Home  About us  Contact
 

Administrative Culture (administrative + culture)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting60%
Humanities and Social Sciences40%

Selected Abstracts

Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2003
Guido Dierickx
The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo-Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership. The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes. [source]

Crisis and Organisational Paralysis: The Lingering Problem of Korean Public Administration

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2001
Jong S. Jun
This essay argues that the Korean crisis is caused by the enduring problems of administrative culture, such as central control of decision-making, corruption, passive learning, moral decay, and a lack of self-governance and autonomy of administrators. The crisis has brought organisational paralysis because public administrators are not capable of responding to and coping with the crisis situation. The authors state that solutions to these problems are difficult and require strategies beyond short-term, instrumental solutions because change involves education and raising consciousness of public servants at all levels. [source]

Information disclosure and environmental regulation: Green lights and gray areas

REGULATION & GOVERNANCE, Issue 3 2010
Eungkyoon Lee
Abstract This research examines the potential of information disclosure for environmental regulation. The research attempts to answer questions of what impact information disclosure has on corporate environmental practices and what interferes with its effective use. A case study of Indonesia's pioneering informational environmental regulation reveals (i) both indirect (e.g. anticipation of external pressure) and direct (e.g. internal learning support) informational effects that enhance environmental awareness at the top management level and stimulate changes in production processes and (ii) detrimental effects of disclosed information that maintain or strengthen the extant power of regulated firms over environmental groups and local communities affected. Regulatory efforts can be leveraged by public disclosure of information regarding firms' environmental performance, especially where the state monitoring and enforcement capacities are weak. However, the introduction of policies of this kind without consideration of different market conditions and political and administrative culture may impede the effectiveness of this potentially useful regulatory method. [source]

Debating a whistle-blower protection act for employees of the Government of Canada

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 2 2005
Paul G. Thomas
Written at the time when Bill C-11 (the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act) was still before Parliament, the article argues that the existing administrative policy on internal disclosure was judged prematurely to have failed. The complications of measuring the success of any whistle-blowing regime are noted. The comparative experience of four countries where whistle-blower protection laws exist demonstrates that the benefits of such laws in terms of promoting "right-doing" and correcting wrongdoing have been oversold. The article challenges the predominant view that a new parliamentary agency is necessary to deal with whistle-blowing. Ultimately, the success of any law will depend less on its detailed provisions and far more on a political and administrative culture in government that supports ethical awareness and responsible behavior. Sommaire: Fondé sur la prémisse selon laquelle la dénonciation est considérée à juste titre comme me activité moralement ambiguë, le présent article examine la manière dont le gouvernement libéral de Paul Martin en est arrivé a adopter un project de loi visant à encourager et à protéger les functionaries qui dénoncent les fautes sérieuses. Rédigé alors que le project de loi C-11 (Project de loi sur la protection des fonctionnaires dénonciateurs) était encore divan le Parlement, l'article prétend que la politique administrative existante sur la dénonciation interne a été prématurément accusée d'avoir échoué. Les complications consistant à mesurer le succès de tout régime de dénonciation sont notées. L'expérience comparative de quatre pays où il existe des lois sur la protection des dénonciateurs démontre que les avantages de telles lois en ce qui concerne la promotion des bienfaits et la correction des méfaits ont été exagérés. L'article contest l'opinion prédominante selon laquelle il est nécessaire d'avoir un nouvel organisme parlementaire pour traiter de la dénonciation. En fin de compete, le succès de toute loi dépendra moins de ses dispositions détaillées et beaucoup plus d'une culture politique et administrative au sein du gouvernement qui favorise la prise de conscience éthique et les comportements responsables. [source]

Discretion unbound: Reconciling the Charter and soft law

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2002
Lorne Sossin
This study explores the relationship between discretion and the Charter and argues for a broader, more contextual approach to remedying the source of unconstitutional discretion. Guidance as to how to exercise broad discretionary authority comes in the form of "soft law," which encompasses a variety of non-legislative instruments such as policy guidelines and training materials, and which, more informally, extends to administrative culture. Administrative discretion involves choices and judgements usually shaped by a range of legal, bureaucratic, social and personal factors. Under present jurisprudence, the less precise a statutory discretion and the greater the reliance on non-legislative guidelines, the more difficult that discretion will be to subject to constitutional scrutiny. This article challenges this logic and concludes that respect for governmental accountability and the rule of law require bringing soft law out of the constitutional shadows. The first part of the analysis examines the regulation of discretion generally and soft law specifically outside the Charter. The second part analyses the leading case law on the regulation of discretion under the Charter. The third section explores the intersection of discretion, soft law and the Charter. Finally, the fourth section considers the problem of remedying unconstitutional exercises of discretionary authority. Alternative principles are suggested for the development and application of soft law, which envisions a central role for the Charter in rendering the discretionary decision-making process more accountable and just. A version of this paper was first presented at a workshop for the Twenty Years Under the Charter Conference, Association of Canadian Studies, Ottawa, 19 April 2002. The author is associate professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. He is grateful to those who participated in that workshop for their suggestions and comments, as well as to Robert Chamey, David Dyzenhaus, Ian Greene, Nicholas Lambert, Ian Morrison and David Mullan, who commented on an earlier version of this paper. He is also indebted to his colleagues Sujit Choudhry and Kent Roach, who have shared their work on related themes. He would like to thank Laura Pottie and Aaron Delaney for their superb research assistance. He wishes to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and the Connaught Foundation for their generous financial support of this research. Finally, he acknowledges the Journal's anonymous reviewers for their comments. [source]