The Apparent Locus of Managerial Decision Making and Perceptions of Fairness in Public Personnel Management

A topic that remains underexplored in public management research is how the appearance of a formal rule or policy as guiding personnel decisions may affect employee perceptions of organizational decision outcomes. In this article, we consider how the locus of decision making (e.g., the apparent source of a decision) affects perceptions of a decision’s fairness. We examine this question with three survey experiments using case vignettes, each describing a distinct personnel decision-making scenario. In each case vignette, we manipulate the locus of decision making (a single supervisor, a team of supervisors, or an organizational policy). We find heterogeneous effects across the three case vignettes. We conclude with a discussion of the implications and future directions for public management research.

“The Squeak of the Hinge”: Hinging and Swinging in Woolf and Mansfield

This paper explores the concept of the hinge in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Katherine Mansfield short fiction. It analyses instances of instability in these texts: psychological, postural, cultural, meteorological, diurnal, and seasonal. The argument makes use of Barthes to consider structural “nuclei” (hinge-points) in these narratives. Mrs. Dalloway is set in mid-June at the solstice which is a hinge-point of the year. The novel begins with doors being taken off their hinges and this unhinging leads to moments of enlightenment. The hinge is used metaphorically to suggest freedom and movement in time, space, class, and gender. A hinge both connects and separates. Gates and doors are used to show societal divisions and associations in these fictions. The hinge is considered as a paradoxical site of potential; a locus of decision-making or undecidability; of opening and closing; of “swinging both ways”. This trope is rich in significance and the paper considers a variety of related ideas: axels, still points, rotation, oscillation, liminality, translation, transition and trespass.

Elections and Power: The Locus of Decision-Making in Chinese Villages

While the election process is important, the significance of the Organic Law on Villagers' Committees rests with what happens after a village election. The existence of the law reveals little about the actual distribution of power and decision-making in China's villages. Even free and fair elections cannot be assumed to bring meaningful change to the contours of rural power where there is a dual authority structure – Party and government – in every village. The villagers' committee is now elected, but the Party secretary is still appointed by the higher levels of the CCP. Which is the locus of power?

Programmable Automation and the Locus of Decision-Making Power

Computer-based technology is often credited with making decentralized decision-making possible, helping firms to respond rapidly to changing market conditions. Research on this subject, however, shows contradictory effects: some studies support decentralization and others support centralization. This longitudinal study examines how one form of computer-based technology, programmable automation (PA), affects centralization. Unlike previous studies, it attempts to clear up some of the confusion surrounding technology’s effect on centralization by distinguishing between strategic and operating decisions, and between decision-making authority and influence. As expected, PA flattened the hierarchy. It had no effect on strategic decision-making power, but surprisingly, did influence centralized line-operating authority and influence. This finding is particularly striking because firms with decentralized line-operating decision-making are more likely to adopt PA.