Miki Malul, Yossi Hadad and Avner Ben‐Yair
The purpose of this paper is to measure and rank nation‐states' governance effectiveness and quality on a quantifying scientific basis, by means of data envelopment analysis.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to measure and rank nation‐states' governance effectiveness and quality on a quantifying scientific basis, by means of data envelopment analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The principles are first analyzed from a theoretical and normative standpoint, linking to earlier literature. One dimension of the approach is adding the equality in income distribution as an output. Another dimension boils down to environmental performance.
Findings
The addition of the Gini index affects the ranking of the developing countries in a more significant manner. Similar results are obtained when the authors add the environmental performance as an input. Another interesting result suggests that conventional ranking methods (i.e gross domestic product per capita or human development index) could be used for representing the country's efficiency only for developed countries.
Research limitations/implications
Future research may be aimed at applying the developed methodology to more countries, both developed and developing, as well as considering inclusion of additional ranking parameters.
Practical implications
The obtained procedure may be regarded as a comprehensive, holistic, mostly objective, and quantifiable method of ranking countries according to their governmental performance accomplishments. The addition of the Gini index and the environmental performance influences the ranking and is a significant improvement as compared to contemporary procedures.
Originality/value
The innovation in this paper is that the authors suggest to measure efficiency of countries not only by their income, but also, looking on wider aspects of efficiency as equity and environmental performance.
Details
Keywords
Barry M. Mitnick and Martin Lewison
Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of…
Abstract
Despite the existence of a variety of approaches to the understanding of behavioral and managerial ethics in organizations and business relationships generally, knowledge of organizing systems for fidelity remains in its infancy. We use halakha, or Jewish law, as a model, together with the literature in sociology, economic anthropology, and economics on what it termed “middleman minorities,” and on what we have termed the Landa Problem, the problem of identifying a trustworthy economic exchange partner, to explore this issue.
The article contrasts the differing explanations for trustworthy behavior in these literatures, focusing on the widely referenced work of Avner Greif on the Jewish Maghribi merchants of the eleventh century. We challenge Greif’s argument that cheating among the Magribi was managed chiefly via a rational, self-interested reputational sanctioning system in the closed group of traders. Greif largely ignores a more compelling if potentially complementary argument, which we believe also finds support among the documentary evidence of the Cairo Geniza as reported by Goitein: that the behavior of the Maghribi reflected their deep beliefs and commitment to Jewish law, halakha.
Applying insights from this analysis, we present an explicit theory of heroic marginality, the production of extreme precautionary behaviors to ensure service to the principal.
Generalizing from the case of halakha, the article proposes the construct of a deep code, identifying five defining characteristics of such a code, and suggests that deep codes may act as facilitators of compliance. We also offer speculation on design features employing deep codes that may increase the likelihood of production of behaviors consistent with terminal values of the community.