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INTRODUCTION E-government initiatives embracing new Web technologies as tools for public service delivery and democratic participation have become a key component of public sector reform worldwide. The Bush Administration, for [...]

This paper critically examines the recent reinventing government movement from an institutional perspective, focusing on principal-agent problems in management and political contexts of public agencies. based on this perspective, it analyzes the problems and prospects of the National Performance Review in the United States and suggests that an institutional perspective can prove useful in redesigning government - not by achieving a single set of insights common to all contexts, but rather by focusing attention to particular situations and institutional contexts.

The Taiwanese ruling party Kuomintang's efforts to resolve environmental protests reflect its policies toward democratization. The protests, which are likened to the NIMBY syndrome, have been addressed with consideration to citizens' rights to a healthier environment. The regime has also managed to protect its financial interests in industrial polluters through effective conflict resolution. Meanwhile, the Kuomintang has used its client-based political machinery to meet the challenges that democratization entails.

Differences between organizational types within sectors are likely to be more significant determinants of employee commitment than the presumed sectoral distinctions between public and private. This was gleaned from an examination of the possible relationships between different types of commitment and a variety of organizational settings. A set of propositions linking the four organizational types of production, procedural, craft and coping organizations to different types of organizational commitment were developed to prove that different types of organizations need to rely on different types of commitment to ensure favorable performance and that managerial actions need to be consistent with these needs to be effective.

What is the role of commitment in collective action? Peter J. Robertson and Shui-Yan Tang examine how this question is addressed from two major theoretical perspectives - organizational behavior and rational choice. The two perspectives differ in the way they define the concept of commitment and in their foci and assumptions regarding the role of commitment in collective action. Despite these differences, both perspectives A set of cooperative norms can be established and emphasize the importance of informal structures and mechanism for generating and maintaining commitment. Robertson and Tang compare the two perspectives with respect to three general strategies - social processes, Leadership, and structural design - for fostering commitment in organizational settings. These ideas are then used to analyze the role of commitment in school-based management. The authors conclude by discussing the relative merits of the two theoretical perspectives and by identifying several research questions derived from their comparison., Powerful environmental forces are transforming the way organizations operate. In particular, forces such as innovations in information technology, demographic changes, and globalization (Drucker, 1988; Naisbitt, 1982; Peters, 1990; Toffler, 1990) [...]

The article reviews three major controversies in the microfinance field: vehicles, technologies, and performance assessments for financial service delivery. Then it proposes that these controversies be resolved by a perspective [...]

The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future by Elizabeth C. Economy. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2004. 272 pp. Cloth, $29.95,' paper, $17.95. In the past decade, [...]

The factors that affect the enforcement of environmental regulations by local agencies are investigated by comparing the experiences in Delhi, India, Taipei, Taiwan, and Guangzhou, China. All three cities are situated in rapidly growing areas where they faced air, water and noise pollution problems produced by automobiles, industrial production and increasing populations. The results indicate that the commitment from the national government to local regulatory enforcement remains ineffective because of unfavorable conditions.

This paper examines the potential role of civic environmental NGOs in China's democratisation. Based on interviews with 31 NGO officials, the paper examines the origins, structures, and functions of civic environmental NGOs in China. It also examines how various political and resource constraints have shaped their development. While having made progress in organising educational campaigns and specific conservation projects, civic environmental NGOs have been less successful in influencing government decisions and official behaviours. Most recently, some NGOs have made limited progress on these fronts by maintaining a largely non-oppositional stance towards government and by utilising various formal and information channels for influencing government decisions. NGO leaders will have to negotiate with different party-state entities in defining their precise roles in the political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]