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This chapter examines one of the most contested issues in Public Administration, namely political–administrative relationships. The first part of the chapter begins with a brief overview of the features of an ideal-type bureaucracy. Next is a literature review of political–administrative relationships. This is followed by an analysis of typologies of political–administrative relationships, with particular reference to developing countries. The second part of the chapter analyses the evolution of political–administrative relationships since the dawn of South African democracy in 1994. It examines the growing politicisation of the public service, the weakening of the powers of public officials vis-a-vis Ministers and the emasculation of the PSC. Data indicate that the government is unable to fill posts at the Senior Management Service (SMS) level and that there are a high number of acting HoDs, an indicator of instability. Finally, it uses Dasandi and Esteve’s typology of political–administrative relationships in developing countries to interpret the South African case.

Women have conquered the universities but their way into top positions is still stopped by a class ceiling. Focusing appointment procedures for full professors the chapter examines why policies aiming at gendered practices have only shown moderate success.

The analysis follows a praxeological approach and draws on material derived from case studies covering all 22 universities in Austria. The aim of these case studies was to analyze the implementation of a new legal framework for appointment procedures at Austrian universities.

In this chapter, the effects of specific measures to tackle gender bias in appointment procedures for full professors in the Austrian context are analyzed. It is evident that despite gender awareness and a comprehensive set of regulations, regularly traditional practices remain stable and unreflected with regard to an inherent gender bias. The analysis presented thus reveals the limitations of existing equality policies. We can assume that reflexivity is a precondition for a change of unreflected practices, but does not form a part of existing policies.

We conclude that policies aimed at changing gendered practices have to (1) built up gender awareness as well as gender competence and (2) encourage reflexivity as well as agency among all stakeholders involved in a practice. Although there are cases where reflexivity arises from an individual conviction with regard to equality, most stakeholders have to be convinced – or even forced – by a superior authority to change their practices. Such a change can be forced by legal obligation or set down as a clear requirement by university management. It becomes evident that any guideline or regulation addressing gendered practices have to be accompanied by features that create room for reflection and reflexivity.

This chapter focusses on whether women heads of states and governments use their powers of selection to empower women. Compared to their male counterparts, do they appoint greater quantities of women to cabinet positions and to more prestigious posts? Examining Germany and Brazil, two countries constituting diverse cultural and institutional settings, this chapter provides in-depth analysis of cabinet appointments and regional breadth. It confirms that women executives do indeed promote more women to their cabinets overall and to higher powered portfolios. This stands in contrast with prevailing findings from within the global literature but generally reinforces those derived from single country and regional explorations.

Decisions which are based on formally organized evaluation processes are widespread in the academic world. In order to develop a theoretical framework which can be used to systematically analyze various evaluation-based decision-making procedures, this chapter focuses on the example of appointment procedures for professorships in German universities. Drawing on systems theory, we start with theorizing universities as formal organizations in order to explain how organizational structures generally affect decision-making procedures. Then three dimensions of academic decision-making are introduced – temporal, social, and matter-of-fact – which are the main cornerstones of our analytical framework. By applying this framework to appointment procedures for professorships, different phases can be distinguished (temporal), participants and their interests as well as their influence potentials come into view (social), and different types of criteria for assessing the candidates can be identified (matter-of-fact). The exemplary application of the framework shows its analytical advantages as an adaptable means of investigating a broader array of (academic) evaluation-based decision-making procedures.

The issue of training and appointment of school administrators has consumed substantial attention from educational scholars for several decades. The literature has witnessed a growing amount of research effort in investigating and identifying the effective ways of training and appointing school principals. However, there are also political, social and cultural aspects to this endeavour, which potentially influences the practices pertaining to training and appointment of school principals. This chapter represents scholarly efforts to discuss issues on the training and appointment of school administrators in Turkey within its historical and political background. Thus, first, it focuses on the historical journey of the field of educational administration in Turkey. This journey has been categorised under three phases: The Ottoman Era, Early Years of Turkish Republic and the 1950s Onwards. Second, this chapter discusses school principalship in Turkey with a specific focus on political and legal dimensions. Finally, the chapter ends with an overall evaluation of the practices and policies pertaining to school administration curriculum in Turkey.

This article examines the discourse of appointment, promotion, and tenure (APT) documents for academic librarians. Discourse analysis can illuminate the social role of language, social systems, and social practices.

This qualitative research analyzes the APT documents for librarians from a group of US universities (n = 50) whose librarians are tenured faculty (n = 35). Linguistic features were examined to identify genre (text type) and register (language variety) characteristics.

The documents showed strong relationships with other texts; vocabulary from the language of human resources (HR); grammatical characteristics such as nominalization; passive constructions; few pronouns; the “quasi-synonymy” of series of adjectives, nouns, or verbs; and expression of certainty and obligation. The documents have a sociolinguistic and social semiotic component. In using a faculty genre, librarians assert solidarity with other faculty, while the prominent discourse of librarians as practitioners detracts from faculty solidarity.

This research is limited to librarians at US land grant institutions. It has implications for other research institutions and other models of librarian status.

This research can help academic librarians fulfill their obligations by understanding how values encoded in these documents reflect positive and negative approaches.

Higher education and academic librarianship are in a state of flux. Understanding the discourse of these documents can help librarians encode appropriate goals and values. Little has been written on the discourse of librarianship. This is a contribution to the understanding of librarians as a discourse community and of significant communicative events.

The premise that the U.S. Supreme Court never veers too far off from the dominant national political coalition (Dahl, 1957) has become widely accepted among social scientists today. To fulfill that promise, however, the confirmation process for justices must serve as a plebiscite through which the public can ratify or reject future justices based on their views. Unfortunately, modern confirmation hearings have become an exercise in obfuscation, providing little meaningful dialogue on important issues. Because conservative Republican presidents have made the lion's share of appointments in recent times, social conservatives have most often benefited from a process that has severed the link between Supreme Court nominees and the polity they must serve.

Higher education institutions have undergone a transformation over the past few decades, from loosely coupled systems to more centrally managed organizations. Central to this ongoing development is the increasing competition for resources and reputation, driving higher education institutions to rationalize their structures and practices. In our study, we focused on changes in job advertisements for professorships in Germany from 1990 to 2010. Findings showed that the requirements stipulated by universities for professorial positions have become increasingly differentiated (and measurable) over time. In this context, competitive aspects, such as third-party funding, international orientation, or publications, have particularly come to the fore and grown significantly in importance. We discuss these findings in light of an increasing managerialization of higher education institutions, which has a direct effect on collegiality. We argue that the differentiation of professorial job profiles leads to even more formalized appointment processes and may push collegial governance into the background.

This study examines the director labor market to better understand which director attributes are important for board service.

Director level data, which includes proxies for both human and social capital, is analyzed to determine which characteristics increase the likelihood of gaining additional board appointments.

We find that general skills and director connections are valued in the marketplace. Among specific director characteristics, financial expertise, holding an MBA degree, and S&P 500 experience are positively associated with gaining new board appointments. Moreover, regardless of the director’s level of expertise, highly connected individuals are more likely to obtain new appointments. Finally, from a range of characteristics, only director connections mitigate the negative consequences of serving on the boards of firms that restate their financials.

While most research has analyzed the effectiveness of boards of directors as a whole, this study examines the value of individual director characteristics within the context of the labor market.