Perceptions of Local Government Fiscal Health and Fiscal Stress: Evidence From Quantile Regressions With Michigan Municipalities and Counties

2021 ◽  
pp. 0160323X2110383
Author(s):  
Stephanie Leiser ◽  
Shu Wang ◽  
Charles Kargman
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Quantile Regression ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Fiscal Health ◽  
Open Systems Theory ◽  
Financial Condition ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Regression Techniques

This study applies insights from open systems theory to explore how the perceptions of local officials can enhance our understanding of local government fiscal health—in particular, to understand differences between healthy and distressed jurisdictions. With a sample of local governments in Michigan from 2013 to 2019, we use quantile regression to investigate associations between subjective financial condition measures and objective indicators. The results show that these relationships are often more muted for lower-stress governments and more pronounced for higher-stress governments, a pattern that is not accounted for by traditional methods of measuring financial condition. The findings demonstrate the utility of open systems theory and quantile regression techniques to improve understanding of the financial condition and suggest that in order to avoid overlooking cases of fiscal distress, policymakers and analysts should incorporate these approaches into methods for diagnosing local fiscal health.

scholarly journals Category Theory for Autonomous and Networked Dynamical Systems

Entropy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Charles Delvenne
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Ergodic Theory ◽  
Category Theory ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Topological Dynamics ◽  
Control Problems ◽  
Natural Conditions ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
Open Systems Theory

In this discussion paper we argue that category theory may play a useful role in formulating, and perhaps proving, results in ergodic theory, topogical dynamics and open systems theory (control theory). As examples, we show how to characterize Kolmogorov–Sinai, Shannon entropy and topological entropy as the unique functors to the nonnegative reals satisfying some natural conditions. We also provide a purely categorical proof of the existence of the maximal equicontinuous factor in topological dynamics. We then show how to define open systems (that can interact with their environment), interconnect them, and define control problems for them in a unified way.

Extending the Tavistock model: bringing desire, danger, dread, and excitement into a theory of organisational process

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133
Author(s):  
Larry Hirschhorn
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Psychosocial Experiences ◽  
Open Systems Theory ◽  
The Future ◽  
Case Vignettes ◽  
Organisational Process

This article develops some novel extensions of the classical Tavistock model of organisational psychodynamics. The classical model privileges the emotion of anxiety as the primary trigger for psychosocial experiences in organisations. While this approach has been very generative, it has also been limiting, since there are several other important emotions that shape how people take up their work and their roles in organisations. The article shows how open systems theory and sociotechnical thinking emerge logically from the anxiety model by highlighting how organisations become functional, and work becomes satisfying. The article goes on to explore how desire as a feeling for the future, stimulates such feelings as danger, dread, and excitement. When these feelings become dispositive, they generate experiences associated with anxiety, and the primary risk, as well as the potential for developmental politics. Politics can be developmental rather than defensive when executives create settings where conflict is seen as transaction and rationality as an achievement. This article explores these issues through the use of case vignettes in the public domain, including a skunk works project in Data General, and leadership struggles and strategy dilemmas in Apple, IBM, and Polaroid.

Use of Open Systems Theory to Describe Regulatory Trends

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Benton ◽  
Máximo A González-Jurado ◽  
Juan V. Beneit-Montesinos ◽  
Ma Pilar Fernández Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Open Systems Theory ◽  
Regulatory Trends

Decentralization and Executive-Legislative Relations in the Philippines, 1961–1967

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Villanueva
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Local Officials ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
National Control ◽  
National Legislature

Although the framers of the Philippine constitutional convention of 1934–35 were careful not to establish an imperium in imperio (kingdom within a kingdom), the local government system which developed was not under absolute national control either. For in spite of the efforts made by several delegates to include in the national fundamental law a provision that would have guaranteed ‘a more autonomous framework of government for the provinces and municipalities,’ and the efforts of other delegates to leave the future of local governments to the national legislature, a unitary government was agreed upon in which local governments were subject to presidential supervision. In the course of time, presidential supervision evolved to mean two things: 1) the power of the Chief Executive to appoint local officials and to review local budgets and 2) the power of congress to create local units and to grant local powers. Thus, these two political branches of the national government were to play major roles in the re-emergence of the issue of local autonomy in the fifties and the issue of decentralization in the sixties. In more specific terms, the two political branches had different views of central-local relations, especially the approach to, and extent of, decentralization. Before we proceed to discuss executivelegislative controversy on the problems of decentralization, the concept of decentralization must be understood.

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