Foundation Strategies to Inform Federal Policy in the United States

Commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, TCC Group's research examined what motivates foundations to engage in advocacy, the methods they apply, and the results they achieve. Although the study focuses on federal policy, many of the factors and strategies relate directly to foundation policy reform activities at all levels of government

The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

Confronting Criminal Law’s Violence: The Possibilities of Unfinished Alternatives

Confronting criminal law’s violence calls for an openness to unfinished alternatives — a willingness to engage in partial, in process, incomplete reformist efforts that seek to displace conventional criminal law administration as a primary mechanism for social order maintenance. But despite all indications that the status quo in U.S. criminal law administration is profoundly dysfunctional — an institutional manifestation of the deepest pathologies in our society — contemporary criminal law reform efforts and scholarship focus almost exclusively on relatively limited modifications to the status quo. These modifications may well render criminal law administration more humane, but fail to substitute alternative institutions or approaches to realize social order maintenance goals. In particular, these reformist efforts continue to rely on conventional criminal regulatory approaches to a wide array of social concerns, with all of their associated violence: on criminalization, policing, arrest, prosecution, incarceration, probation, and parole. Thus, even as these reformist approaches may offer substantial benefits, they remain wed to institutions that perpetrate criminal law’s violence and to limited temporal and imaginative horizons. By contrast, this essay explores a series of criminal law reform alternatives that offer more fundamental substitutes for criminal law administration. More specifically, this essay focuses on the possibilities of alternatives to criminal case processing that substitute for the order-maintaining functions currently attempted through criminal law enforcement. These alternatives hold the potential to draw into service separate institutions and mechanisms from those typically associated with criminal law administration. Further, these alternatives enlist on more equal footing and invite feedback and input from persons subject to criminal law enforcement. Importantly, this latter subset of reform alternatives is decidedly unfinished, partial, in process. I will argue that this unfinished quality ought not to be denied as an embarrassment or flaw, but instead should be embraced as a source of critical strength and possibility. In this dimension, this essay is a preliminary call for more attention on the part of legal scholars and criminal law reform advocates to unfinished partial substitutes for the order-maintaining work performed by criminal law administration — a call to attend further to as yet incomplete reformist alternatives that may portend less violent and more self-determined ways of achieving some measure of social order and collective peace. I begin to develop this argument by drawing, in particular, on the work of the Norwegian social theorist and prison abolitionist Thomas Mathiesen

