A comparative study of institutional frameworks for local public service partnerships in Finland and Scotland

This research presents a cross-national comparative review of the institutional arrangements for how local public service partnerships are regulated and governed in Finland and Scotland.Both legal and administrative differences of partnership policies are analysed in order to explain the nature of the incentives and obligations for local governments to collaborate with external partners. Institutional theory and conceptual partnership approaches are utilised in the analysis. The Scottish institutional framework provides defined requirements for public-private partnerships. The partnership term is not recognised in the Finnish legal framework;instead it operates with the general concept of co-operation. Both Scottish and Finnish municipalities have more institutional obligations than incentives for partnerships or collaboration. The Scottish institutional framework requires municipalities to partner with external organisations, while in Finland, the legislature has not been proactive in promoting or encouraging public-private partnership. While the political incentives for partnerships are stronger in Scotland, Scottish municipalities have limited financial incentives to look for budgetary savings from partnership arrangements. In contrast, in Finland such financial incentives exist. However, the fixed forms of municipal-municipal collaboration may inhibit the search for more effective forms of partnerships

Planning: Applied Rationality or Contingent Practice?

This paper develops an interactional approach to planning in organisations that draws out the relevance of both rationalist and contingent models of planning. The distinction between these two models is developed in the light of the modernist / postmodernist debate to provide a set of theoretical issues to with planning in organisations. These issues are explored in the context of planning carried out in two empirically studied settings, a health authority and a school. The two models are found to provide resources for organisations and participants in these settings, both to proceed with planning activity and to account for it. Neither model is however adequate to describe the process of planning which is always a practical and situated activity whose character emerges in the process of interaction

Providing effective trauma care: the potential for service provider views to enhance the quality of care (qualitative study nested within a multicentre longitudinal quantitative study)

Objective: To explore views of service providers caring for injured people on: the extent to which services meet patients’ needs and their perspectives on factors contributing to any identified gaps in service provision

For Love and Money: Governance and Social Enterprise

For Love and Money – Governance and Social Enterprise is the result of research commissioned by the Governance Hub, in partnership with the Social Enterprise Coalition, and conducted by third sector specialists from the Open University. It aims to: Identify any characteristics of governance practices specific or distinctive to social enterprises. Identify and examine the governance support needs of social enterprises, the specific sources of governance support they currently access and the limitations and gaps in this provision. Explore how Governance Hub strategies, services and resources, and those of its successor, might be communicated, adapted, or extended to meet the needs of social enterprises

Developing patient-centred care: an ethnographic study of patient perceptions and influence on quality improvement.

BACKGROUND: Understanding quality improvement from a patient perspective is important for delivering patient-centred care. Yet the ways patients define quality improvement remains unexplored with patients often excluded from improvement work. We examine how patients construct ideas of 'quality improvement' when collaborating with healthcare professionals in improvement work, and how they use these understandings when attempting to improve the quality of their local services. METHODS: We used in-depth interviews with 23 'patient participants' (patients involved in quality improvement work) and observations in several sites in London as part of a four-year ethnographic study of patient and public involvement (PPI) activities run by Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Northwest London. We took an iterative, thematic and discursive analytical approach. RESULTS: When patient participants tried to influence quality improvement or discussed different dimensions of quality improvement their accounts and actions frequently started with talk about improvement as dependent on collective action (e.g. multidisciplinary healthcare professionals and the public), but usually quickly shifted away from that towards a neoliberal discourse emphasising the role of individual patients. Neoliberal ideals about individual responsibility were taken up in their accounts moving them away from the idea of state and healthcare providers being held accountable for upholding patients' rights to quality care, and towards the idea of citizens needing to work on self-improvement. Participants portrayed themselves as governed by self-discipline and personal effort in their PPI work, and in doing so provided examples of how neoliberal appeals for self-regulation and self-determination also permeated their own identity positions. CONCLUSIONS: When including patient voices in measuring and defining 'quality', governments and public health practitioners should be aware of how neoliberal rationalities at the heart of policy and services may discourage consumers from claiming rights to quality care by contributing to public unwillingness to challenge the status quo in service provision. If the democratic potential of patient and public involvement initiatives is to be realised, it will be crucial to help citizens to engage critically with how neoliberal rationalities can undermine their abilities to demand quality care

When Aims and Objectives Rhyme: How Two of Ireland's Largest Foundations Found Common Ground

Describes the Atlantic Philanthropies' and One Foundation's partnership to coordinate funding and monitoring of grantees advocating for and serving immigrants and children, challenges, lessons learned, and grantee and staff perspectives on pros and cons

Segmenting Publics

This research synthesis was commissioned by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to examine audience segmentation methods and tools in the area of public engagement. It provides resources for assessing the ways in which segmentation tools might be used to enhance the various activities through which models of public engagement in higher education are implemented. Understanding the opinions, values, and motivations of members of the public is a crucial feature of successful engagement. Segmentation methods can offer potential resources to help understand the complex set of interests and attitudes that the public have towards higher education. Key findings: There exist a number of existing segmentations which address many of the areas of activity found in Universities and HEIs. These include segmentations which inform strategic planning of communications; segmentations which inform the design of collaborative engagement activities by museums, galleries, and libraries; and segmentations that are used to identify under-represented users and consumers. Segmentation is, on its own, only a tool, used in different ways in different contexts. The broader strategic rationale shaping the application and design of segmentation methods is a crucial factor in determining the utility of segmentation tools. Four issues emerged of particular importance: 1. Segmentation exercises are costly and technically complex. Undertaking segmentations therefore requires significant commitment of financial and professional resources by HEIs; the appropriate interpretation, analysis, and application of segmentation exercises also require high levels of professional capacity and expertise 2. Undertaking a segmentation exercise has implications for the internal organisational operations of HEIs, not only for how they engage with external publics and stakeholders 3. Segmentation tools are adopted to inform interventions of various sorts, and superficially to differentiate and sometime discriminate between how groups of people are addressed and engaged. 4. For HEIs, the ethical issues and reputational risks which have been identified in this Research Synthesis as endemic to the application of segmentation methods for public purposes are particularly relevant