New Article: Cohen, The On‐Going Civil Service Reform in Israel

Cohen, Nissim. “Forgoing New Public Management and Adopting Post‐New Public Management Principles: The On‐Going Civil Service Reform in Israel.” Public Administration and Development 36.1 (2016): 20-34.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pad.1751
 
Abstract

Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) and post‐NPM reforms have dominated attempts to improve public administration. The literature suggests several reasons for the latter approach. However, these explanations seem to be less relevant to the ongoing civil service reforms in Israel. The Israeli experience is an example where NPM reforms did not occur, but post‐NPM reforms were adopted enthusiastically decades later. Our findings demonstrate how under the structural conditions of both non‐governability and bureaucratic centralization, post‐NPM reforms may provide an attractive layering strategy, offering the option of changing certain features of the system without requiring a drastic, comprehensive overhaul of it. Once Israeli decision makers decided that there was a real public demand for reform, and long‐term learning and diffusion processes convinced them that change was needed, the characteristics of the post‐NPM approach made it much easier politically for them to adopt.

 

 

 

New Article: Oplatka, Research on School Principals in Israel

Oplatka, Izhar. “Israel: Research on School Principals in Israel, Varied Topics and Limited Scope.” In A Decade of Research on School Principals. Cases from 24 Countries (ed. Helene Arlestig, Christopher Day, and Olof Johansson; Cham: Springer, 2016): 403-20.

 

 

Abstract

This paper reviews the research on principalship in the Israeli educational system conducted by Israeli researchers since 2000 till 2013 (53 works) and sheds light on varied aspects of this managerial career. The major conclusion arising from this review refers to the varied, inchoate, diverse, and fragmented nature of the research on principalship in Israel, stemming, at least in part, from the very small number of researchers in the field of educational administration in this country. Thus, the research into principalship in Israel involves activities in a loosely connected array of sites of inquiry rather than a single or even coherent field of study along the lines of problem foci and clear scholarly directions that continue to exist for a long time. In fact, the research covers a multitude of ideas and area (e.g., the principal’s career and leadership style, the impact of reforms upon principal’s role, the skills of principals, the gender and management) representing considerable different views among various groups of researchers within the profession. In other words, this research lacks a unified, cumulative knowledge base, leaving us with only partial understanding of principalship in Israel. The practical contribution of this research is, therefore, limited. Methodologically, the ratio of quantitative and qualitative methodologies used by the Israeli researchers is almost equal, with very few works using triangulated research design. Finally, new Arab researchers in Israel have begun to explore the particular lives and career of Arab male and female principals in the Arab educational system in Israel and exposed interesting viewpoints about educational leadership in traditional societies.

 

 

New Article: Segev et al, Corporate Social Responsibility: Cleaning Services Procurement in Israel

Segev, Galit, Sarit Nisim, and Orly Benjamin. “Corporate Social Responsibility as Shaped by Managers’ Role Dissonance: Cleaning Services Procurement in Israel.” Journal of Business Ethics 130 (2015): 209-21.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2213-9

 

Abstract

Public procurement provides an excellent window into the shaping of corporate social responsibility of companies contracted by the government. To this emerging scholarly realization, we want to add that public procurement provides also the opportunity to examine corporate social responsibility as practiced by public sector organizations. This opportunity enables the investigation of the conditions under which public sector organizations endorse CSR guidelines, adherence to which demonstrates accountability for their service providers’ legal, employment-related practices. Our study examined the possibility that public sector organizations’ CSR is enhanced by maintenance managers’ role dissonance emerging in response to an ethical mismatch between them and their organizations’ official stance concerning whether unethical employment practices of service providers should be sanctioned. We analyzed interviews with 13 managers in charge of contract administration in the area of cleaning and maintenance. Our findings suggest that the role dissonance that emerges in cases of mismatch in ethical orientation rarely enhances more responsible treatment of cleaning employees. We introduce a model indicating the conditions supporting this incident.