Place-making strategies of culturepreneurs. The case of Frankfurt/M., Germany

The paper describes the emergence of a new hybrid cultural and entrepreneurial agent in the context of the local cultural industries of Frankfurt on Main (Germany). The thesis of the paper is, that the culturepreneur is responsible for new place-making strategies apart the most visible and dominant one, such as the skyline in Frankfurt/M. The understandings of his place-making strategies offer insights in new forms of negotiation of an urban renewal process. Despite this it provides a new and important evaluation of the yet underestimated spatial category place in the process and formation of scenes, recently brought into discussion by sociologist R. Hitzler (2001). Places are the terrain of the post-industrial city where different and heterogeneous scenes are struggling. The analysis of the use and significance - out of the perspective of culturepreneurs - provides a new, yet in the field of social sciences unclear, reading of the existing urban condition. The context of the emergence of the type culturepreneur is framed by neoliberal governmental and political approaches, urban marketing campaigns such as the self-promotion as being a young and a cool city like Frankfurt/M. (or Berlin) are practicing it, in order to encourage individuals to launch ones own enterprise: The first results can best be seen in the field of the growing numbers of workers in the socalled creative (service-industry-related) sector. Besides that, the growing numbers of creatives, such as web-, fashion-, music and arts and crafts designers as well as club organizers are - viewed from an institutional perspective - an expression of complex changes of the role of the arts and media sector as growing mediator between the subsectors of culture and economy. Based on comparable results of A. McRobbie´s studies (1999) in the creative sector of London (GB), this research shows that the agents of creative work are - especially since 1998 - on the one hand considered to be a symbolic forerunner and a pioneer of the politics of the new middle in Germany ('Politik der Neuen Mitte'). Thereby on a micro level we can observe agents, who reflect increasing values such as individual entrepreneuralism, bringing to light un-embedded as well as flexible labour situations. Besides their escalating sharp existential situation, they show a rising dependency of subsidies of different sponsors. Thereby creative work is squeezed and brokered by growing influences of venture capitalists using trendy popular culture products of the culturepreneurs as signs and symbols of their holistic idea serving the society. On the other hand, the growing numbers of relatively young and creative workers struggle to regain social and institutional embedding by setting up and creating new temporary and flexible alliances with different agents in the urban context, such as city governments as well as corporate firms. In sociological terms we cannot consider these actors as members of a completely individualized society anymore (Beck 2000), but as members of post-traditional communities or, like Hitzler proposed, new scenes (Hitzler 2001) amongst the culturepreneur plays a key and ma-jor formatting role, which is yet from the scientific perspective so far undefined. The paper argues that the analysis of the local cultural industry as a key factor in the creation of new labour forces in the metropolitan regions such as the Rhine-Main as well as stimulating atmospheres for service-related industries has to be connected to micro-spatial analysis of the emergence of new scenes. Sociological analysis provides valuable insights in the formation of new communities, but micro-geographical analysis can conceptually and methodologically provide a spatial understanding of complex place-making strategies of new post-traditional communities. Space is a yet an underestimated variable in the analysis of the emergence of new agents - such as the culturepreneurs - in the field of the local cultural industries. The conducted field research shows not only the fact that - from the perspective of individual agents (culturepreneurs) - place matters, but that the processes of professional socialisation is closely linked to a complex creative and necessarily practice with place in order to create a spatial network, that means a new socially-defined space. This process can first be seen as a necessary attempt in order to regain a professional place in the labour market, but second as a practice to get economic, social, and network-related attention by acting, staging and using (with) the variable place. Culturepreneurs develop - with new forms in the field of the economy of attention - these new geographies that can be read as a post-modern counterstrategy to the dominant place-making strategies, applied most visible with the geography of centrality in the case of Mainhatten (sic!), Frankfurt on Main.

A Strategic Approach to Agricultural Research Program Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa

Recent studies have shown that agricultural research can have high payoffs in Africa, but impact depends on how well technology fits with evolving needs and capacity in the agricultural sector and the rest of the economy. Structural adjustment policies (e.g., market liberalization, currency devaluation) and political change are transforming user demands for new technology and the economic environment in which technology must perform. The challenge is how to design agricultural research as a strategic input to promote broad-based economic growth, structural transformation, and food security in the increasingly market-driven, but fragile, economies of Africa.Food Security, Food Policy, Agricultural Research, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Downloads May 2008-July 2009: 44, Q18,

Working through frame incongruences : A process perspective on (re)framing for digital servitization

Industrial firms are increasingly seeking new means of competitiveness through digital servitization that involves incorporating digital services and platforms. Despite the growing prominence of digital servitization, we have yet to understand how such changes are being framed, reframed, and unfold in industrial firms. To this end, we undertake an in-depth longitudinal exploratory case study of an industrial firm to understand the organizational framing and reframing activities vis-à-vis digital servitization. Our findings identify how motivational, diagnostic, and prognostic framing gradually unfolds over distinct phases. Specifically, our findings reveal the occurrence of frame incongruence among different groups of actors, compelling the firm to engage in strategies and tactics to achieve frame alignment. Notably, we identify that management engages in the alignment processes of frame extension, translation, and clarification, which creates a space of workable certainty. While transient in nature, this state of workable certainty serves as a catalyst in propelling the firm forward in its pursuit of a digital servitization strategy. By shedding light on the process of digital reframing that firms undertake in order to materialize their digital servitization strategy, our study contributes to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. Moreover, we raise pertinent managerial implications for firms embarking on the path of digital servitization, emphasizing the imperative of continuous attention to the ongoing framing and reframing processes accompanying such change endeavors.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

