John D. Montgomery

Running on the spot? A review of twenty years of research on the management of human resources in comparative and international perspective

Research using a comparative and international perspective on the management of human resources is examined, drawing on articles published in leading human resource management, management/organizational behaviour and related social science journals between 1977 and 1997. In total a little under 2 per cent of the articles under review focused on the management of human resources in a comparative and international perspective. The largest group of these articles was comparative in nature (44 per cent), followed by those with an international perspective (35 per cent). A smaller number adopted a combined approach (17 per cent) and a few were separately classified as foreign national studies (4 per cent). Over time, there has been some progress made in terms of the number of articles published and the scope of topics covered. However, many of the articles displayed similar shortcomings to those noted in earlier reviews of cross-national management/organization studies: in particular, an over-reliance on a sma...

Probing Managerial Behavior: Image and Reality in Southern Africa

Abstract In the belief that Africas political and cultural environment is likely to have unique effects on its administrative systems, many Western observers have expected to find correspondingly unique managerial behavior in that part of the world. These expectations take on a systematic quality that is often thought to characterize African management. First of all, since the concept of public interest is only beginning to emerge in these newly-independent countries, African managers are expected to be primarily motivated by hopes of personal or tribal gain rather than improved institutional performance. And because the bureaucratic organizations themselves were bequeathed by the imperial colonists and thus do not follow local institutional traditions, American and Europeans expect to find them preoccupied with internal problems to the neglect of larger goals and purposes. Third, because many Westerners are somewhat baffled by the politics of Pan-Africanism and African socialism, they expect to find bureaucratic behavior to be somewhat unrealistic because the system is thought to be suffused with ideology and political fantasy. Then because they understand the goals and functions of the private sector better than those of the public or parastatal sector, they expect corporation managers to be more entrepreneurial and more efficient than their counterparts in public and parastatal organizations. And finally, because of the political uncertainties on the continent, African managers are expected to be unusually risk averse, especially when it comes to adopting institutional innovations. This article draws upon data gathered in a recent study of management in nine Southern African countries to investigate these five images. The results of the investigation show that managerial behavior in Africa is less exotic than these expectations, though they also provide some useful warning signals to European and American development advisors who may be tempted to recommend standard administrative reforms as a remedy for all shortcomings.

Popular participation in Development administration

Most discussions of participation treat it as a political process, involving such dramatic decisions of government as choosing leaders, determining the scope of government action, assessing priorities and programs, and expressing institutional preferences. The degree of participation in such issues is one of the major indicators of democracy. Indeed, participation in decisions of this importance is a constitutional, or at least a major legislative, problem. But there is another range of participatory issues which, though less dramatic, we consider especially relevant to development administrators. It involves an equally important dimension of government: the relationship of career administrators to the public and the public interest. Our emphasis will be on popular participation in governmentally sponsored economic development and social action programs. The locus will be both the United States and Third World countries. We are concerned with participation by the

The Populist Front in Rural Development: Or Shall We Eliminate the Bureaucrats and Get on with the Job?

Distrust of the bureaucracy as an instrument of progress is nothing new. But it is flourishing with extraordinary vigor in this era when little else is taken for granted. Waves of suspicion now pervade the American domestic scene; and on the international front both the World Bank and the UN specialized agencies are now encountering the same skepticism that has already overtaken the once-exuberant U.S. foreign aid program. There is a fashionable turn in the old populism that rejects, in the United States and abroad, technicians and administrators, along with politicians and judges. The current populism began on the international scene after social reforms initiated by planning agencies and aid donors, and entrusted to technicians and administrators, simply failed to materialize. High expectations of the 1960s were frustrated both in Latin America and Southeast Asia as the results of their development and reform activities were examined and appraised. Technocratic approaches to a better quality of life, relying on guided democracy and planned social change, are now pejorative terms. The experiments in political modernization and administrative reform that flourished during the past fifteen years have produced political hypertension and administrative disillusionment. The public has begun to reject centralized authority whether located in national capitals or in city halls. One solution is the current effort to seek more effective and thorough-going means of involving citizens in decisions made and actions carried out in their name. International banks and foreign aid agencies are attempting to export demand politics and popular participation along with capital and technology. It would seem that the only good bureaucrats are those charged with the task of disarming, or at least unmasking, other bureaucrats.

