Search results

Nineteenth-century trends in abandonment to Mexico City's foundling home, the Casa de Niños Expósitos, reflected changing social, economic, and political enti tlements to family life. Even as liberal governments rewrote family law and reor ganized welfare, abandonment remained linked to constructs of family honor and ritual kinship datingfrom the colonial period. But by the late 1890s, migration and economic stress had created a new poor who relied on ritual kin to resist perma nent relinquishment of children to the state. The welfare bureaucracy, in turn, facilitated the acquisition of children by households of means through adoption. After the Mexican Revolution, the emerging revolutionary state centered child welfare on medicine and social hygiene but continued to rely on internment. With out social services providing material support to families, however, single mothers remained at risk for separation from their children.

In the face of widespread organizational change which some claim heralds the demise of bureaucracy, and in the context of the cultural and intellectual uncertainties of postmodernism, how do people in organizations respond? In this paper, we explore the role of `How To' books for managers in the elaboration of these responses. How To books may be read as part of a long-standing tradition of self-help which represents a form of the secularized Protestant ethic. However, in contemporary conditions it is also congruent with emerging forms of reflexivity and projects of the self. The How To books we discuss promise to yield control of the world around them to managers who learn to know and control their `inner-worlds'. They also offer techniques of self-presentation and self-appraisal which, we argue, are particularly congruent with the likely control problems within post-bureaucratic organizations.

In order to understand the nature of eighteenth-century Spanish political development, the highest organs of central government (Councils, Boards, Ministries, Secretariats, etcetera), and the organs of regional and provincial government ought to be examined together with institutional practices such as: hacienda (the management of the public Finances or Treasury); fiscalidad (the system of taxation) and fomento (the promotion and protection of public works, buildings, etcetera). The latter is one of the favourite terms of the Enlightenment and represents the government's intention to intervene directly not only in social organization but also in economic activity. Private law (derecho privado) is another aspect that can provide a key to the understanding of family relations and forms of ownership in their interaction with norms of ideological behaviour and implementation. Finally, it is also necessary to analyze the role played by the administrative agents, or civil servants, who manned the state bureaucracy.

AbstractThe U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) sholders some of the world's most daunting remediation responsibilities. Despite the technical expertise of thousands of people and the expenditure of billions of dollars, the efficiency of DOD remedial efforts too often is compromised by problems tied less to technology than to bureaucracy and administrative procedure. The result is lost time, lost money, and, increasingly, lost confidence by the American public. Some observers insist that to "fix the system" is to dismantle the DOD remedial program and replace it with a "new and improved version." In contrast to that belief, the author suggests several modifications to discrete program elements. These modifications are offered from a unique perspective of long‐term service within the public sector, combined with recent work in the private sector, and reflect hands‐on familiarity with the issues—and potential solutions—associated with DOD's remedial program.

Discusses multiple perspectives on the nature & extent of worldwide corruption. Whereas neoliberals commonly blame corruption on the expansion of bureaucracy, others attribute it to an erosion of public ethics & state legitimacy. Further, corruption is depicted as everything from a rapidly increasing epidemic to a natural aspect of human relations. Although politicians frequently hold the media responsible for the corruption hysteria, it is argued that increased awareness of corruption during the last decade results from a growth in the occurrence & diversity of corruption; corruption is most evident during political &/or economic crises & transformations when the power elite is vulnerable to public scrutiny. It is concluded that the globalization of economic & political resources has further complicated corruption, & contemporary corruption is characterized by quasi-legitimacy & is frequently masked behind a complicated range of political & economic relations. 2 Figures, 10 References. Adapted from the source document.

Ernest Gellner's model (1988) of the relation between production, coercion, & cognition is used to compare the social role of encyclopedias in early-modern Europe, China, & the Muslim world. A chronicle of the development of the European encyclopedia shows that the thematic style of the arrangement of knowledge developed prior to the dictionary, or alphabetical, style of arrangement. This diffusion of information was accomplished largely through entrepreneurial publishers responding to public demand. This commercialization of knowledge is an aspect of the commercialization of European society & culture generally. While the encyclopedic tradition in the Arab world encountered considerable religious opposition, Chinese encyclopedias were officially sanctioned, & organized to prepare candidates for the qualifying examinations for the imperial bureaucracy. The European encyclopedia & European cognitive growth were linked to productive development, while Chinese cognitive growth as embodied in the encyclopedia was linked to coercion. 54 References. H. von Rautenfeld

