Donijo Robbins

Using Capital Budgeting for Managing E-Government Expenditures

Abstract This article offers government officials, particularly local officials, a plan to finance their technological infrastructure. Our proposition of a fee-based financing structure rests on the guiding principles of capital financing, primarily the principle of equity.

Auction off the farm: signaling, politics, and economic development

Local public officials rely on tax and non-tax incentive packages to develop their economies. No conclusive evidence supports the economic improvement incentives afford. We investigate, with an experimental approach, the political reasons public officials use tax incentives. The experiment uses simulation gaming to model local economic development as an auction, in that way permitting us to compare the impact that motives, goals, and contexts have on outcomes. Our findings suggest that the majority of economic development competitors fall victim to the “winner’s curse”-overestimating and overbidding the potential payoff for business development.

Comments on "Getting to the Roots of Change: Performance Management and Organizational Culture"

As image builders, leaders must demonstrate to their stakeholders that they are serious about changing the culture. The stakeholders of the Finance Department the citizens of New York City-needed assurances that something was being done to take on the existing culture of corruption. Martha Starks belief was that a change in culture from within the organization would exude transparency and accountability, ultimately sending a new message to the citizens. Stark was serious and started strong. Her goal was to loosen the noose of bu reaucracy through performance measures, which would create a new system of transparency and accountability. To begin to sell the idea, she hired a sidekick and put in some serious face time with her employees. Stark embraced one type of management reform, hired another sidekick to help implement it, and subsequently hired consultants to manage the change. Reform efforts abound and decision makers are led to believe, through little evidence of success, that the new reform is better than yesterdays reform. In fact, the new reforms that emerge are often recycled old reforms with a twist-such as New Coke or Pepsi with lemon. The Performance Management Movement of the 1950s, when dollars were matched to production, became the New Performance Management Movement starting in the 1990s, which linked dollars to outcomes. SMART is no different. In fact, this system goes beyond performance measure ment: SMART makes every employee identify and rationalize his or her position and justify how the position fits within the organization. It is not the responsibility of the line workers to determine why they work for the organization. All employees have job descriptions, which may evolve over time, but organizations do not hire people and then ask questions about what their jobs are and how they fulfill the organizations mission. The organizations management team creates, rationalizes, and links each position to the mission, values, and objectives, and the workers carry out that plan by doing their assigned tasks. Unfortunately, the common belief among many managers, agency heads, and

Competition and economic development efforts in the garden state: perceptions of municipal public officials

Competition for private investment, it has been argued, is often the fiercest between neighboring cities or cities within the same region. One result of maintaining a competitive edge (stimulating private investment) over other localities, is that local public officials rely on tax and non-tax incentive packages. If this is true, it seems that municipal public officials in New Jersey would perceive this competition and offer incentive packages given their location near major cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. This article explores the perceptions of local public officials in New Jersey about competition and the impact of tax and non-tax incentives in the context of population, unemployment, income, geographic location, and government structure.