This book contains the collection of papers presented at the conference of the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group 8.2 "Information and Organizations." The conference took place during June 21-24, 2009 at the Universidade do Minho in Guimaraes, Portugal. The conference entitled "CreativeSME - The Role of IS in Leveraging the Intelligence and Creativity of SME's" attracted high-quality submissions from across the world. Each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double-blind review process. In addition to the 19 papers presented at the conference, there were five panels and four workshops, which covered a range of issues relevant to SMEs, creativity and information systems. We would like to show our appreciation of the efforts of our two invited keynote speakers, Michael Dowling of the University of Regensburg, Germany and Carlos Zorrinho, Portuguese coordinator of the Lisbon Strategy and the Technological Plan. The following organizations supported the conference through financial or other contributions and we would like to thank them for their engagement: "

In most developed countries immigration policy is high on the political agenda. But what happens to migrants after their arrival - integration and social cohesion - has received less attention, yet these conditions matter to migrants and to wider society. Drawing on fieldwork in London and eastern England, Moving up and getting on is the first accessible, yet comprehensive, text to critique the effectiveness of recent integration and social cohesion policies and calls for a stronger political leadership. Written for those interested in public policy, the book argues that if the UK is to be successful in managing migration, there needs to be greater emphasis on the social aspects of integration and opportunities for meaningful social contact between migrants and longer-settled residents, particularly in the workplace.

In the sixty-four days between November 3 and January 6, President Donald Trump and his allies fought to reverse the outcome of the vote. Focusing on six states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - Trump's supporters claimed widespread voter fraud. Caught up in this effort were scores of activists, lawyers, judges and state and local officials, among them Rohn Bishop, enthusiastic chairman of the Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, Republican Party, who would be branded a traitor for refusing to say his state's election was tainted, and Ruby Freeman, a part-time ballot counter in Atlanta who found herself accused of being a 'professional vote scammer' by the President. Working with a team of researchers and reporters, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague uncover never-before-told accounts from the election officials fighting to do their jobs amid outlandish claims and threats to themselves, their colleagues and their families. The Steal is an engaging, in-depth report on what happened during those crucial nine weeks and a portrait of the heroic individuals who did their duty and stood firm against the unprecedented, sustained attack on the US election system and ensured that every legal vote was counted and the will of the people prevailed.

At a time when issues of international engagement are again at the fore of foreign policy, this book tells the story of how America's apparatus for public diplomacy came to be in disarray. Using newly declassified archives and interviews with practitioners, Nicholas J. Cull has pieced together the story of the final decade in the life of the United States Information Agency. It is both a sorry tale of political neglect and missed opportunities and an account of what America's public diplomats were nevertheless able to accomplish. Key methods examined include Voice of America radio, exchanges, and cultural diplomacy. Major episodes include the transition of Eastern Europe to democracy, the role of public diplomacy in the First Gulf War and Kosovo Wars, the US interventions in Somalia and Haiti, and the build-up to the attacks of 9/11.

Profound social changes have made governance and political leadership more challenging than ever. The result is that politics in the democratic world faces a crisis in the 21st century. The revised edition of this highly successful text reassesses the gap between citizen expectation and the realities of government in light of new developments.

Public transport in low-income Asian (LIA) cities fails to meet people's mobility needs, generates high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and worsens social exclusion. Following successful Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects in Bogota and Curitiba, LIA countries promoted BRT in their large to medium-sized cities. However, the political and institutional structure distinctive to LIA cities makes their implementation difficult. This book investigates policy tensions by examining the planning and attempted implementation of BRT projects, taking Bandung and Surabaya in Indonesia as case studies. It analyses BRT to understand how power and communication gaps in institutional relationships between different actors at multiple levels of governance create conflict, and concludes that top-down policies and funding mechanisms cause tension in intergovernmental relationships. It also found that BRT solutions generated socio-political tension arising from the socio-economic realities and local political dynamics that shaped city structure, mobility patterns and capacity in resolving conflicts. The superimposed BRT solution generated discursive tension because conflicting discourses were not aligned with local economic, social, and environmental issues. The book highlights the need to take into consideration the vital role of local social and political actors, institutions and planning processes as they respond to and shape policies that are imposed by higher levels.

