort to gain more rewards, resulting in increased performance. So it suggests that expectancy perceptions can be strengthened through appraisal system where the link between effort and performance can be demonstrated. Also many employers use PRP as a strategic tool to force changes in values and cultures of their organizations. However the empirical studies demonstrating the effectiveness of PRP are few in Japan. Therefore a survey of government organizations in the UK known to be recently introduced PRP was carried out. We also implemented comparative studies in organizational culture between Japanese civil service and the UK's, because they could identifY the important factors in introducing and implementing processes of PRP in Japan. The principal findings are : 1) Although the principles of PRP are mainly accepted, PRP does not work well as a monetary incentive for improving performance. 2) The recognition with non-monetary incentives is more effective in promoting employee's motivation than a monetary incentive through PRP. 3) Integrating with performance management system has an impact on the organizational culture. 4) Compared to the Japanese civil service, UK's culture is more result-oriented and enterprising while more procedual and regulated

Interrelation between Management and Policy Sciences - the Developments and its Future -

This paper aims at presenting an interrelation between management or organizational science and policy sciences. Both sciences have developed by influencing and learning with each other. For example, bounded rationality model in management affected policy analysis, while garbage can model developed in policy sciences impacted on management theory. Especially, it is shown that as the new public management (NPM) has emerged in public sector reforms, private sector and public sector management as an implementing part of policy sciences are complementary to improve performance and strengthen accountability

Comparative Studies in Government Auditing

Government auditing has been moving to the international harmonisation because of an increase in public accountability and the activities ofthe International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) in developed countries are, however, fairly different in functions and influence on the government. This paper focuses on these differences and shows they have been caused by each SAI's rational behaviour for its clients