Analyzes the historical accuracy & predictions of Max Weber's The Russian Revolutions (1995 [1906]) in the context of current scholarship & debates. Weber's account of Russian society pits a despotic & insensitive czarist state against a budding capitalist liberalism. It has been criticized by recent Western historiography for its overreliance on liberal Russian publications & contacts in 1905/06. These sources led him to attribute too much power to the Russian bureaucracy, to overlook important developments in the budding public sphere (eg, the rise of volunteer associations), & more generally to a premature pessimism concerning the possibility of middle-class leadership in Russia's transition to a liberal constitutional democracy. However, it is maintained that Weber's analyses might still be useful in evaluating the prospects for democratic government in post-Soviet Russia, especially in his emphasis on the indispensability of the state bureaucracy's support for constitutional democratic reform. D. M. Smith

This paper explores the changes in the study of Public Administration during the 1980s It documents the continuing contribution of organisation theory in the study of central-local government relations and government-industry relations; the failure of state theory; the challenge of rational choice theory; and the meteoric rise of the new public management. Public Administration experienced contradictory trends. The institutionalist tradition underwent a long lingering decline and was replaced by many competing approaches. The institutional base of the subject was eroded in the 1980s as the subject was absorbed by business schools and research funding evaporated. The New Right was the wellspring of ideas for government reform while 'indifference' best describes official attitudes to Public Administration. But against this inauspicious back cloth, there were clear signs of intellectual vigour with important innovations in, for example, bureaumetrics, policy networks and rational choice models of bureaucracy.

Examines citizen participation as a commonality in maintaining &/or enhancing ethics in the public sector, using the examples of: (1) Japan's national police system & the ethics & values integral to it & the national culture; (2) eastern Berlin's human relations directors & boards & its foundation of new ethics; & (3) the Nigerian citizenry's reaction to the Weberian type of bureaucracy that encompasses Nigeria's massive public sector. Observations related to several theoretical issues concerning ethics in a comparative perspective are made. Adapted from the source document.

The task of a comparative approach should be to seek commonalities and principles that would be apposite to a wide range of nations and their organizations. Citizen participation is one commonality in maintaining and/or enhancing ethics in the public sector. In the Japanese case, the study focuses on the national police system and the ethics and values integral to it and the national culture. Owing to the radical change in government, eastern Berlin's human relations directors and boards provide a good case study of the foundation of new ethics in this inchoate democracy. The Nigerian citizenry's reaction to the Weberian type of bureaucracy that encompasses Nigeria's massive public sector is instructive as it sheds light on the significance of citizen participation in the people's attempt to maintain ethical norms among public servants. This article closes with some observations related to several theoretical issues concerning ethics in a comparative perspective.

International institutional cooperation is often difficult due to the level of bureaucracy that permeates policy & procedure structures. In the case of the rain forest, which constitutes an ecosystem that indirectly relates to all global environmental decisions, coordination between large structures will at times be very urgent. The process of coordination typically proceeds through an exchange of information, the creation of an international network, & international negotiations & partnership in specific projects. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment & Development has officially recognized the relationship between sustainable development & international cooperation, particularly between the UN & the Bretton Woods institutions. Other recent improvements include the UN & World Banks' participation in the Global Environmental Facility, which funds conservation projects in developing regions. It is suggested, however, that this process is still hampered by bureaucratic structures & the desire for institutional autonomy, which can drastically decrease reform implementation. 21 References. Adapted from the source document.

Measures of coordination and control techniques—including structural complexity, formalization, decentralization, and firm internal labor markets—are related to one another in theoretically anticipated ways for the diverse set of establishments in the National Organizations Study. Quite strong differences in structure between large and small organizations persist even after statistical adjustments for effects of contextual features, including auspices, environmental complexity, the presence of unions, and branch/subsidiary status. There are appreciable differences, net of size and complexity, in formalization and decentralization between public-sector, nonprofit, and private for-profit establishments. Branch/subsidiary establishments display higher levels of formalization and centralization than do comparable independent workplaces. The end of this article identifies five common profiles of coordination/control strategies. Two of these are variations on simple structure used predominantly in small, independent firms. The other three are varieties of bureaucracy found in large nonunionized, large unionized, and small branch establishments.

AbstractUnder what conditions do dominant policy ideas change in Japanese bureaucratic organizations? The answer is developed in reference to a rare empirical case in which critical information has been released about intra-bureaucracy politics, the Japanese Ministry of Finance during the 1969–1971 international monetary crisis. The paper contends, first, that the crisis did not automatically lead to a change of a dominant policy idea prevalent in the Ministry. A policy change occurred only after tactful leadership was exercised by the highest Ministry official. Second, dynamics of paralysis and change were strongly shaped by structures and norms characteristic of Japanese organizations. At a more general level, the case study shows that the exercise of policy-changing leadership vis-á-vis bureaucracies depends on two intra- governmental structure variables: institutional arrangements within and surrounding bureaucracies; and the level of information control exercised by bureaucracies.