Partnership as conversation: why partnerships are condemned to talk and what they need to talk about

Participants and observers regularly complain that multi-agency partnerships are “talking shops,” engaged in constant discussion which gets in the way of “doing” the work of partnership. In this paper we engage with and criticize this characterization. Drawing on ideas from the Cultural Theory of Mary Douglas, we argue that true multi-agency partnerships are structurally condemned to talk. Instead of criticizing this talk and contrasting it with “doing” we should see it as a critical part of the doing of partnership. We should therefore concentrate on organizing and structuring partnership talk in order to move things forward rather than trying to minimize it. In the second half of the paper we therefore put forward a proposal for how partnership talk should be organized into five “conversations” concerning the principles, policies, processes, practices and politics of partnership. While we can make no predictions for the outcome of these conversations in any given case, we can, we believe, establish some necessary preconditions for effective interaction. We illustrate our arguments drawing on a range of empirical work in education and wider public services reform

Representing the family: how does the state 'think family'?

Over the last decade the family and family-centred policies and practices have received increasing attention within the public service agenda, culminating in the emphatic instruction to ‘think family’ individually, collectively and institutionally. This has occurred at a time when the sociology of the family has increasingly emphasised the difficulties of thinking family in a coherent way. In this article we explore this agenda through an examination of the representational tools with which public service professionals and managers have been recently equipped. We conclude by questioning the adequacy of these tools for effectively representing family relations

Competing institutional logics of information sharing in public services: Why we often seem to be talking at cross-purposes when we talk about information sharing

Sharing information and data across organizational boundaries has proved hard to achieve. This is, in part, because we have framed the problem, and possible solutions, in one of three conflicting ways that draw on powerful institutional logics: design, governance and enculturation. Five strategies for addressing this conflict are presented—contingency, combination, conflict, ambiguity and synthesis. The conclusion links the problem of information sharing to the paradoxical nature of information

New Media as Social Facts: Researching as Shaping the Digital Landscape

The emergence of new media (or digital media, or perhaps even ‘the new economy’) has certainly had some salutary effects on media studies. The advent of the Web has raised (or re-raised) a whole set of interesting questions for those concerned with researching various aspects of the media from those concerned with political economy and industrial organisation to those concerned with reception, interpretations and texts. Digital media frequently appear, even in the most sober accounts, to be some unstoppable tidal wave of change, a complex and multi-layered landscape moving so fast that researchers can only rush to try to keep up with its myriad implications and perturbations throughout society. This paper is concerned to break down that image, to try to show that its basic categories – digital media, developing quickly, researchers rushing to catch up – are, if not false, at least questionable. What I want to argue is that the researchers do not simply react, belatedly to the emergence of digital media, but that they have an active role in shaping its development. At the end of this essay I want to draw out some of the more practical implications of this point of view

A local property associated with the semilattice of compactifications of a space

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the problem of when the complete upper semilattice K(X) of compactifications of a space X is a lattice. The concept of K(X) being locally a lattice at a point of X is introduced, and it is shown that K(X) is a lattice if and only if K(X) is locally a lattice at each point of X. This is used to show (1) that if K(X) is a lattice and U is open in X, then K(U) is a lattice, and (2) that if X is the topological sum of spaces (Xi)i∈I, then K(X) is a lattice if and only if K(Xi) is a lattice for each i ∈ I

Network governance as a structure of conversations

In this paper, we use Cultural Theory to explain why effective network governance is experienced by so many participants as generating many frustrating conversations – a ‘talking shop’ – and to explain why particular actors tend to find these conversations so frustrating. In the second part of the paper, we propose an approach to managing those conversations in a more fruitful way, based on separating out a specific set of conversations, based on our prior analysis, and generating a set of potentially testable propositions about how to go about this. We draw on twenty years of participation in the network governance of ‘joining up’ projects in the field of health social care and education

‘Trying to do a jigsaw without the picture on the box’: understanding the challenges of care integration in the context of single assessment for older people in England

