Browsing by Subject "OECD"
Now showing items 1-3 of 3
-
(2023)In response to the increasing need for an effective method to compare student performance on the international scale, the Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) launched the Program for International Student Assessment, better known as the PISA, in 1997. As such, PISA not only establishes an internally agreed upon framework between countries, but it also binds the commitment of OECD member states to regularly assessing the impact of educational systems on student performance. According to the first published PISA results, PISA “aims at providing a new basis for policy dialogue and for collaboration in defining and operationalizing educational goals— in innovative ways that reflect judgment about the skills that are relevant to adult life.” In simple terms, PISA seeks to evaluate how well 15-year-olds are prepared for the challenges they will face in life. Finland has ranked among the top countries since the first administration of the triennial PISA in 2000. Despite measuring well against its OECD counterparts, Finland, which once topped the PISA ranks, has since experienced a relative decline in performance. The mediation of PISA results has undeniably affected Finland’s image of education. This media discourse analysis uses major American newspaper outlets to unearth how Finland’s image has been affected by PISA results. These newspapers’ presentations of Finnish PISA performance further reveal how the US understands its own academic system. Ultimately, PISA asserts that academic institutions can make a profound difference on the individual, country, and global levels. Since PISA results can influence the academic decisions and policies of a given country, then the assessment must also make a difference on the individual, country, and global levels. Since the OECD drives forward the PISA, then the OECD also has an influence on the beforementioned levels. Thus, the OECD not only shapes representations of countries, but it also hinges on media as a vehicle by which to deliver these representations internationally. Although commonly overlooked, the OECD is a relevant and power-wielding actor because its PISA index reinforces and challenges narratives of academic exceptionalism, as exemplified by the case of Finland in this study. Does the OECD’s positioning as an overlooked actor magnify its power?
-
(2018)Over the past decades, there has been an ongoing debate on the need to reform regulatory frameworks in most OECD countries. One of the more recent developments in this field is the emergence of better regulation agenda, which can be defined as form of meta-regulation that sets regulatory principles and tools in order to control the regulatory process from formulation to enforcement. The aim of this study is to problematize and critically explain OECD's better regulation agenda. The method used in this study is poststructural discourse theory and specifically the logics approach developed by Glynos and Howarth, which aims to understand the social, political and fantasmatic logics of a social practice. The different logics were used to characterize and explain the underlying values and norms of better regulation as well as its emergence, change and 'grip'. The analyzed materials consist of the regulatory quality principles that OECD has published since 1995 and some complementary documents. The results show that there are distinct social, political and fantasmatic logics that OECD's regulatory agenda is built on. The social logics of markets, rational choice and public interest indicate that the overall discursive structure of OECD's better regulation can be understood through logics of depoliticization. All the social logics seek to simplify the regulatory process by limiting and structuring the world around the decision-making process and offering ostensibly neutral and objective set of principles to refer to. The logics of depoliticization are supported by drawing political frontiers between the new alternative regulatory tools and old command-and control forms of regulation and by beatific fantasies of prosperity as well as horrific fantasies of stagnation. It is argued that the logics of depoliticization hide the underlying political and communicative nature of the regulatory process. Completely neutral or unbiased principles are argued to be impossible and that defining quality as efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability is a political choice. By structuring the communicative aspects of the regulatory process, better regulation also increases the use of professional power in regulatory decision-making. It should be noted that regulation is seldom only concerned about maximizing welfare and bringing economic benefits. Rather, it should be seen as an organic process that requires balancing competing values and views concerning the society.
-
(2018)This study provides an analysis on the role of communications in enhancing tax compliance from building an overall view of OECD’s Forum of Tax Administration’s member countries’ tax administrations’ perceptions about communications’ role on improving tax compliance. Prior to this study, there was no comprehensive view about the state of communications in the aforementioned countries. This study examines the perceptions of tax administration communications departments on whether tax compliance can be improved by means of communication. In the recent tax-related theories, there are two ways of encouraging the payment of taxes: coercive power and trust. According to theories, trust can be increased by the transparency that modern government communication is nowadays very much aimed towards. The tax communication units of OECD’s Forum of Tax Administrations' member countries' tax administrations were viewed in regards of organisational factors, communication practices and strategic approaches. This study has been carried out as a quantitative observational study targeting the members of the aforementioned network. An online survey was used to collect the data and was sent to the member countries in 2017 and 2018. This way it was possible to gain further insight with the year-by-year comparison. In addition, the data obtained through the survey was compared to other materials such as the OECD's Tax Administration Series. Key concepts and theories are related to tax compliance, government communication as well as transparency and trust. One of the key findings of the study is that the size of the tax administrations does not have impact on communications departments’ perceptions or activities on enhancing tax compliance with communications. Seems that tax administrations have not been able to leverage the economics of scale communications-wise. All of the tax administrations perceived their communications to be successful despite the variance in their actual performance within strategic goals, usage of different media channels or monitoring their performance. However, tax administrations’ attitudes towards transparency have moved in a positive direction within one year. According to the results, communication measurements are underutilised, as they could be reflected more with the goals and directions of communication strategies. The link between strategic objectives and practice is broken, despite the fact that tax administrations use a wide range of different service channels, marketing communicational tools as well as social networks when communicating towards tax payers and stakeholders. With this in mind, it can be said that on a general level, tax administrations are well prepared for the challenges of the new information age and its pressures for more transparency, but do not necessarily have the optimal organisational setting for it yet.
Now showing items 1-3 of 3