Justyna Bandola-Gill, Sotiria Grek and Matteo Ronzani
The visualization of ranking information in global public policy is moving away from traditional “league table” formats and toward dashboards and interactive data displays. This…
Abstract
The visualization of ranking information in global public policy is moving away from traditional “league table” formats and toward dashboards and interactive data displays. This paper explores the rhetoric underpinning the visualization of ranking information in such interactive formats, the purpose of which is to encourage country participation in reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals. The paper unpacks the strategies that the visualization experts adopt in the measurement of global poverty and wellbeing, focusing on a variety of interactive ranking visualizations produced by the OECD, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the ‘Our World in Data’ group at the University of Oxford. Building on visual and discourse analysis, the study details how the politically and ethically sensitive nature of global public policy, coupled with the pressures for “decolonizing” development, influence how rankings are visualized. The study makes two contributions to the literature on rankings. First, it details the move away from league table formats toward multivocal interactive layouts that seek to mitigate the competitive and potentially dysfunctional pressures of the display of “winners and losers.” Second, it theorizes ranking visualizations in global public policy as “alignment devices” that entice country buy-in and seek to align actors around common global agendas.
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Morten Lund Poulsen, Per Nikolaj Bukh and Karina Skovvang Christensen
This paper studies how performance funding of education is perceived by principals, teachers and administrative staff and management. The dysfunctionality of performance measures…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies how performance funding of education is perceived by principals, teachers and administrative staff and management. The dysfunctionality of performance measures often reflects how the measures prevent an organisation from achieving its goals. This paper proposes that perceptions of dysfunctionality can be analysed by separating the perceptions of the programme's intentions, of the school-level actions and of the outcomes for students.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, school management, staff specialists and top management in a large Danish municipality when outcome-based funding was introduced.
Findings
The performance-funding programme affected teaching by changing educational priorities. Different perceptions of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes fuelled diverging responses. Although the performance measure was generally considered incomplete, interviewees' perceptions of the financial incentivisation and the dysfunctionality of actions depended on interpretations of the incentivisation and student-related outcomes of the programme.
Research limitations/implications
Dysfunctionality can be contested; the interpretations of the intention of a performance-funding programme affect the perceived dysfunctionality of reactions. Both technical characteristics of funding schemes and administrators' and principals' mediating roles are essential for the consequences of performance funding.
Originality/value
The paper examines conditions for dysfunctionality of performance measures. We demonstrate that actions can be perceived as dysfunctional because of a measurement's intentions, actions themselves and the actions' outcomes. Further, the paper illustrates how the reception of performance funding depends on how consequences are enacted based on educators' interpretations of the (dys)functionality of intentions, actions and outcomes.
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Martin Powell and Michele Castelli
The purpose of this paper is to critically explore hybrid organisations in health care. It examines the broad literature on hybrids focusing on issues of perspective, definition…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically explore hybrid organisations in health care. It examines the broad literature on hybrids focusing on issues of perspective, definition, sub-type and level. It then presents the results of the literature review of hybrid health care organisations, exploring which organisations have been viewed as hybrids, and then examining studies in more detail with respect to the research questions.
Design/methodology/approach
It critically explores the literature on hybrid organisations in health care through a structured search.
Findings
It is found that a wide variety of hybrid forms exist, but not clear what they combine or how they combine it. However, the level of depth from some of these studies is rather limited, with little consensus on definition, and relatively few drawing on any explicit conceptual perspective. It seems that the wider hybridity literatures have limited influence of studies of hybrid health care organisations.
Originality/value
As far as the authors are aware, this paper is the first attempt to critically review the literature on hybrid organisations in health care. It is concluded that it is difficult to define and explain hybrid health care organisations. Health care hybrids appear to be chameleons as they appear to be able to change their form to different observers.
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Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption that shapes the way it recognizes and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby…
Abstract
Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption that shapes the way it recognizes and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby constructs boundaries and frames permeability in terms of what counts, is accounted for, as being inside and outside of the organization. Yet there are different possible entity concepts reflecting different values about the relationship between the organizational entity and society. This essay considers four problem areas in which these values and the entity–society relationship are at stake within financial accounting: the problem of control within group accounting; accounting for externalities; the economization of public organizations; and the construction of organizational actorhood. These four problematics suggest that financial accounting, its boundary determining assumptions, and the forms of organizational permeability it permits are deeply intertwined and subject to continuous pressure for change.
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Tim Pullen, David Smith, Jacquelyn Humphrey and Karen Benson
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the practices, processes and expertise embedded within Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) distinctively mediate the tensions between outcome…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how the practices, processes and expertise embedded within Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) distinctively mediate the tensions between outcome payers’ competing and contradictory programmatic discourses.
Design/methodology/approach
We use qualitative research methods and employ concepts drawn from the governmentality literature to analyse interviews with SIB outcome payers.
Findings
SIBs are shown to challenge the degree of negative influence of biopolitics, neoliberalism and financialization by highlighting a broader and more holistic set of influences. SIB operations pre-empt and counteract perceived risks and are refined through a “learning by doing” effect. In contrast to other approaches to funding social interventions, the SIB structure attributes and independently validates outcomes. Payments to investors are based on the achievement of outcomes and are funded by the outcome payers. SIBs’ operational processes allow the responsibilities of the various parties to be explicitly assigned and contracted. The interests are aligned, yet the cultural differences harnessed.
