From Comparison to Collaboration: Experiments with a New Scholarly and Political Form

Society and the workplace are two factors that are important for the individual's health status. It is important that the individuals has the right skills to take care of their health. For organizations, it is important to strive for the welfare of their employees. This has proven to have a positive impact on work performance, reduced absenteeism and reduced costs for rehabilitation. In 2007, the local authorities in Umeå implemented a wellness offering for all employees working in the municipality administration. They later saw a need to assist employees who needed help getting started with new exercise habits. This study aims to examine how the participants in the "Get Started Programme", succeeded in creating lasting exercise habits , 3-4 years after completing the program. Research questions are: How have the participants increased their knowledge practically and theoretically after the programme has finished? How have the participants succeeded in creating the content of the programme in their daily lives? How do the participants assess their health compared to before they participated in the programme? Are there any beneficial factors highlighted by the participants as during the program? The study was conducted on the basis of semi-structured interviews with eight voluntary participants who previously participated in the Get Started Programme. The results show that six of the eight participants succeeded to get started with the goals for behavioral change, and still maintain a sufficient physical activity level today. Participants who do not consider themselves to have succeeded in reaching the goals they set up in the beginning of the program, point out that they have the tools needed to go on and continue the behavioral change they strive for

Public service spin-outs in the UK: towards a theoretical understanding of the spin-out process

Since the election of the Labour government in 1997 and its vision of the ‘Third Way’, the UK government has been keen to support social enterprise and to utilise the third sector in welfare delivery. Over the past few years the policy environment in the UK has sought to encourage public sector workers to ‘spin-out’ the services that they deliver into social enterprises. The research reported in this paper draws on semi-structured interviews with eleven representatives across four local authorities (LA) in the UK that are spinning out a public service into a social enterprise. The services being spun out operate across four different sectors, which allows the research to identify the common experiences and barriers in spinning out. The analysis is underpinned by a theoretical model of public/third sector collaboration by Takahashi and Smutny’s (2002), later adapted by Cornforth et al (2013). We present an alternative version of this framework based on public sector spin outs. In doing so, the research identified that there are significant barriers facing public services that seek to spin-out as social enterprises and the challenges that this brings to LAs in relation to managing the process. Issues around the sustainability of the ‘business case’ of the spin-outs proved to be the main problem, along with the difficulties of maintaining service provision during the transition phas

New ways of working in acute inpatient care: a case for change

This position paper focuses on the current tensions and challenges of aligning inpatient care with innovations in mental health services. It argues that a cultural shift is required within inpatient services. Obstacles to change including traditional perceptions of the role and responsibilities of the psychiatrist are discussed. The paper urges all staff working in acute care to reflect on the service that they provide, and to consider how the adoption of new ways of working might revolutionise the organisational culture. This cultural shift offers inpatient staff the opportunity to fully utilise their expertise. New ways of working may be perceived as a threat to existing roles and responsibilities or as an exciting opportunity for professional development with increased job satisfaction. Above all, the move to new ways of working, which is gathering pace throughout the UK, could offer service users1 a quality of care that meets their needs and expectations

Defining the dimensions of engineering asset procurement: towards an integrated model

Procuring engineering asset management is a critical activity of all types of government, with optimal approaches to procurement still in need of identification. This paper advances a novel approach of exploring the procurement of engineering assets across a number of dimensions: Project rules, organisational interaction rules and complexity. The dimensions of project rules are held to include cost, quality and time. The dimensions of organisational interaction rules are held to be collaboration, competition and control. Complexity is seen as in the project itself, in the interaction between organisations or in the business environment. Taken together these dimensions seem salient for any type of engineering asset, and provide a useful way of conceptualising procurement arrangements of these assets

Conflict Management. The Contribution of the Christian Church

It is true now that man lives in a world of conflict. Conflict is an ever-present process in human relations. Conflict situations indeed appear frequently in daily, public and private life. Conflict may occur within and among families, groups, communities or nations; and they may be fuelled by ethnic, racial, religious, or economic differences, or may arise from differences in ideologies, values and beliefs. Conflict may be on a small or large scale. Conflict charge the people with tensions, threats, fears, anxieties and uncertainties. What makes a society ideal is the extent to which the conflicting interests and needs in a society are constructively managed so that violence does not threaten its continued existence. Since it is obvious that conflicts in any given society is inevitable, management and resolution of conflict is the very essence of talking about conflict. This is what this work is set to achieve and to offer suggestions on how to manage and resolve conflict thereby reducing its negative and destructive effects. This work showed the church has the potential to contribute to the management and resolution of conflicts in Nigeria

Recent Developments in Employment Relations in the Philippines

We seek to describe recent developments in employment relations in the Philippines, placing these developments in the contexts of the distinctive elements of the Philippine social/political/industrial relations systems as well as the ongoing trade-based and functional integration of international markets and the recent regional economic crisis. We find that, while some firms are pursuing functional flexibility and more cooperative employment relations, the logic of competition has primarily induced firms to adopt practices that promote numerical flexibility such that a core-periphery workforce is created. We argue that the labor movement in the Philippines has been hampered in its efforts to effectively counter employer strategies by its low density, its fragmentation, and an unfavorable public policy environment; Philippine labor unions have, however, made some recent gains in organizing and inter-union coordination. We also argue that governments, both national and regional, have not done enough to counteract the negative effects of market integration on workers nor to evolve the Philippines into a higher value-added exporter

Practical heutagogy: Promoting personalised learning in management education

The purpose of this article is to highlight the benefits to both organizations and individuals in adopting heutagogy within management education to develop individual capability. This conceptual paper is based on a systematic review of the literature relating to heutagogy and learning theory. This article calls for the adoption of heutagogic learning within management education alongside traditional pedagogy and andragogy. It provides a number of practical examples of how heutagogy may be implemented in a variety of contexts, ranging from undergraduate study to senior leadership positions within organizations. This article contributes to the growing interest and literature related to new forms of student-centered learning and, in particular, heutagogy. This article is an original contribution to the discourse on student-centered learning and the contribution that heutagogy may make to the professional development of individuals

Future directions in urban design as public policy: reassessing best practice principles for design review and development management

his paper reassesses John Punter's ‘Best Practice Principles for Design Review and Development Management’ that were published in this journal in 2007. Placing a focused lens on British and North American practice, the paper argues that design control and review has been profoundly reshaped since 2007 by three contributing factors: the challenges associated with climate change, the growing role that communities can play in local decision making, and the impacts of the global economic crisis upon public sector finances and property development. In light of these trends, the paper uses a review of recent literature and design practices to argue for a series of amendments to the best practice principles. These focus on: (1) the potential for design control and review to be more fully informed by ecological design theory and practice; (2) the need for more rigorous multi-stakeholder collaboration in the design decision-making process; and (3) the opportunity for urban designers to become more competent ‘market actors’ with the necessary abilities to confidently shape property development decisions