This book provides key strategic principles and best practices to guide the design and implementation of digital government strategies. It provides a series of recommendations and findings to think about IT applications in government as a platform for information, services and collaboration, and strategies to avoid identified pitfalls. Digital government research suggests that information technologies have the potential to generate immense public value and transform the relationships between governments, citizens, businesses and other stakeholders. However, developing innovative and high impact solutions for citizens hinges on the development of strategic institutional, organizational and technical capabilities. Thus far, particular characteristics and problems of the public sector organization promote the development of poorly integrated and difficult to maintain applications. For example, governments maintain separate applications for open data, transparency, and public services, leading to duplication of efforts and a waste of resources. The costs associated with maintaining such sets of poorly integrated systems may limit the use of resources to future projects and innovation. This book provides best practices and recommendations based on extensive research in both Mexico and the United States on how governments can develop a digital government strategy for creating public value, how to finance digital innovation in the public sector, how to building successful collaboration networks and foster citizen engagement, and how to correctly implement open government projects and open data. It will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, students, and public sector IT professionals that work in the design and implementation of technology-based projects and programs.

During China's Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong's "rustication program" resettled 17 million urban youths, known as "sent downs," to the countryside for manual labor and socialist reeducation. This book, the most comprehensive study of the program to be published in either English or Chinese to date, examines the mechanisms and dynamics of state craft in China, from the rustication program's inception in 1968 to its official termination in 1980 and actual completion in the 1990s. Rustication, in the ideology of Mao's peasant-based revolution, formed a critical component of the Cultural Revolution's larger attack on bureaucrats, capitalists, the intelligentsia, and "degenerative" urban life. This book assesses the program's origins, development, organization, implementation, performance, and public administrative consequences. It was the defining experience for many Chinese born between 1949 and 1962, and many of China's contemporary leaders went through the rustication program. The author explains the lasting impact of the rustication program on China's contemporary administrative culture, for example, showing how and why bureaucracy persisted and even grew stronger during the wrenching chaos of the Cultural Revolution. She also focuses on the special difficulties female sent-downs faced in terms of work, pressures to marry local peasants, and sexual harassment, predation, and violence. The author's parents were both sent downs, and she was able to interview over fifty former sent downs from around the country, something never previously accomplished. China's Sent-Down Generation demonstrates the rustication program's profound long-term consequences for China's bureaucracy, for the spread of corruption, and for the families traumatized by this authoritarian social experiment. The book will appeal to academics, graduate and undergraduate students in public administration and China studies programs, and individuals who are interested in China's Cultural Revolution era.

The Russian State and Administration provides a rich and innovative assessment of Russian bureaucracy from 1881 to the present. From a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the work assesses the organization, personnel, and practices of officialdom across three different Russian regimes tsarist, Soviet and postcommunist.

Faced with falling social cohesion governments have sought to revitalise society by trying to reconstruct local communities, civil society and citizenship. As a result, civil society is increasingly brought within the realm of public management, subject to accountability and embedded in hierarchies the impact and origins of which this book explores

Stories of government management failures often make the headlines, but quietly much gets done as well. What makes the difference? Ira Goldstein offers wisdom about how to lead and succeed in the federal realm, even during periods when the political climate is intensely negative, based on his decades of experience as a senior executive at two major government consulting firms and as a member of the US federal government's Senior Executive Service. The Federal Management Playbook coaches the importance of always keeping four key concepts in mind when planning for success: goals, stakeholders, resources, and time frames. Its chapters address how to effectively motivate government employees, pick the right technologies, communicate and negotiate with powerful stakeholders, manage risks, get value from contractors, foster innovation, and more. Goldstein makes lessons easy to apply by breaking each chapter's plans into three strategic phases: create an offensive strategy, execute your plan effectively, and play a smart defense. Additional tips describe how career civil servants and political appointees can get the most from one another, advise consultants on providing value to government, and help everyone better manage ever-present oversight. The Federal Management Playbook is a must-read for anyone working in the government realm and for students who aspire to public service.

