Does Disclosure of Performance Information Influence Street-level Bureaucrats' Enforcement Style?

Governments use different regulatory instruments to ensure that businesses owners or "inspectees" comply with rules and regulations. One tool that is increasingly applied is disclosing inspectees' performance information to other stakeholders. Disclosing performance information has consequences for street-level bureaucrats because it increases the visibility of their day-to-day work. Using a survey (n =507) among Dutch inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, this article shows that the disclosure of performance information has an impact on enforcement style at the street level. Findings show that perceived disclosed performance information positively enhances all three dimensions of street-level bureaucrats' enforcement style (legal, facilitation, and accommodation). This effect is strongest for facilitation and accommodation and weakest for the legal style. Perceived resistance by inspectees partly explains this effect. Contrary to expectations, more perceived disclosure does not result in more but in less perceived resistance of inspectees by street-level bureaucrats

Nationale Citymarketing Monitor 2010

Inleiding Citymarketing is volop in beweging. In het begin van de jaren tachtig was het aantal gemeenten met een citymarketingbeleid nog relatief klein; inmiddels doen veel meer gemeenten aan citymarketing1. Anno 2010 is citymarketing één van de gemeentelijke beleidsterreinen. Citymarketing komt terug in collegeakkoorden, er zijn wethouders met citymarketing in de portefeuille en er zijn ambtenaren belast met het ontwikkelen, coördineren en uitvoeren van citymarketing . Ook zien we op meerdere plaatsen externe – vaak deels door de gemeente gesubsidieerde - partijen die een belangrijke rol vervullen in de citymarketing. Soms hebben deze externe organisaties vooral uitvoeringstaken, maar er zijn ook externe organisaties die verantwoordelijk zijn voor het ontwikkelen en coördineren van het citymarketingbeleid. We kunnen ook spreken van een beroepsgroep van citymarketeers. Een goed voorbeeld hiervan is dat er veel professionals lid zijn van de Linked In groep voor citymarketing. Ook kunnen we zeggen dat de aard en omvang van citymarketingactiviteiten in de afgelopen decennia is veranderd. Zo was city branding nauwelijks aan de orde in de jaren tachtig en negentig. Vanaf de millenniumwisseling is de belangstelling voor het gebruik van branding toegenomen

Blaming the bureaucrat: does perceived blame risk influence inspectors’ enforcement style?

Is there a relation between street-level bureaucrats’ enforcement style and their perception of the risk of getting blamed? This article answers this question on the basis of a survey (n = 507) among inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Product Safety Authority. We included perceived media attention on their work as a factor that might influence street-level bureaucrats’ perception of blame risk and their enforcement style. Three dimensions of enforcement style were distinguished from earlier research: legal, facilitative and accommodative. We found that when inspectors perceive more blame risk, they employ a slightly less legal style and, instead, employ a more accommodative style. Thus, they act a little less formally and less coercively (i.e. legal) and take greater account of their peers’ opinions (i.e. accommodative). However, perceived media attention did not have a significant influence on enforcement style. Points for practitioners: 1. When inspectors perceive more blame risk, they tend to pay more attention to the opinion of peers (other inspectors, supervisors, etc.). 2. Blame risk does not lead to the use of a more formal inspection style. 3. Media attention does not play an important role in enhancing the blame risk perception of inspectors. 4. This media and blame risk is less important than often found in the case of politicians. This may be connected to the fact that the work of inspectors as street-level bureaucrats is less visible to the wider public (and the media)

Music and low-frequency vibrations for the treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain in elderly:A pilot study

BACKGROUND: Transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation has analgesic potential and might be elicited by abdominally administered low-frequency vibrations. The objective was to study the safety and effect of a combination of music and abdominally administered low-frequency vibrations on pain intensity in elderly patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. METHODS: This trial was an international multicenter, randomized controlled pilot study. Patients at age ≥ 65 years with musculoskeletal pain for ≥ 3 months and a daily pain score ≥ 4 out of 10 were recruited at three centers. They were randomized to receive either a combination of music and low-frequency (20–100 Hz) vibrations administered to the abdomen, or a combination with the same music but with higher frequency (200–300 Hz) vibrations administered to the abdomen. Low-frequency vibrations were expected to result in pain reduction measured with a numeric pain rating scale (NRS). Patients in both groups received eight treatments of the music combined with the vibrations in three weeks. Primary outcomes were safety (Serious Adverse Events) and pain intensity measured at baseline, after the last treatment and at six weeks follow-up. Multilevel linear model analyses were performed to study group and time effects. RESULTS: A total of 45 patients were analyzed according to intention-to-treat principle. After 344 treatments, 1 Adverse Event was found related to the intervention, while 13 Adverse Events were possibly related. A multilevel linear model showed that the interaction effect of group by time did not predict pain intensity (F[1, 45.93] = 0.002, p = 0.97) when comparing pain intensity at baseline, after the last treatment and at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of music and abdominally administered vibrations was found to be safe and well tolerated by the elderly patients. However, over time, neither the low-frequency treatment group nor the high-frequency treatment group provided clinically meaningful pain relief. There is no evidence that the low-frequency treatment elicited vagal nerve stimulation. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial was prospectively registered in the Netherlands Trial Register (NTR: NL7606) on 21-03-2019

The Effect of Air on Granular Size Separation in a Vibrated Granular Bed

Using high-speed video and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) we study the motion of a large sphere in a vertically vibrated bed of smaller grains. As previously reported we find a non-monotonic density dependence of the rise and sink time of the large sphere. We find that this density dependence is solely due to air drag. We investigate in detail how the motion of the intruder sphere is influenced by size of the background particles, initial vertical position in the bed, ambient pressure and convection. We explain our results in the framework of a simple model and find quantitative agreement in key aspects with numerical simulations to the model equations.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, submitted to PRE, corrected typos, slight change

The differential effect of various stakeholder groups in place marketing

This article analyses whether involving various stakeholder groups in place marketing has effects on the content of place brands, and on how place marketing influences other policy fields, i.e. spatial planning and tourism/leisure policies. The research applies structural equation modelling to nationwide surveys in the Netherlands and Germany among professionals in place marketing (N = 444). The study shows that different stakeholder groups have a varied influence; involving residents and public managers increases the influence of place marketing on spatial planning policies, whereas involving businesses increases influence on tourism/leisure policies. Other studies have shown varying influence of stakeholder groups in cases, but not in quantitative studies. The research also addresses the mechanisms at play in Germany and the Netherlands, showing mainly commonalities

Random-phase approximation and its applications in computational chemistry and materials science

The random-phase approximation (RPA) as an approach for computing the electronic correlation energy is reviewed. After a brief account of its basic concept and historical development, the paper is devoted to the theoretical formulations of RPA, and its applications to realistic systems. With several illustrating applications, we discuss the implications of RPA for computational chemistry and materials science. The computational cost of RPA is also addressed which is critical for its widespread use in future applications. In addition, current correction schemes going beyond RPA and directions of further development will be discussed.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, published online in J. Mater. Sci. (2012

Reactive Petri Nets for Workflow Modeling

Petri nets are widely used for modeling and analyzing workflows