Global Connections
GSPIA faculty, students, and alumni connect with the world through research, collaboration, internships and action. This summer has been no exception. Students have returned from meaningful internships while faculty members are conducting new and exciting research in a variety of countries and disciplines.
Nongovernmental Organization Management in the Czech Republic
Faculty member Kevin Kearns recently returned from his Fulbright-Masaryk Award-sponsored trip to the Czech Republic. He held joint teaching appointments at Charles University and the University of Economics in Prague from February through May, 2007. “I see NGO management as a government-business management hybrid,” said Kearns, emphasizing that, just like for-profit organizations, NGOs require a steady stream of revenue and must offer a valuable and well-marketed product or service. “What distinguishes NGOs from corporations,” says Kearns, “is the NGO’s emphasis on serving a public need.”
Kearns saw that citizens have found a remarkable yet simple way to participate in charitable causes: text messaging. This program allows people to make charitable contributions through a text message. In the Czech Republic, Kearns reports that “over five million people in a population of ten million donate through text messaging.”
Kearns has returned with a unique perspective on NGO Management and better prepared to guide students as a result of his experience.
Organizational Culture and Approach to Management within the European Commission
Faculty member Carolyn Ban recently returned from Brussels, where she was a visiting professor at the Institut d’Études européenes, of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She conducted research on the changes in the organizational culture and approach to management within the EU’s European Commission. While on sabbatical, she interviewed and met with several key individuals within the Commission and traveled to six new member states with a grant from the Commission. Ban presented initial results of her research in a paper entitled “Enlarging Europe: Eastern Europeans in the European Commission at the annual meeting of the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee) in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Her initial observations are that the administrative reforms instituted in 2004 have had less effect than the reformers anticipated, and some of the results have actually hurt rather than helped motivation. “Some of the reactions to reform are typical,” said Ban. “What surprised me most here was the strong antipathy not only to management reform but to management systems in general, which was linked to the long-standing north-south cultural split within the Commission,” she said.
This fall, Ban will offer a course on Managing People in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors that builds on her research over the past 30 years and on her personal experience as a manager. She will also offer a new course on Managing International Organizations. “This is the first time I am offering this course, and few other universities offer this course, so it is a bit of an experiment,” said Ban. It will provide an overview to basic management skills and challenges, examining how the approach may need to be different in an international setting. The innovation of the course combined with Ban’s experience and research will make for a unique, advantageous experience for students.
European Union Emissions Trading Scheme
Faculty member Martin Staniland is taking his knowledge of the air transport industry to a new level. He seeks to address the policy problem of how seriously air traffic emissions should be taken and what can be done about it.
While attending a recent colloquium, Staniland talked about ways in which airlines could work to reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on the atmosphere, and cited the EU’s emissions trading scheme as one possible solution, though difficult to enforce. In the trading scheme, each airline would be allotted an emissions quota based on usage from 2004 through 2006, with options to buy and sell surplus emissions quotas.
He notes that several characteristics of EU transportation systems may inspire individuals to fly less often, citing the availability of speedy rail travel as one attractive transit alternative. Another possible solution is more efficient air traffic control and reducing the frequency of long airplane journeys.
Another issue, says Staniland, is that the “lead time” required to change technology in the airline industry is significant, especially when compared to other transportation industries. Aircraft can last 30 or 40 years, and the technological changes necessary to increase fuel economy take time to implement. What remains is a debate on the severity of the problem and what can be done to reduce air traffic pollution.
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