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Pittsburgh Papers on the European Union

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The Pittsburgh Papers

In 2012 the ESC began publishing a series of scholarly papers devoted to the European Union under the editorship of Professor Alberta Sbragia, Vice-Provost for Graduate Studies. Submissions come from throughout the United States, Europe and elsewhere and are from scholars and practioners.  All submissions are screened for topic and length, and all published papers are subject to double-blind anonymous review.

Submissions can focus on any contemporary or historical aspect of the European Union including relations among members, with other states or in a regional or global context.

Upon final acceptance, Papers are published electronically, utilizing the Open Source Open Journal System (OJS). Papers are available free of charge and without subscription costs.  Metadata for the materials published in the Pittsburgh Papers are freely available for harvesting by internet search engines, allowing for greater access by researchers worldwide through major indexes of scholarly research.  Authors are able to include links to documents, documentary collections, videos or other sources of electronically available information. The University of Pittsburgh Library System is the official publisher, authors retain copyright under license, and the Papers is housed on the Library’s OJS platform.

Please visit The Pittsburgh Papers website or contact Pawel Lewicki (pawel.lewicki@pitt.edu) for further information and submission instructions.

Current Issue:

The Challenges of Linking Pay and Promotion: Repeated Reforms of the European Commission Staff Appraisal Process 
Carolyn Ban (2017)

In response to the 1999 crisis caused by the mass resignation of the European Commission, the Commission introduced a series of administrative reforms based in large part on New Public Management models.  A centerpiece of those reforms was a new staff appraisal process linking numeric ratings with promotions, which was designed explicitly to change the management culture of the Commission.  Of all parts of the reform, this was by far the most controversial.  This paper traces the long arc of reform, as the original reform was replaced with a second version that was even more rigid and complex, leading to a third reform, in 2012, which returned the Commission in large part to the status quo ante, abandoning numeric ratings and the formal link to promotions.  I analyze the reasons for the reforms and the problems and unintended consequences of each.  In conclusion, I link this saga of repeated reforms to the broader literature on the effectiveness of attempts to change organizational culture through formal structural reforms.

Past Publications: