In the economic development of Taiwan, the privatization of state-run enterprise has a very important mission in government policy. In the process of Taiwan¡¦s privatization of state-run enterprise, China Steel Corporation (CSC) has plays an essential role among the privatized institutions, and shapes the way and view of the privatization. Past researches were restricted to the enterprise evaluation happened before and after privatization, and stressed the use of the abstract modeling and mathematics, however, the relation between theory and practice has been touched very little in terms of the institutional change of privatization. This study is to explore the privatization of CSC from the perspective of new institutional economics. The methodology used is qualitative approach, which differes from the qualitative approach. The primary approach is document analysis, and supplemented by Gadamer¡uQ&A logic¡v. Under the self-adjustment to the change of internal institution and the adaptation to the change of external environment, the present analysis of CSC privatization, from the perspective of the change of property right and institution, will result in comparative prices change and new transaction profit, and new institution will create some arrangements, inspiration effect, etc. The result of this research can be summarized as two points, which we hope may offer some contributions. 1. From the perspective of property right, the behavior of rent-seeking resulting from the involvement of interest groups during the CSC privatization process may easily cause the phenomenon of increasing transaction cost. Therefore, in the future plan for institutional change, we must consider the institutional environment and strategy to reduce the possibility of that phenomenon. 2. From the perspective of institutional change, the present study analyzed from the imposed institutional change of state-run CSC to the induced institutional change of privatization, and it can give a clear understanding in that the cultural change of enterprise has a critical influence to the institutional change.

Economic growth in China is attributed by many people to the reforms initiated in 1978. Some individuals, who were previously agents of the state, party cadres, or peasants, have become High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) within a relatively short period in the wake of certain institutional changes. Before economic reform, China’s political elites seized administrative controls and material privileges and yet were relatively restricted in money income and private wealth; however, the market transition and privatization added additional value into those controls and privileges and created unique opportunities for those political elites. These political elites retain intact power and privilege regardless of market reforms or regime change. During the transformation, redistributive mechanisms are shaped by these elites, who discriminate in favour of themselves, their families, and like individuals; subsequently, some of those from the political elites migrate into HNWIs, and unjust wealth re-distribution is created accordingly. Development and the changing role of elites in transitional China, like all societies, is constrained and shaped by heritage (resources, pre-existing institutions, geography, culture, etc.); these constraints maybe stronger in transitional societies than in open market economies and enhance the importance for transitional society elites to maintain their footholds of power in state and regulatory institutions. Therefore, these elites exert influence to maintain their existing privileges for accumulating wealth from competition. This research adapts institutional change theory to incorporate the concept of resource dependences in order to give practical expression to an analysis of how the transition between these roles is played out during the institutional changes and to explore the relations between the leading social actors and their institutional environment. It draws on the example of the housing market to illustrate that there is a trade-off between conformity to external institutional pressure and exercising influence over external resources whilst pursuing stability and legitimacy in China’s reforms.

Within the Canadian government, studies associated with staffing the federal public service have been endemic for over a century. Despite this, concerns about lack of change and dissatisfaction with staffing (too slow, too complex) remain hallmarks. The Public Service Modernization Act (PSMA) was introduced in 2003 as a means to bring about transformative change and yet, following a nearly two year study, the PSMA Review Report (2011) found that virtually no one was satisfied with changes in key aspects of the human resource and staffing regime. A strong desire for change was noted as existing, however, a diluted sense of ownership and powerlessness to change were also noted, even among the most powerful federal communities – deputy ministers, executives, and central agencies. As Canada’s largest employer, with an annual payroll that has been estimated at $22 billion and, with another era of potential change launched with the Public Service Commission’s 2016 introduction of New Directions in Staffing, federal staffing can be viewed as both timely and warranting academic examination. This dissertation combines the strengths of institutional change literature from political science, sociology and economics to examine the institution of federal staffing in the core public administration. It focuses on an extended period of time in order to identify if any substantive changes have occurred despite popular views of negligible change and to examine why change may not have occurred to advance toward the long expressed goal of simplified, efficient staffing of highly qualified (meritorious) public servants. This mixed methods case study uses documentary, archival, and qualitative and quantitative secondary source material as well as input from 49 semi-structured interviews with a variety of Canadian federal managerial and human resource representatives. It identifies and addresses issues that have only at times been identified and, others not typically detailed in government reports, particularly those associated with culture and path dependent history. Issues examined include power relations and key narratives as well as evolving ideas and logics of appropriateness that shape behaviour, some of which continue to exert pressure on current organizational and institutional choices despite having been in existence for, in some cases, 50 or 100 years. Some ideas for change are offered but this study suggests without attention to long-standing and systemic issues only highly incremental change should be expected.

Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / Despite calls to understand the micro-foundation of institutional theory and to understand how professional identity change relates to the broader macro context (e.g., Lok, 2010; Lepisto, Crosina and Pratt, forthcoming); exploration of the link between a field-level institutional change and the individual professionals' identity responses within the field remains. For this dissertation, I conducted an inductive qualitative study of French veterinarians and their reactions to "the Service Directive", a European Union regulation that re-categorizes veterinarians as "service providers" from "healthcare professionals." Drawing on interviews with practicing veterinarians, leaders of the field, observations, and archival data, my dissertation advances our understanding of professionals' responses to an institutional change which can potentially redefine what their profession is. My findings suggest that professionals negotiate an institutional change (in this case, the Service Directive) at the professional level before its formal implementation and before individual professionals within their organization engaged in any form of response. My dissertation introduces a model centered on understanding how veterinarians responded to this change at the individual level (and more particularly, in terms of identity) within their organization. This model suggests that individual professionals perceive the institutional regulatory change in hopeful, fearful or ambivalent manners. I found that these perceptions are influenced by professionals' work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation. Further, I found that these perceptions lead to different types of identity responses: identity expansion, identity maintenance, giving up a possible self, and de-emphasizing an existing identity. My research enriches emerging perspectives on identity responses to an institutional change by pointing out various identity responses and tying them to the perceptions of an institutional change. My research further suggests that such a change can be perceived as an opportunity, as a threat, or both, not solely as a threat. Furthermore, my dissertation introduces the notions of orientation (work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation) as key to the processing of an institutional trigger. Finally, it calls attention to an emotional processing of the institutional trigger. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

This thesis discusses the changes and corresponding causes of the wage distribution in China from the late 1990s to the 2000s. According to various data sources, real wage inequality in China has been increasing over time. People have become increasingly concerned about such a phenomenon, which can potentially cause economic instability and further social unrest. From the analysis of household survey data, a significant part of the the increase in wage dispersion in China can be attributed to changes in the institutional changes. Having gone through the institutional reform of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s, many Chinese firms have become more privatized and smaller in size. That is to say, the Chinese labour market becomes less affected by the government intervention (through public enterprises). Changes in the supply side of the labour market have also been examined. The increase in the number of university graduates slows down the growing wage dispersion. A comparison between the household survey data and the industrial enterprises data tells a slightly different story about Chinas wage structure. As the firm-level data omits within-firm wage inequalities and excludes data of primary sectors, the service sectors, and the small businesses, a decrease in the logarithm of the wage variation has been found. The inconsistency between the changes of real wage dispersion and the dispersion of log wages has been discussed in depth in the thesis. Nonetheless, since China set the new minimum wage in 2004, the wage distribution in the countrys industrial sector has been reshaped, which is not obviously shown in the household data. The impact of increasing the national minimum wage has been evaluated under a set of relatively conservative assumptions. Further analysis has been conducted to quantify the effect of trade liberalization on wage dispersion. It turns out that starting to export on the part of the firms has a significant positive effect on firm-level wages and employments, but the impact of an increasing export exposure remains debatable.

During the past two decades there have been significant changes in the landscape for higher education. Among these was a trend for universities and colleges to respond by adopting a more market-driven approach, leading to the introduction of new public management within universities and colleges, which led to the emergence of tensions between the academic and quasi business aims. In 2004 the UK government changed the criteria for the grant of degree-awarding powers and university title opening up the possibility for non-public organisations to apply. This thesis presents the case study of a private sector for-profit organisation as it introduced a more robust quality assurance infrastructure during the application process for taught degree-awarding powers. The analysis is undertaken within a conceptual framework developed from institutional and agency theory. The need to demonstrate legitimacy and the influence of key groups played a large part in the changes made. Using data collected via participant observation, key informant interviews and documentary evidence, the study examines the changes and management actions that took place during the period between June 2004 and July 2009 in order to identify the strategies that were adopted to manage the tensions between the academic standards and the commercial imperative of meeting shareholder expectations. The study contributes to the literature covering change in educational institutions and in particular that which reports on the introduction of a more business-oriented approach to the management of universities. The study is able to bring a new perspective to studying the management of tensions between academic and business aims by looking at the issues from an alternative angle. The key strategy developed was a gradual rationalisation of the academic aims within the business aims such that the duality of aims was diminished.

La gestion de l‘eau d’irrigation en Egypte repose sur un cadre institutionnel centralement défini intégrant les parties concernées, y compris les acteurs informels au niveau local. Ce cadre régi la répartition des ressources en eau et la façon dont les différents acteurs contribuent collectivement aux mécanismes de gestion. En raison de plusieurs contraintes, telles que la mauvaise qualité et la pénurie d’eau, les iniquités au niveau de la distribution et le faible recouvrement des coûts, l’approche collective a été progressivement remplacée par des actions plus individualistes qui mènent à des conflits d’intérêts. Cette situation appelle à une réforme du cadre institutionnel existant. Les solutions adaptatives mises en place par les usagers qui tentent à surmonter les défis sont une forme de changement. En parallèle, les réformes promues par le gouvernement favorisent une approche participative à travers la création d’organisations des usagers (WUOs). Cette formalisation des acteurs informels est motivée par l’idée que l’effort collectif d’un groupe ayant des intérêts communs et agissant selon des règles et normes mutuellement acceptées permettrait de renforcer leur participation dans la gestion. Le résultat serait une distribution plus équitable de l’eau et une meilleure opération et maintenance des systèmes d’irrigation. Or, bien que les WUOs puissent être considérées comme des structures appropriées pour restaurer l’action collective et améliorer la gestion au niveau local, certains défis institutionnels, financiers et structurels affaiblissent leurs opérations et leur capacité à répondre aux intérêts des parties prenantes, ce qui rend leur soutenabilité incertaine / The irrigation water sector in Egypt relies on a well-defined central management framework, the integrated role of the different concerned stakeholders, including the local-level informal actors, and on how the water users perceive the value of their water resources and collectively contribute to the management mechanism. With the rising complexities, namely, poor quality, water shortage, unfair distribution and poor cost recovery, the collective approach has been progressively replaced by more individualistic actions that lead to conflicts of interest and calls for reforms. Adaptive solutions are a form of change among the water users who seek to cope with the challenges they face. Another form is a government-driven reform that supports the participatory approach through the establishment of Water Users Organizations (WUOs). The rationale behind this formalization of the informal actors is that when collective efforts of a particular group who holds common interests and is functioning under mutually accepted and compelled set of norms and rules, it is believed that it becomes more feasible to raise their level of participation in the management process. They would hence contribute to realizing more equitable water allocation and distribution and better operation and maintenance of the irrigation systems. Although the WUOs can be viewed as suitable settings for restoring collective action and improving the management at the local level, a number of institutional, financial and structural challenges hinder their functions and their capacity in meeting the interests of the concerned stakeholders and hence render their sustainability uncertain

Dans le système politique d‟un État, le rôle que joue la haute fonction publique constitue une problématique centrale, en ce que l‟efficacité de l‟action gouvernementale et la réalisation du principe démocratique en dépendent. À partir des années 1990, la haute administration japonaise fut la cible de critiques fustigeant ses échecs et son autonomie jugée excessive vis-à-vis du pouvoir politique élu. Aussi, au début des années 2000, plusieurs réformes inspirées du courant de la nouvelle gestion publique furent mises en oeuvre, afin notamment de renforcer le leadership des responsables politiques et leur contrôle sur les hauts fonctionnaires. Notre travail examine ces réformes et analyse les évolutions perçues dans le processus décisionnel et les relations politico-administratives au cours de ces quinze dernières années, en prenant soin de nous défaire de la grille de lecture simpliste opposant les élus aux agents de la fonction publique. L‟étude approfondie du gouvernement Koizumi (2001-2006) et du passage au pouvoir du Parti démocrate (2009-2012), qui révèle des transformations de nature incrémentale, mais également la persistance de certaines pratiques, nous amène à envisager d‟autres variables explicatives que le simple changement institutionnel. Pour ce faire, nous faisons appel aux outils théoriques proposés par les divers courants néo-institutionnalistes, insistant sur le poids du passé et l‟influence des différentes idées partagées par les acteurs. Nous nous basons sur un important corpus de sources primaires et secondaires, notamment en langue japonaise, sur des données quantitatives, ainsi que sur plusieurs entretiens réalisés auprès de hauts fonctionnaires japonais. / In a State's political system, the role that the bureaucracy plays constitute a central issue, as the efficiency of the government's policies and the realization of the democratic principle are at stake. From the 1990's on, the bureaucracy has suffered a lot of criticisms blaming its failures and its allegedly excessive autonomy from the elected political power. Thus, at the beginning of the 21st century, many reforms inspired by the New Public Management movement were implemented, in order to – among other things – reinforce the political leadership and control over the senior civil servants. Our work examines these reforms and analyses the evolutions perceived in the decision-making process and in the politico-administrative relations during the last fifteen years, while rejecting the oversimplifying approach that necessarily brings in opposition elected politicians and civil servants. The case studies of the government Koizumi (2001-2006) and the Democratic Party of Japan‟s governments (2009-2012), which revealed incremental transformations but also the persistence of some pre-existing practices, invite us to consider other explanatory variables than the mere institutional change. In order to do so, we use theoretical tools created by the multiple neo-institutionalisms, insisting on the „weight of the past‟ and on the influence of the different ideas shared by the actors. We base our work on a corpus of primary and secondary sources, especially written in Japanese, on quantitative data, and also on some interviews conducted with Japanese senior civil servants.

Multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaborations have been considered as ‘panacea’ for complex local to global problems confronting governments, businesses and society. And for over a decade now, they have also been increasingly promoted as mechanisms to achieve sustainability. There is, however, a dearth of empirical studies that give deeper insights into the practical dimensions and various implications of such processes for sustainability. This dissertation explores how multi-stakeholder organising processes for sustainability occur in local settings. It relies on a theoretical framework that combines institutional and social movements theoretical perspectives. Such a theoretical cross-fertilisation has been helpful in explaining: (a) how the macro institutional context of sustainable development influences micro interactions of individuals during collaborations; and (b) how those micro interactions may influence the sustainability movement organised at macro societal levels. The dissertation is philosophically based on the principles of critical hermeneutics. It draws on the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas to understand the nature of reality, society and human relationships. The study also uses literature on sustainable development, organising, dialogue, collaboration, stakeholder engagement, emotions and time. Three cases of multi-stakeholder dialogic collaborations organised to address sustainability of two regions in New Zealand were investigated through observations, interviews with participants and documentary research. These processes were developed in response to a regulatory change in New Zealand – the new Local Government Act (2002) which emphasises sustainable development of communities. The data across the three cases was analysed using principles of grounded theory and critical hermeneutics. Analysis reveals how various kinds of institutional pressures (engulfing cultural-cognitive, regulative and normative institutions connected with sustainable development) confront different stakeholders with varying intensities. Those pressures influence stakeholders to become involved in and commit to such collaborations. And as stakeholders participate in such processes, they are shown to engage with one another rationally and emotionally, and with different conceptions of time. The collaborations thus can be characterised by a complex fusion of rationality, emotionality and temporality. On the one hand, multi-stakeholder dialogic collaborations stimulate learning, facilitate relationship building and build social capital for implementing sustainable development. They thus prove themselves as potent governance mechanisms that can help to institutionalise sustainable development. On the other hand, multi-stakeholder dialogic collaborations for sustainability are highly messy, unpredictable, paradoxical and conflict-ridden processes of stakeholder engagement. They are shown to suffer from three major problematics: problematic of misunderstandings; problematic of stakeholders’ emotions; and problematic of stakeholders’ time. They thus, ironically and paradoxically, are also problematic solutions for sustainability.

The ongoing transformation of centrally planned societies into market economies poses many difficult questions regarding large scale institutional reform. How far to go, how fast, and in which order? Until now, the debate has been mainly theoretical. As the reforms progress, however, we need to compare the theoretical predictions with the empirical evidence. Financial intermediation is one sector in which the gap between socialism and capitalism is particular large, and the development of commercial banking has often proved to be a bottleneck in the reform process. Empirical examination of financial reform is therefore urgent. This dissertation explores the development of the Vietnamese state banks during the early 1990s. It highlights the lengthy process of altering the formal model and informal rules governing the bank organizations. The official socialist ideology is the source of many problems. First, it means that state ownership remains, enabling the government to intervene easily in the banks’ operations. The ideology’s informal role is arguably even more important, because it leaves unclear how bankers should act when profit maximization conflicts with social responsibility. Uncertainty will prevail as long as bankers and banking authorities have only partially converted to a new set of norms. Accordingly, the formal financial sector will fail to florish. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.</p><p></p><p>A revised version of this dissertation has been published as: Román, Lisa, Institutions in Transition – Vietnamese State Bank  Reform, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston 1999.</p>