1,720,954 research outputs found
INSTITUTIONALISING ETHICS IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLIC SECTOR
No full textThis article, explores strategies and mechanisms for institutionalizing ethics to instill ethical values, accountability and integrity in the South African public sector. It examines institutionalization through the theoretical lenses of neo-institutional theory and applies social constructivist thinking to explain how an ethical culture can embed and get institutionalized in the public sector. It is the contention of this paper that, influences on ethical choices manifest within the context of a robust deconstruction of meanings and messages embedded in institutional culture settings and organizational structural arrangements. Neo-institutionalism as a theoretical framework unravels, why and how organizations adopt processes and structures for their meaning rather than their productive value. From this perspective, the paper argues that ethical compliance strategies still fall short of institutionalizing ethics. Institutional messages and communication it argues, replicate and diffuse institutional logics. Organizational symbolism also fits within the overall rubric of organisational culture. Thus, the article argues that institutionalizing ethics in the public sector, has to revolve around stewardship and servant leadership for building and maintaining high levels of stewardship-based trust. Ethics education and training are therefore critical elements of the institutionalization of ethical values. The paper thus contributes to the sustaining of the gains of good governance. The institutionalization of ethics within the public service it is argued is predicated on a robust organizational architecture and culture embedded in underlying public administration and public service values and principles
Control and accountability in supply chain management: Evidence from a South African metropolitan municipality
No full textAccountability requires supply chain management (SCM) public officials to account for, report on, explain and justify activities, and accept responsibility for municipal financial expenditure outcomes. Regardless of having SCM systems in place, efficiency in terms of procuring, tendering and sourcing goods and services in South African municipalities remains problematic. A key contributory factor to regressions in local government audit outcomes is the constant failure to develop, implement and monitor effective SCM systems, oversight, internal controls and financial reporting processes. With recurring instances of fruitless, irregular and wasteful expenditure, compliance with SCM policies, regulations and legislative frameworks needs solidification. When effectively implemented, control and oversight measures reduce waste, eradicates ethical malfeasance and promotes, integrity, transparency and accountability. The purpose of this article is to determine the SCM, risk factors that threaten accountability and how they can be mitigated in a typical South African Metropolitan Municipality. This descriptive and explanatory qualitative case study collected interview data from a purposeful sample of 14 (n = 14) information-rich participants. Secondary data were also collected from official documents and extant literature. Results indicate weak implementation of internal audit controls and policies, which make it challenging for internal audit and oversight committees to timely detect unethical, unfair, inequitable, opaque, uncompetitive and cost-inefficient SCM practices. The consequences are pervasive non-compliance with SCM policy, procuring and tendering processes, favouritism and corruptible tendencies. These have to be timely mitigated so as to remedy risks in the SCM process, which constrain municipal financial accountability
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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