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I examine three recent cases where local governments changed their processes for selecting capital projects. The central question is whether these changes institutionalized a more “strategic” outlook in capital improvement planning and budgeting for these jurisdictions? The findings suggest that local governments can set capital priorities strategically, but that the process of implementing those reforms must be adaptable to changing political circumstances. These findings add to the limited literature on the political, administrative, and other challenges that local governments must confront when reforming their capital improvement planning and budgeting processes.

Despite their important role for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy reform, the individual scores of the ten categories of business regulations in the World Bank’s Doing Business report are often overshadowed by the equal-weighted overall score and ease of doing business ranking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal interrelations between category scores and pinpoint the critical categories for reform.

Based on the latest 2016 Doing Business report, this paper applies the four-stage integrative framework to investigate the causal relationships between category scores and the overall score for business regulations for SMEs. The four-stage analysis includes cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling, and importance-performance map analysis (IPMA).

The overall score for business regulations is not only influenced by the direct effects of the category scores but also by the indirect effects of the causal interrelations between these scores. The IPMA suggests that policy-makers should examine the priorities of the category scores before making a decision about business regulatory reforms for SMEs. This paper suggests that policy-makers should allocate resources in order of priority – to resolving insolvency, getting credit, trading across borders, registering property, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, getting electricity, dealing with construction permits, and, finally, starting a business.

This four-stage methodology is the first attempt to construct a roadmap for business regulatory reforms for SMEs that addresses the problem of equal weighting and subjective causal relationships between category scores.

Most companies rarely work on sustainable development as a whole, which includes environmental, social, governance, and economic pillars. The purpose of this paper is to explore causal relationships between pillar scores and overall score of sustainability and identify the most critical pillar to which policy makers should allot limited resources with the highest priority.

Based on Thomson Reuters ASSET4 database of global corporate sustainability, this paper examines the causal relations between pillar scores and overall score of sustainability by using the three-stage integrative methodology consisting of cluster analysis, data mining, and partial least square path modeling.

This paper finds that each pillar has unequal effects on the overall corporate sustainability and that the overall score is affected by not only the direct effects from pillar scores but also the indirect effects from the causal interrelations among pillars. Moreover, the patterns of causal directions and the most critical pillar are sensitive to industries. Social performance is the most critical pillar for the majority of industries, followed by environmental performance, and economic performance, respectively. The governance performance, however, is not the most critical pillar in any industry.

To construct a roadmap for reform priorities, policy makers should follow the top-down approach which involves hierarchical decisions. Using the three-stage methodology, the policy makers first decide on the most critical pillar score before selecting the most critical category score underneath.

Relaxing traditional assumptions of simple average overall score of corporate sustainability, the three-stage integrative framework allows for causal interrelations among pillars and different weights on individual pillars.

The kindergarten curriculum in mainland China has evolved through four periods and the current reform began in the end of 1980s. The reform aimed to transform kindergarten practice by shaping ideologies including respect for individual child, active learning, and play-based integrated curriculum. This review of research literatures shows that compared with the practice before the reform, many kindergarten teachers organize classrooms in learning centers, provide more play materials, pay time, and freedom for free play, and pay more attention to individuals. But indoor space organized in rice-seedling-bed model, teacher-led group instruction and teacher-controlled interactions are still often observed after three decades of reform efforts; there still exist great variations among kindergartens of different sponsoring bodies and in different regions. The problems resulted from the innate deficiencies of the top-down and value-priority reform, the conflicts between the advocated value and the traditional Chinese culture with emphasis on Ming-Fen, testing, and the value of children for the whole family and nation, and the unequal distribution of public resources decided by the educational institutions. Therefore, the curriculum reform is not a separate endeavor from other social changes, but a comprehensive and systematic change. To guarantee the success of the curriculum reform, the Chinese society needs cultural transformation and institutional reconstruction.

Although the Social Progress Index offers a thorough overview of the top-ranked countries with a highly developed social performance, it assigns the same weight to all component scores, implying that each component has identical and independent contribution to the SPI. By removing these flawed assumptions, the purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationships among component scores and identify the critical components for reform priorities.

The authors propose an alternative approach to exploring the causal relationships and prioritizing the underlying components of the SPI. The four-step methodology comprises cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling, and importance-performance matrix analysis.

The authors find evidence of causal interrelations between the 12 components of the SPI. To accelerate social progress, the authors suggest that policy makers should allocate resources in order of priority to personal freedom and choice, personal rights, access to advanced education, water and sanitation, access to information and communications, tolerance and inclusion, personal safety, shelter, ecosystem sustainability, nutrition and basic medical care, health and wellness, and, finally, access to basic knowledge.

Policy makers in government, business, and civil society should become aware of causal relationships among the 12 components of the SPI and select an appropriate methodology to prioritize areas where social improvement is most needed.

Allowing for unequal weighting and causal relationships between component scores of the SPI, the authors’ methodology is the first attempt to offer a concrete way to identify which areas of social progress should constitute priorities for policy reforms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the pre-adoption phase of budgetary reform. Perspectives on the introduction and use of performance information in budgeting are obtained through interviews with current and former senior politicians and civil servants in Malta. Institutional theories are used to analyse the pressures that are perceived as promoting or inhibiting reforms.

The research followed a qualitative approach, using data gathered from documentary sources and empirical evidence collected from semi-structured interviews. Documentary sources were used to provide knowledge, obtaining an understanding of budgeting processes in the Maltese central government. Two categories of interviewee are identified in the analysis: political interviewees, consisting of 7 politicians; and administrative interviewees consisting of 13 senior civil servants.

The authors find that the current line-item budgeting system is deeply embedded into government practices. Malta’s membership of the European Union and its adoption of the Euro support coercive pressures for reductions in fiscal deficits. Normative pressures appear to be significant and may have a longer-term impact in promoting budgeting reform.

This paper contributes to existing performance-based budgeting literature by studying the pre-adoption phase which has rarely been the focus of previous studies. The study delves into the interaction between institutional and economic forces, an aspect which has been inadequately studied. The access to current and former Prime Ministers and other Ministers of State in this study is unusual. As such, the researchers have been able to obtain the perceptions of political decision makers in a way that might be more difficult to do in larger countries.

Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

This paper aims to review the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in China and analyzes the role of the Chinese Government in the progress of the SOE reform. It provides suggestions to better guide the direction of further reforms of the SOEs in China.

This paper reviews the historical path of the SOE reform in China and analyzes the underline policy implication associated with the reform.

The success of the function-oriented SOE reform depends on the transformation of governmental functions. Only with the linkage of governmental functions reform can we change the existing pattern of economic development, build a solid foundation for the socialist market economy and achieve the final triumph.

This paper provides suggestions to better guide the direction of further reforms of the SOEs in China.