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Institutional Transformation (institutional + transformation)
Selected AbstractsDemocratizing Dance: Institutional Transformation and Hegemonic Re-Ordering in Postcolonial JamaicaCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 4 2002Deborah A. Thomas First page of article [source] Payments for Ecosystem Services in Nicaragua: Do Market-based Approaches Work?DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2010Gert Van Hecken ABSTRACT The concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is gaining increasing attention among scholars as well as conservation and development practitioners. The premises of this innovative conservation approach are appealing: private land users, usually poorly motivated to protect nature on their land, will do so if they receive payments from environmental service buyers which cover part of the land users' opportunity costs of developing the land. However, this article warns against an over-enthusiastic adoption of a one-sided market-based PES approach. Based on a field study of the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Project (RISEMP), one of the main PES pilot projects in Nicaragua, it suggests that a mixture of economic and non-economic factors motivated farmers to adopt the envisaged silvopastoral practices and that the actual role of PES is mistakenly understood as a simple matter of financial incentives. The authors argue that PES approaches should be understood as a part of a broader process of local institutional transformation rather than as a market-based alternative for allegedly ineffective government and/or community governance. [source] Politics, Plurality and Problemsheds: A Strategic Approach for Reform of Agricultural Water Resources ManagementDEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 6 2007Peter P. Mollinga Starting from the assessment that past efforts at reform in agricultural water management in developing countries have achieved very little, this article argues that a fundamental change is required in the approach to policy and institutional transformation if the present deadlock in the internalisation of ecological sustainability, human development/poverty alleviation and democratic governance into the ,core business' of water bureaucracies is to be overcome. ,Social engineering' approaches need to be replaced by ,strategic action' approaches that acknowledge the inherently political character and the plurality of actors, institutions and objectives of water management , a perspective operationalised here around the notions of ,problemshed' and ,issue network'. [source] The Institutional Trap in the Czech Rental Sector: Nested Circuits of Power, Space, and InequalityECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2005Stefan Buzar Abstract: An "institutional trap" is a sequence of misplaced regulatory steps that have increased the costs of institutional transformation to the level at which inefficient structures can remain stable, despite changes in the external economic environment. This is a common occurrence in Central and Eastern Europe because of the path-dependent nature of the postsocialist transformation process. This article examines the organizational and territorial transformations of housing, utility, and social welfare policies in the Czech Republic through a comparative analysis of institutional power geometries and household expenditures at the national scale. The results indicate that the Czech Republic is facing an institutional trap in the restructuring of its rent control and social welfare policies. The trap operates within three nested circuits: the power geometries of postsocialist reforms, the geographies of housing prices and social welfare, and the consumption patterns of disadvantaged households. The lock-in created by the trap can be resolved only through carefully targeted and synchronized social support and housing investment programs, parallel to rent liberalization. This article argues for comprehensive, rather than partial, solutions to the institutional trap and emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of the relationships among institutions, space, and inequality. [source] Incremental Organizational Change in a Transforming Society: Managing Turbulence in Hungary in the 1990sJOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 3 2000Laszlo Czaban The rapid liberalization of the former state socialist economies of Eastern Europe coupled with privatization were thought by many in the early 1990s likely to generate effective capitalist firms quite quickly. However, the radical institutional transformation and collapse of Soviet markets resulted in considerable uncertainty for most companies which, together with high sunk costs and lack of resources, inhibited organizational restructuring and strategic change. Despite high levels of foreign ownership and control by the mid-1990s, many Hungarian companies continued to produce much the same kinds of products for mostly the same customers with inputs from mostly the same suppliers as in 1990. While most had reduced employment substantially, and many had disposed of ancillary organizational units, the bulk of the companies considered here had not greatly altered their work systems and overall organizational structures. In the few enterprises where the production process had been extensively reorganized by 1996, this was funded and directed by foreign firms who had taken them over. These foreign firm-controlled companies also tended to have new top managers from outside the enterprise. They additionally introduced new products more often than Hungarian firms, albeit within rather narrow product lines that usually dominated the domestic market. Overall, most of the enterprises studied were still doing much the same set of activities in the mid-1990s, though with fewer staff, as at the start of the decade, and privatization per se had not led to major shifts in enterprise structure and strategy, nor did it seem likely to do so in the foreseeable future. [source] STRUCTURING GLOBAL DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL COMMUNITIES, UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND TRANSNATIONAL REPRESENTATIONMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2009CAROL C. GOULD Abstract: The emergence of cross-border communities and transnational associations requires new ways of thinking about the norms involved in democracy in a globalized world. Given the significance of human rights fulfillment, including social and economic rights, I argue here for giving weight to the claims of political communities while also recognizing the need for input by distant others into the decisions of global governance institutions that affect them. I develop two criteria for addressing the scope of democratization in transnational contexts,common activities and impact on basic human rights,and argue for their compatibility. I then consider some practical implications for institutional transformation and design, including new forms of transnational representation. [source] Transformation Charters in Contemporary South Africa: The Case of the ABSA Group LimitedBUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008BINDU ARYA ABSTRACT Over the past decade, strategy and international business scholars have increasingly turned their attention to assessing how alterations in institutional arrangements in former centrally planned economies influence enterprise-level strategies. Little is known about the strategic responses of organizations operating in countries going through institutional transformation related to social issues. Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the South African government has focused on addressing the inequalities of the past through what is known as Black Economic Empowerment (empowerment of historically disadvantaged black people). In this paper, we investigate the approach used by the Amalgamated Banks of South Africa (ABSA) Group Limited, one of the top four banks and an important player in the South African financial services sector, in formulating and implementing strategy to ensure successful and sustainable organizational transformation. A key component of ABSA's Black Economic Empowerment strategy is incorporation of transformation as a business imperative and not merely as a compliance requirement. [source] | |||||||||||||