The Oxford Handbook of Health Economics provides an accessible and authoritative guide to health economics, intended for scholars and students in the field, as well as those in adjacent disciplines including health policy and clinical medicine. The chapters stress the direct impact of health economics reasoning on policy and practice, offering readers an introduction to the potential reach of the discipline.
Contributions come from internationally-recognized leaders in health economics and reflect the worldwide reach of the discipline. Authoritative, but non-technical, the chapters place great emphasis on the connections between theory and policy-making, and develop the contributions of health economics to problems arising in a variety of institutional contexts, from primary care to the operations of health insurers. The volume addresses policy concerns relevant to health systems in both developed and developing countries. It takes a broad perspective, with relevance to systems with single or multi-payer health insurance arrangements, and to those relying predominantly on user charges; contributions are also included that focus both on medical care and on non-medical factors that affect health. Each chapter provides a succinct summary of the current state of economic thinking in a given area, as well as the author's unique perspective on issues that remain open to debate. The volume presents a view of health economics as a vibrant and continually advancing field, highlighting ongoing challenges and pointing to new directions for further progress.

Analysis of why politicians are driven to create an independent judicial institution with the authority to overrule their decisions. It focuses on a country with no tradition of independent judicial review - Russia. History does not support an independent judiciary here; yet a potentially powerful constitutional court has existed for 20 years.

This volume is a follow up to its highly influential predecessor, "Options for Britain," which in 1995 brought together a leading group of academics and policy experts to assess the key economic, social and constitutional policy options for Britain.
A decade on and the British political world is very different. Much of the analysis in "Options for Britain" has become accepted wisdom, and many of the policy proposals have become reality. However, there is also a sense of deja vu. The Labour government has been in power for a decade and governments find it difficult to refresh themselves in power, as the legacy of their own decisions build up. It is in these historical moments that outside thinking such as that embodied within "Options for a New Britain" can have a decisive influence, helping to inform the public and key commentators, and to provide a source of ideas and inspiration.
Leading policy experts examine what has happened over the last decade across a broad range of key policy areas, what are the current challenges and what options might an incoming government- regardless of political persuasion- have to address them.

Regulation has become a central aspect of contemporary governance as a result of public management reforms over recent decades. Yet, for all its ubiquity, the ideas of regulation have become increasingly contested. Key failures in the regulation of areas such as financial markets, nuclear power and food safety have revealed limitations in strategies which were once praised as offering superior problem-solving solutions. This major new text introduces the issues which affect the design and operation of regulatory regimes, and assesses the different regulatory strategies which can be used to deal with real-world challenges. In doing so, it examines the most important areas in regulatory policy and reform, including rule-making and enforcement, better regulation, infrastructure regulation, international regulation and risk regulation. Throughout the book, Martin Lodge and Kai Wegrich discuss a range of hypothetical and real-world examples to illustrate key issues, options and trade-offs, and to encourage readers to think critically and creatively about the regulatory options which are available. Drawing on the most up-to-date research, this text provides a clear and useful toolkit for thinking analytically about regulation.

On January 2009, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. The memorandum declares the new Administration's commitment to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government and establishing a system linking three principles: transparency, public participation and collaboration. Since then, federal agencies in the United States and public administrations around the world have embarked on open government initiatives and have worked to redefine their relationship with citizens and with each other. On September 20th, 2011, eight governments gathered in New York City to launch the Open Government Partnership, a new multilateral initiative to promote open government. The benefits attributed to open government are many and by no means universally shared. They include the claims that open government leads to more effective decision making and services, safeguards against corruption, enables public scrutiny, and promotes citizens' trust in government. However, the speed of events and pressure to implement has given rise to confusion and ambiguity. Although many of the initiatives have been based on opening data and on promoting open action, governments have followed different directions and interpretations when it has come to implement them and development of open government has become unequal and heterogeneous. This book provides a comprehensive study of recent major developments of open government around the world, and analyzes the importance of open government efforts for public governance, making it of interest to academics and practitioners worldwide.

The contributors to this edited volume analyze and compare different kinds of citizens' initiatives, including both full scale initiatives and agenda initiatives, in eleven European democracies and the EU. The book provides a comprehensive account of the practices of citizens' initiatives in each case, including a description of the historical background of the citizens' initiatives and the political system in which they operate. Particular attention is paid to the institutional design of citizens' initiatives which largely explains how they function in different political contexts. Citizens Initiatives in Europe sheds light on issues relevant to democracy, for example, how citizens' initiatives influence patterns of political agenda-setting in representative democracies and how they contribute to the aspirations of participatory democracy.

