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The purpose of this paper is to better understand the performance improvement outcomes that result from the interaction of a performance regime and its context over more than a decade.

A series of partial free disposable hull analyses are performed to graph variations in performance for 13 services in 444 municipalities in one province for over a decade.

There are few examples of mass service improvements over time. This holds even for relative bottom performers, as they do not catch up to average municipalities over time. However, there is also little proof of service deterioration during the same period.

A limitation results from the high churning rate of the indicators. The relevance of refining indicators based on feedback from practitioners should not be dismissed, even if it makes the task of proving performance improvement more difficult. It is possible that the overall quality of services on the ground improved, or stayed stable despite diminishing costs, without stable indicators to capture that reality.

Not all arrangements incentives and structures of – performance regimes – are equally fruitful for one level of government to steer a multitude of other governments on the generalized path to improved performance.

With the insight that was not available to public managers putting together these performance regimes in the beginning of the 2000s, the authors offer a proposition: mass performance improvement is not to be expected out of intelligence regime. It neither levels nor improves performance for all (Knutsson et al., 2012). Though there are benefits to such a regime, a general rise in performance across all participants is not one of them.

Performance improvements are assessed under difficult, yet common characteristics in the public sector: budgetary realities where there are trade-offs between many services, locally set priorities, no clear definition of what constitutes a good level of performance, and changes in the indicators over time.

This case study draws on interviews conducted with officials from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), City of Woonsocket and Town of North Smithfield. Additionally, it pulls from relevant legal documents, recordings and minutes from meetings of the Woonsocket City Council and North Smithfield Town Council, City Council resolutions, state legislation and local press coverage.

From 2012–2017, the communities of Woonsocket and North Smithfield engaged in a protracted dispute concerning wastewater disposal. For 30 years, the two jurisdictions had maintained a signed service agreement. Following its expiration; however, Woonsocket imposed a new host fee on North Smithfield. Woonsocket needed to upgrade the facility to comply with mandates from the RI DEM. Over the next five years, leaders from both jurisdictions vociferously fought over the new fee. At the same time, leaders within communities experienced their own divisions. This case study highlights the challenges that decision-makers faced in both communities.

This case is appropriate for graduate and executive level courses in environmental policy, communication and leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine US state strategic plans for e-government (or information technology), identify their strengths and weaknesses, and presents best practices for both practitioners and scholars interested in improving state strategic plans for information technology.

The research analyzes the e-government strategic plans, based on a content analysis using a rubric consisting of 15 questions.

The findings suggest that of the state information system plans reviewed – Michigan, Virginia, and Massachusetts are the most comprehensive. Overall, the state plans were effective in developing strategies and core beliefs, and assessing their strengths and opportunities, while less successful in recognizing weakness and threats.

This study builds on existing research examining strategic information systems plans in US states and assesses the extent to which each plan addresses established criteria for developing strategic plans. This study also attempts to fill the need for more data and empirical evidence in the development of literature in strategic planning and performance measurement.

The research employs a public sector approach to strategic planning, and while the process is not specific to information systems it is comprehensive in its approach, grounded in literature, and offers guidance to public sector leaders in planning for investments in information systems and technology.

The conclusion offers suggestions for both public administration practitioners and scholars interested in improving state strategic plans for information technology.

This article explores the contingent role that social ties play in the emergence of status hierarchies. We argue that, while status is formed based on actors’ perception and understanding of social cues, network structure, and position influence this process by influencing the attention and legitimacy given to the focal actor in accordance with social cues that signal an actor’s identity. Using a large data set from an open-source software development community, we find that a broker linking diverse network members is less likely to receive status ratings from others and that the rating is more likely to be low when a broker receives a rating. Furthermore, we find evidence that the effects of brokerage are contingent upon certain factors that may affect the attention and legitimacy given to actors in the process of status evaluation, such as the actor’s prior status. An actor’s prior status was found to weaken the negative effect of brokerage. The importance of this study for theories of status, social networks, and attention is discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic stressed the health care sector's longstanding pain points, including the poor quality of frontline work and the staffing challenges that result from it. This has renewed interest in technology-centered approaches to achieving not only the “Triple Aim” of reducing costs while raising access and quality but also the “Quadruple Aim” of doing so without further squeezing wages and abrading job quality for frontline workers.

How can we leverage technology toward the achievement of the Quadruple Aim? I view this as a “grand challenge” for health care managers and policymakers. Those looking for guidance will find that most analyses of the workforce impact of technological change consider broad classes of technology such as computers or robots outside of any particular industry context. Further, they typically predict changes in work or labor market outcomes will come about at some ill-defined point in the medium to long run. This decontextualization and detemporization proves markedly problematic in the health care sector: the nonmarket, institutional factors driving technology adoption and implementation loom especially large in frontline care delivery, and managers and policymakers understandably must consider a well-defined, near-term, i.e., 5–10-year, time horizon.

This study is predicated on interviews with hospital and home health agency administrators, union representatives, health care information technology (IT) experts and consultants, and technology developers. I detail the near-term drivers and anticipated workforce impact of technological changes in frontline care delivery. With my emergent prescriptions for managers and policymakers, I hope to guide sectoral actors in using technology to address the “grand challenge” inherent to achieving the Quadruple Aim.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This paper aims to engage with the cinematic history of Australian education by examining the historical representation of secondary schools in two Australian feature films of the 1970s: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975) and The Getting of Wisdom (Beresford, 1977). By what narrative strategies, metaphors and understandings were Australian high schools encoded into images and how might these interpretations differ from written accounts of the secondary schools? The discussion focuses on the social and material worlds of the schools. It reflects on the types of education depicted and the characterisations of teachers and students, including consideration of gender, class, and sexualities. The paper asks: what was the historical understanding of secondary schools that made them so attractive for cinematic explorations of Australian national identity in the 1970s?

The purpose of this study is to empirically test the role of heterogeneous investor’s, i.e. institutional investors, individuals and insiders in deteriorating market integrity.

The research is conducted by examining the participants of 244 market manipulation cases of East Asian emerging and developed financial markets for the period of 2001–2016. The empirical analysis is conducted using panel logistic regression.

The results show that firms with higher institutional ownership are most likely to be manipulated in both markets. Insiders are potential manipulators in developed markets and deteriorate market integrity. In contrast, individual investors behave differently in both markets. In developed markets, firms with high individual ownership are less likely to be manipulated while in emerging markets, firms with individual ownership are more prone to manipulation because of substantial participation by individual investors which invites manipulative practices. Additionally, the authors found that firms with a higher proportion of passive institutional investors are less likely to be manipulated in emerging markets.

This study contributes to the existing literature by identifying the potential manipulators in the financial markets who deteriorate market integrity with the additional focus of subdivision of institutional investors as active institutional investors and passive institutional investor. The findings are helpful for regulators in designing policies to ensure market integrity and to enforce the role of institutional investors and insiders.