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This chapter describes an institutional choice that most Latin American countries have taken in the past 25 years: the creation of national Public Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME) systems. We summarize research assessing their institutionalization, identify their shortcomings, and discuss trends demonstrating a potential – not yet realized – to fulfill their vocation as instruments of political and democratic accountability. Despite remarkable progress in their institutionalization, the evidence suggests that the systems fall short in producing strong results-oriented democratic accountability. Key factors hindering this aspiration include the systems' low credibility, problems associated to their diversification, low institutional coherence, and lack of effective coordination mechanisms to improve information legibility, its quality, its usefulness, and thus its use by both public managers and citizens. We suggest that PPME systems depend on environmental conditions beyond government structures and processes and argue that citizen-oriented mechanisms and entry points for social participation around the systems are required to fulfill their accountability function.

The New Development Paradigm (NDP) integrates the theoretical and empirical views on development that have gained prominence since the mid‐1990s. In particular the multifaceted nature of development objectives‐including social and ecological development next to economic growth‐and the critical role of institutions in the development process characterize the NDP. This new perspective has important consequences for understanding the role of Multinational Enterprises in fostering development. This paper addresses these implications and delineates a research agenda that pays systematic attention to the wide variety of direct and indirect, active and passive ways in which MNEs can (and do) affect sustainable development

Development, both economic and social, has been uppermost in the minds of the Malaysian fathers of independence in the process of nation building. Although the nation inherited the British systems of liberal democracy and capitalism, it also inherited many of the problems it had created earlier among which were a nation divided by race, culture and religion and a society divided by disparities in economic functions, income levels and social standings. Thus the main functions of nation building have since then been that of creating national unity and redressing economic and social disparities.

The purpose of the paper is to explore how climate change and the discourses about adaptation to climate change are altering the spatial development of the tourism industry in coastal destinations. The paper also identifies how tourist development and climate change adaptation can be combined to transform space and place, especially in coastal tourism areas.

Using a theoretical approach based on the concept of production of space, the study focuses on relational space, relationships expressed through representations of space and social practices. A case study method is used to analyze the socio-geographic processes at work in the adaptation to climate change in a coastal tourism community in Quebec, Canada. The analysis of the study utilized Nvivo with thematic textual queries.

The results reveal an adaptation process at work, based on a “hold the line” strategy, where private stakeholders choose to invest in defensive structures to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels and erosion. This strategy reflects coordinated action in the face of the risk and to protect high-value land property.

This research illustrates how tourism and climate change adaptation discourses intersect. It also reveals how tourism development promotes the values and image of coastal space and how this can conflict with an efficient climate change adaptation strategy.

This research provides guidelines for coastal tourism communities, enabling them to design their own climate change adaptation strategy, taking into account how the different social discourses and tourism practices interact with climate change adaptation. It also provides some insights into the criteria that influence an effective climate change adaptation strategy.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the research work of managing returnable assets such as pallets by radio frequency identification (RFID) methods on a national scale.

The project is an extension of an earlier project which tracks pallets and cartons through a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) supply chain. This extension project investigates how RFID information can be applied for integrating business processes. The project team developed a national business information network with electronic product code (EPC) compliance devices and systems. To implement an effective pallet management business process, the project team carried out detailed process modelling study of the effect of RFID processes and measured the improvement in performance and efficiency.

The key to success in the extension project is the adoption of EPC compliance technology that enables efficient communication of business data across platforms and companies. The project found that there is an average 18 per cent improvement in system efficiency should an EPC compliance technology be adopted for supporting paperless proof of delivery. There are also additional administrative and unquantifiable savings in support systems and services.

The research is related to the FMCG industry sector. The business processes in this sector can vary significantly. The project is conducted under a controlled business environment on the condition that the changes would not affect main business activities of the partners. The system efficiency improvement and savings estimated from the project findings should be taken as reference figures only.

The combination of process modelling approach and validation of system performance data by simulation in this paper provide a basis for generalisation of the methodology in similar national scale research studies. The estimated data could be used as reference for preliminary feasibility studies of similar EPC applications.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how policymakers in different African countries negotiate the complex relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and poverty reduction. The authors adopt a novel perspective on this problem by considering how the broader policy discourse and associated mechanisms tend to address (or neglect) the multiple dimensions of poverty.

A textual analysis was conducted on selected ICT and poverty reduction policy documents from Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria, between 2005 and 2012.

The findings show that the focus of ICT policy interventions continues to be on increasing economic capabilities amongst the poor. There is recognition in all three cases that human, political and social capital are also important. The continued dominance of an economic focus within ICT policies is supported by a techno-deterministic policy discourse, which tends to downplay social factors. Meanwhile, poverty reduction strategies adopt a similarly techno-deterministic perspective on the role of ICTs in development.

While there is negligible evidence of methods that could enable a more contested, discursive policy environment, there are signs in South Africa and Uganda of a strong but relatively high-level (and largely rhetorical) interest in participatory approaches to ICT implementation which may, if appropriated fully by policymakers and their agents, lead to a more contextually anchored approach to ICT-supported poverty reduction around a diverse mix of poverty dimensions.

This paper has developed a novel framework for analysing the extent to which the multiple dimensions of poverty are being addressed within African ICT policy and whether the appropriate institutional arrangements and policy processes are being adopted to do this.