Various e-strategies have been developed since the late '90s in an attempt to describe the governmental vision for administrative and for societal change, the objectives and priorities with regard to the development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at national and at supranational levels. Terms such as the European "Information Society", the U.S. "Information Highways" and the Korean and Chinese "Informatization" try to describe social transformation that occurs due to the ICT, and to determine means with which governments will capitalize the ICT to improve social life and to support economic growth. This book focuses on the e-strategic management approaches that are followed worldwide, addresses the gaps that appear between e-strategic updates, and presents alternative strategic management methods adopted or to use strategic management methods as a means to describe the e-strategic evolution in their geographic areas. Each chapter evaluates e-strategic management approaches, to define multi-criteria decision-making systems for e-strategic transformation and Indicative methods for e-strategic analysis. This book also illustrates experiences from national and supranational cases, which come from different geographic areas regarding e-strategic planning and management, and demonstrates e-strategic initiation and development across different countries and continents, and the association between policies and ICT. It also seeks to perform a systematic analysis of various representative cases, in order to capture the realized e-Strategic transformation. It will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers in public administration, management, and information technology.

This collection improves our understanding of the problems associated to accountability in regulatory governance, focusing on audiences, controls and responsibilities in the politics of regulation and through a systematic exploration of the various mechanisms through which accountability in regulatory governance

"Stepping through Troubled Times "is a cry in the wilderness. It cuts through the media hype and fear mongering to show why Americans must stand strong. Biblical truth reveals a clear parallel between political liberalism and the lost nature of man as evidenced by fear of global catastrophe and widespread religious hypocrisy. A subtle tyranny has grown out of failure to accept responsibility for our own actions and developed into a cry for government to provide all our needs. Dr. Nelsen focuses the Word of God upon both the political unrest and our personal failure of faith which has led America down the destructive path towards socialism.

The reason for the "Stepping through Troubled Times "is two-fold:
(1) Confusion of Americans: Patriotic Americans and Christians in general are confused by the media hype and fear-filled news reports that inundate our daily lives. Political correctness and hypocrisy is pervasive in our culture. Discerning truth has become much more difficult in recent years. Moral relativism has replaced the awareness of right and wrong. Immoral behavior is more acceptable in this generation than ever before. Tolerance of evil has become a requirement, and Christian values are seen as bigotry.
(2) The depth of our trouble: Most Americans are unaware of the extent of socialist ideology in our government and society. Soft tyranny has invaded our thinking and legislative action has restricted the fundamental freedoms envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Our God-given liberties have been codified into law for government to provide. God has been taken out of the picture, and America as a nation is drifting rapidly into a Marxist ideology.

Over the past two decades, there has been a paradigm shift in public administration and public sector accounting around the world, with increasing emphasis on good governance and accountability processes for government entities. This is all driven both by economic rationalism, and by changing expectations of what governments can and should do. An important aspect of this accountability and governance process is the establishment and effective functioning of a Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a key component of democratic accountability. With contributions from renowned scholars and practitioners, and using case studies from around the world, this research-based collection examines the rationales for current roles of the PACs and explores the links between PACs and National Audit Offices. It also compares PAC practices from developing and developed countries such as Africa, Asia, Pacific islands, and Europe with both Westminster and non-Westminster models of government. This will be valuable reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students in public management, public accounting and public sector governance.

This important new work updates the arguments of Christopher Hood's classic work "The Tools of Government" for the twenty-first century. Revised and updated throughout and drawing its examples from a wide range of places and contexts, it includes substantially increased coverage of how government gets information and an assessment of how the tools available to government have changed over time--especially with new developments in digital technologies.

The UK public sector faces an unprecedented long-term challenge. A decade of plenty in the public finances has been followed by a decade and more of austerity. Public services are undergoing long-term annual spending cuts even as demographic changes create soaring demand in health, education and adult care. The challenge for the public sector is how to radically transform and adapt to the new era while avoiding the mistakes of previous reform programmes. In this first comprehensive 'bird's eye' account of public sector reform supported by studies from over 400 official sources, the book offers an invaluable practical guide to all those in the public, private and voluntary sectors grappling with the twin challenges of public spending austerity and the pressure to transform public services and ensure they are 'fit for purpose.'