Great policies : strategic innovations in Asia and the Pacific Basin

This work describes 11 strategic innovations designed to deal with problems that transcend the normal boundaries of government action. Examples range from the Marshall Plan in the United States to the exploration of community natural resource management in Latin America.

When local participation helps

Programs for the delivery of public goods and services are often more effective if the public participates in their planning and execution. Not all such activities benefit from public participation, however. Activities whose effectiveness most benefits from such participation are those whose local effects are variable; those that have to be made frequently but not routinely; those that require quick responses from the public; and those whose impact calls for major changes in the behavior of the public. Experience with irrigation projects in developing countries is consistent with this “sensitivity hypothesis,” but the hypothesis is probably applicable to the management of other goods and services such as social welfare, education, public health, and transportation.

Environmental management as a third-world problem

Of the three major sources of environmental deterioration — CFCs, carbon dioxide, and deforestation and land degradation — only the first two can be eased by industrial policies alone. The second and third also require changes in mass behavior, especially in pre-industrial countries. In order to encourage action on the part of their governments, international agencies have supported the preparation of more than fifty country environmental profiles. The next steps will require a careful analysis of current direct and indirect policies influencing human behavior toward the environment. This article describes the ‘policy environment of environmental policies’ in third-world countries and suggests a strategy for creating a coherent body of incentives to motivate environment-supporting public behavior.

Administering to the Poor (or, if We Can’t Help Rich Dictators, What Can We do for the Poor?)

Perhaps, the greatest role bureaucracies can plan is to find ways of extending their own reach: to recruit, train, supervise, and deploy paraprofessionals; and to use their knowledge of legal requirements for the management of public resources to mobilize local self-help efforts in the urban and rural slums; to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of voluntary groups willing to work with the poor; and, most important of all, to help organizations that already exist among the poor, giving them guidance in their own internal management, arbitrating among rival claimants when necessary, and providing them with information about the resources that might be available for their own further development. They can also act as links between these informal organizations in the field and the political and administrative leadership at the center, to the benefit of both.

Administration of human rights

It is puzzling that although human rights pervade nearly all actions that affect the public, so little attention is devoted to their administration. The absence of books, chapters or even courses describing human rights administration is a silent reproach to our profession. To suggest how such a study might proceed, this article considers three questions: (1) how rights like those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are converted to policies; (2) how human experiences can suggest priorities in their administration; and (3) how to improve the performance of the ‘virtual bureaucracy’ that is carrying the related administrative responsibilities. Serious studies of human rights administration must deal with three critical problems: their complexity as they infuse other public policy issues; their universality as they interact at all levels of public and private society; and their ubiquity, which renders coherent bureaucratic structures and reforms difficult. Such studies are justified because large-scale efforts to provide education in rights administration can make important contributions to the realization of human dignity. Copyright

Comparative administration: theory and experience

In order to determine the extent to which regional training in management would serve their own diverse national needs, nine African countries with different colonial, economic. political, and economic traditions sponsored a large-scale restarch project .to identify. common behavioral characteristics in the vublic, private. and amstatal sectors. The theory was that if there was a sufficient body of ;cbuind.thtoighout the region, it would be possible to adopt standard training and selection procedures and use similar approaches in improving organizational designs. The theory posited further that comparative studies conducted in sufficient depth could separate the unique from the common elements of managerial behavior and contribute to the desirn of national as well as reeional training systems. Studies conducted with these ends in mind were also expected distinguish between behavioral differences that were associated with the political and cultural context or organizational setting, and those reflecting in...