Introduction: Demographic ageing is one of the major challenges for governments in developed countries because older people are the main users of health and social care services. More joined-up, partnership approaches supported by information and communications technologies (ICTs) have become key to managing these demands. This article discusses recent developments towards integrated care in the context of one of the arenas in which integration is being attempted, the Single Assessment Process (SAP) to support the care for older people in England. It draws upon accounts of local SAP implementations in order to assess and reflect upon some of the successes and limitations of service integration enabled by ICTs. Description of care practice: At the Department of Health in England, policy and strategy are directed at the integration of services through a ‘whole systems’ approach, with services that are interdependent upon one another and organised around the person that uses them. The Single Assessment Processes (SAP) is an instance of inter-organisational and cross-sectoral sharing of information intended to improve communication and coordination amongst professions and agencies and so support more integrated care. The aim of SAP is to ensure that older people receive appropriate, effective and timely responses to their health and social care needs and that professionals do not duplicate each others efforts. This article examines examples from two programmes of work within the context of SAP in England: one with the direction coming from local government social services, the other where the momentum is coming from the National Health Service (NHS). Conclusion and discussion: Both examples show that the policy and practice of ICT-supported integration continues to represent a significant challenge. Although the notion of integrated care underpinned by ICT-enabled information sharing is persuasive, it has limitations in practice. The notion of an ‘open systems’ approach is proposed as an alternative way of improving communication and coordination across the domains of health and social care

Using data mining techniques to predict students at risk of poor performance

The achievement of good honours in Undergraduate degrees is important in the context of Higher Education (HE), both for students and for the institutions that host them. In this paper, we look at whether data mining can be used to highlight performance problems early on and propose remedial actions. Furthermore, some of the methods may also form the basis for recommender systems that may guide students towards their module choices to increase their chances of a good outcome. We use data collected through the admission process and through the students' degrees. In this paper, we predict good honours outcomes based on data at admission and on the first year module results. To validate the proposed results, we evaluate data relating to students with different characteristics from different schools. The analysis is achieved by using historical data from the Data Warehouse of a specific University. The methods used, however, are fairly general and can be used in any HE institution. Our results highlight groups of students at considerable risk of obtaining poor outcomes. For example, using admissions and first year module performance data we can isolate groups for one of the studied schools in which only 24% of students achieve good honour degrees. Over 67% of all low achievers in the school can be identified within this group

Reducing the Resource Acquisition Costs for Returnee Entrepreneurs: Role of Chinese National Science Parks

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the mechanisms through which Chinese National Science Parks' (NSPs) services facilitate returnee entrepreneurs' (REs) acquisition of resources for their new ventures. Resource acquisition is crucial for new ventures, but it inevitably leads to significant costs increase. Although the NSPs offer various services to REs to reduce these costs, they still struggle to find the right mix of services. Design/methodology/approach: From the transaction cost's perspective, an exploratory multiple-case study was conducted with data collected from six NSPs in China. Findings: The results reveal that four types of NSP services (mentoring and training, social event, promotion of REs and accreditation of resource holders (RHs)) have both individual and joint effects on reducing REs' resource acquisition costs. Specifically, the “accreditation of RHs” service directly helps REs reduce search costs. The combination of “accreditation of RHs”, “promotion of REs” and “social event” services help REs and RHs to establish guanxi. Further, guanxi, working along with the “mentoring and training” service, helps REs to reduce contracting, monitoring and enforcement costs. Originality/value: This study is among the first to explore the matching mechanisms between science parks’ services and entrepreneurs' cost reduction. This helps reconcile the inconsistent findings on science parks' effect by explaining why some NSPs are able to provide strong support to REs while others are less successful. In addition, the findings are useful for NSPs to develop the right mix of tailored services for REs. Finally, REs will find this study useful to evaluate which NSP is a more suitable location for their new ventures

Mechanism of age-dependent susceptibility and novel treatment strategy in glutaric acidemia type I

Glutaric acidemia type I (GA-I) is an inherited disorder of lysine and tryptophan metabolism presenting with striatal lesions anatomically and symptomatically similar to Huntington disease. Affected children commonly suffer acute brain injury in the context of a catabolic state associated with nonspecific illness. The mechanisms underlying injury and age-dependent susceptibility have been unknown, and lack of a diagnostic marker heralding brain injury has impeded intervention efforts. Using a mouse model of GA-I, we show that pathologic events began in the neuronal compartment while enhanced lysine accumulation in the immature brain allowed increased glutaric acid production resulting in age-dependent injury. Glutamate and GABA depletion correlated with brain glutaric acid accumulation and could be monitored in vivo by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) spectroscopy as a diagnostic marker. Blocking brain lysine uptake reduced glutaric acid levels and brain injury. These findings provide what we believe are new monitoring and treatment strategies that may translate for use in human GA-I