From search engine optimisation to search engine marketing management: development of a new area for information systems research

Search Engine Optimisation was a term used by web developers in the late 90s to highlight the importance of increasing a website’s position in search engines’ results. Further development of the Internet in terms of the diversity of its users and uses such as e-commerce, blogging and wikis have highlighted the need for technical staff to work more closely with marketing professionals resulting in a new area of work – Search Engine Marketing Management. The paper highlights the emerging role of Search Engine Marketing Management as a new and increasingly important area for future information systems researchers and research. Reaching beyond the 'simple' undifferentiated goal of increasing visitors to a website, a mature perspective of marketing is developing - that of realising strategic marketing objectives. The practical contribution of this paper is found in the development of awareness among management roles of the importance and nuances of search engines and the tactics required to harness the benefits of multiple online communication channels within organisational marketing strategy

Reviews

Web‐Teaching ‐ A Guide to Interactive Teaching for the World‐Wide Web by David W. Brooks, New York: Plenum, 1997. ISBN: 0–306–45552–8. Paperback, 214 pages. $30

Clinical governance, education and learning to manage health information

Purpose – This paper aims to suggest that the concept of clinical governance goes beyond a bureaucratic accountability structure and can be viewed as a negotiated balance between imperfectly aligned and sometimes conflicting goals within a complex adaptive system. On this view, the information system cannot be separated conceptually from the system of governance it supports or the people whose work it facilitates or hinders. Design/methodology/approach – The study, located within the English National Health Service (NHS) between 1999 and 2005, is case study based using a multi method approach to data collection within two primary care organisations (PCOs). The research strategy is conducted within a social constructionist ontological perspective. Findings – The findings reflect the following broad-based themes: mutual adjustment of a plurality of stakeholder perceptions, preferences and priorities; the development of information and communication systems, empowered by informatics; an emphasis on education and training to build capacity and capability. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of case study methodology include a tendency to provide selected accounts. These are potentially biased and risk trivialising findings. Rooted in specific context, their generalisability to other contexts is limited by the extent to which contexts are similar. Reasonable attempts were made to minimise any bias. The diversity of data collection methods used in the study was an attempt to counterbalance the limitations highlighted in one method by strength from alternative techniques. Practical implications – The paper makes recommendations in two key governance areas: education and learning to manage health information. In practice, the lessons learned provide opportunities to inform future approaches to health informatics educational programmes. Originality/value – With regard to topicality, it is suggested that many of the developmental issues highlighted during the establishment of quality improvement programmes within primary care organisations (PCGs/PCTs) are relevant in the light of current NHS reforms and move towards commissioning consortia

Reviewing the Statutory Union Recognition (ERA 1999)

In 2000 the UK government introduced, under the Employment Relations Act of 1999, a new statutory union recognition procedure, while in 2003 it published a consultation document on its Review of the Act. The document concluded that th eunion procedure was broadly working and confirmed that the government would not be changing the procedure's basic features, but outlined some changes that it was proposing and issues on which it sought opinions. This paper assesses, on the basis of the authors' research, whether the procedure is indeed achieving the government's consultative document. The latter was submitted as the authors' response to the review. The authors concur with the document¿s overall judgement that in the first three years of its operation, the procedure is working effectively. It is providing a right to union recognition where the majority of workers want it, encouraging the voluntary resolution of recognition disputes and being used as a last resort, whilst no judicial reviews have, as yet, undermined its operation as happened with the last statutory procedure in the 1990s. Nonetheless there are problems particularly relating to the ability of employers to influence both how the CAC uses its discretion and workers exercise their rights with respect to union recognition, whilst the applications are in the procedure and during recognition ballots. On the basis of this, the author¿s response to the consultative document gauges that many of its arguments for making only limited changes in the procedure¿s fundamentals are sound, as are those where change is envisaged. However, in certain areas more consideration should be given to change, and particularly of ways of limiting the actions of employers that the document concedes might be deemed ¿unfair labour practices¿.trade unions, collective bargaining