Originality/value
This paper is one of the first to apply governmentality concepts to SIBs. By focusing on outcome payers, the paper provides new perspectives on the practices, processes and expertise of governing and the programmatic discourses of governing, as well as their relationship. The insights offered are supported by one of the largest and most diverse empirical SIB samples including 34 interviews where 43 individuals reflect on their experiences across 32 unique outcome payer organisations.
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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the opportunities and challenges provided by the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), and particularly the prospects for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the opportunities and challenges provided by the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), and particularly the prospects for enhanced public accountability of policing as a result. It considers how the new accountability framework might work in practice and in comparison with the existing arrangements of Police Authorities and highlights the key accountability relationships on which success is likely to depend.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a range of published research on public accountability and applies the key ideas to the particular context of police governance and accountability.
Findings
While the plans for directly elected PCCs have proved controversial, the overall view is that the new approach to police governance deserves its chance because it seems to offer at least some potential for stronger public accountability. Much depends on the three key accountability relationships and probably it will take some time for clear, significant and lasting impacts to show themselves. But in four years time, when the next round of elections are due, the nature of the challenge of injecting more effective public accountability into policing will be better understood.
Originality/value
The paper offers conceptual insights on the governance and accountability framework for policing, both as currently exists and as is intended with directly elected PCCs. It also highlights the three key accountability relationships which lie at the heart of the new arrangements and upon which success, to a large extent, will depend.
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Per Nikolaj Bukh and Lars Grubbe Dietrichson
The purpose of this paper is threefold: to investigate why and how companies in voluntary networks engage in performance benchmarking; how requirements for a standardised chart of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is threefold: to investigate why and how companies in voluntary networks engage in performance benchmarking; how requirements for a standardised chart of accounts are handled; and what the role of regulatory pressure is.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of an established group of six district-heating companies. The data sources are semi-structured interviews, observations and documents.
Findings
Both the forthcoming re-regulation of the district-heating sector and aims to improve efficiency were motivating the collaboration among the firms. An interpretation of common accounting rules can be negotiated in a collaborative network. The benchmarking model was embedded in routines internally in firms to facilitate learning and knowledge exchange, but it was also used to legitimise current operations.
Research limitations/implications
As the paper is based on a case study of a specific project, the issues discussed in the paper should be further investigated in similar firms being exposed to regulation.
Practical implications
Harmonisation of accounting data are of immense importance when benchmarking performance, but discretion in interpretations of data and results must be handled. Co-existence with existing rules and procedures should be allowed.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to research understanding the role of collaboration in voluntary networks when benchmarking is implemented.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide space for the consideration of alternatives to the dominant conceptions of corruption and its measurement.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide space for the consideration of alternatives to the dominant conceptions of corruption and its measurement.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper provides an in‐depth secondary source analysis within a post‐colonial framework.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how public administration can be subverted to the agenda of business by the way the measurement and management of African “corruption” is manipulated to serve Western economic interests. The conclusion reached is that the most popular measure of corruption, Transparency International's (TIs) corruption perception index (CPI), is a flawed instrument, capable only of calculating vague proxies of corruption. The index is oblivious to cultural variance and is business‐centric in style and philosophy.
Originality/value
The paper represents one of the first attempts to expose the business serving purpose of TI's CPI. A fresh approach to corruption is advocated around two principles; corruption cannot be comprehended outside the experience, nor can it submit to empirical investigation. A new corruption‐fighting role for the African Union is envisaged.
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Stuart Cooper and Suzana Grubnic
The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic relationship between formal and non-formal processes of accountability in a public services context.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic relationship between formal and non-formal processes of accountability in a public services context.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a case study of the impact of the Health and Social Care Act (2012) on the practices of Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) members. It draws upon multiple data sources, including in-depth interviews with the members, comprehensive archival data published by the HWB (2011–2019), and observations of HWB public meetings. We utilise the concept of dynamic duality (Li, 2008) to further theorise the relationship between formal and non-formal processes of accountability and how they mutually transform one another.
Findings
The case illustrates the role of formal and non-formal processes of accountability at a HWB in England. Moreover, the case study reveals the relationship and interaction between the formal and non-formal accountability processes and how they change and transform each other over time. We find that whilst non-formal accountability processes were strengthened by a historical legacy of partnership working, over time the dynamics at play led to the development of formal accountability processes through more sophisticated performance systems, which in turn transformed non-formal accountability processes.
Originality/value
The paper presents a more holistic conceptualisation than articulated in prior accountability literature, dynamic duality, on the relationship between formal and non-formal accountability processes. Through application of this conceptualisation to a HWB in England, the paper spotlights the inter-relationship between formal and non-formal processes of accountability, and how they have the potential to transform each over an extended time-period.
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The paper aims to examine how the measurement of African “corruption” has been manipulated to serve western economic interests.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to examine how the measurement of African “corruption” has been manipulated to serve western economic interests.
Design/methodology/approach
In depth secondary source analysis within a post‐colonial framework.
Findings
The most popular measure of corruption, Transparency International's corruption perception index (CPI), is a flawed instrument. Capable only of calculating proxies of corruption, the measure is oblivious to cultural variance and is business‐centric in style. The CPI is embraced in good faith by African governments and donor organisations oblivious to its deeper purpose of serving western economic and geo‐political interests under the guise of weeding out something falsely portrayed as a universal negative.
Practical implications
The paper will assist efforts to ground the anti‐corruption effort in the realities of Africa.
Originality/value
The paper is part of a minority scholarship that seeks to provide space for the consideration of alternatives to the dominant conceptions of corruption and its measurement.