Experiencing accountability: the impact of the Osmotherly Rules on the senior responsible owners of major public projects

Accountability is a characteristic of being a senior civil servant. Calls for them to be more accountable make assumptions about the causal mechanisms that link it to behaviour, and about how these officials experience and manage multiple accountability relationships. Despite the importance of accountability within the public sector there is limited investigation into these assumptions, or how it feels to be accountable from the manager’s perspective. My research uses in-depth interviews with 47 senior officials to investigate their experience of being accountable. The narrative around the problems affecting major public projects in the UK includes the demand for increased accountability of their Senior Responsible Owners (SROs). Recent changes to the Osmotherly Rules, which provide guidance for civil servants giving evidence to parliamentary committees, have created a new accountability mechanism for the SRO. They are now expected to account personally to Parliament for the implementation of their project. The interviews provide an opportunity to investigate how this group of public managers feel about being accountable, how they manage multiple relationships, and their experience of this new mechanism. The analysis shows that they prioritise their account giving activity by assessing the salience of account holders. I propose a typology to illustrate their management of their accountability environment. I argue that being made accountable to Parliament is perceived to have reputational risk for SROs but has not made significant changes to how they feel about being held accountable for their projects. However, it may have a positive impact because of the personal authority it gives them to influence the relationships with their most salient account holders. I show that to understand the effect of adding a new mechanism to a complex environment, it is essential to appreciate how it is perceived by those it is intended to hold accountable

The Art of Diplomacy: Restaging a Wartime Brazilian Initiative of Public Diplomacy in the United Kingdom

The show ‘The Art of Diplomacy – Brazilian Modernism Painted for War’ was opened on 5th April and displayed until 22nd June 2018 at the Sala Brasil, the exhibition space of the Brazilian Embassy in Trafalgar Square, London. This was a partial restaging and tribute to the 1944-1945 ‘Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings’, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and seven other major galleries across the United Kingdom. Out of the one-hundred-sixty eight original artworks, twenty-four paintings by twenty artists were found in the public galleries of seventeen cities throughout the UK. They were shown, together with a video produced for this occasion and several historical documents unearthed during a four-year academic research project. The investigation for this meta-exhibition inspired this author’s PhD dissertation on “Public Diplomacy on the Front Line: The Exhibition of Modern Brazilian Paintings within Brazil’s Second World War Foreign Policy”, for which this essay serves as a sort of epilogue. The dissertation hermeneutically examined the diplomatic motivations and outcomes of this wartime initiative, concluding that it was a public component of a foreign policy designed to increase Brazil’s prestige in the aftermath of WW2. It also demonstrates that the exhibition was a successful endeavour, although its outcomes were weakened by the political discontinuity that followed the replacement of its mastermind, Minister Oswaldo Aranha (1894-1960), and President Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954). The TAoD, which was diplomacy-driven as much as the exhibition that it celebrated, took place within a historical, political and cultural context entirely different from the one in which the original show came into existence. The purpose of this paper is to describe how the 2018 project evolved vis- à -vis its diplomatic background, while also forming a corpus for future analyses and interpretations

Assessment of the Cause Why the Most People Prefer to Buy Imported Shoes to Domestically Manufactured Ones

This study is conducted to assess the reasons why most people prefer to buy imported shoes to domestically manufactured ones. The main reason that initiates the researcher to conduct this study is the spate of complaints received from the Ethiopian shoe manufacturers because of their incompetency in the domestic market To investigate factors that influence the consumer preference towards imported shoes products, the study have used different variables or values that consumers need a shoe to have. It has also tried to identify what values are absent in domestically manufactured shoes. The research has used primary data collected with help of questionnaires to obtain the relevant information pertaining to the study. Random sampling technique is used to - determine the number and composition of consumers to be included in the survey. The sample size taken is 200 customers with in the city units of Addis Ababa and contains 108 male and 92 female customers. -: As the result based on the collected and analyzed data the identified factors that are mentioned as the main reason that influence customer's preference towards imported shoes are presented . As the result of the study it is expected to identify which of the values of a shoe like; price, quality, Fashionability, durability etc influence the consumers preference.Jimma Universit

Highly prevalent but not always persistent: undergraduate and graduate student's misconceptions about psychology.

Although past research has documented the prevalence of misconceptions in introductory psychology classes, few studies have assessed how readily upper-level undergraduate and graduate students endorse erroneous beliefs about the discipline. In Study 1, we administered a 30-item misconception test to an international sample of 670 undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral students. Analyses indicated that participants identified and rejected the majority of misconceptions, with doctoral students performing better than their Master’s or undergraduate peers. In Study 2, we administered a revised version of our questionnaire to a novel sample of 557 students while controlling for number of years spent at university, psychology courses completed and need for cognition. Once again, we found that graduate students rejected more, affirmed less and reported lower levels of uncertainty than their undergraduate counterparts. Educational implications and future research directions are discussed

Folk devils without moral panics: discovering concepts in the sociology of evil

In this theoretical ‘think piece’, I question whether Stanley Cohen’s (1972) ‘folk devil’ and ‘moral panic’ concepts are as inseparable as current sociological and criminological research suggests. Thus far, the vast majority of crime and deviance scholars have treated the folk devil as just one sub-part of the moral panic concept, rather than considering it to be a distinct concept. Consequently, the social processes leading to the creation of folk devils have been largely under-theorized compared to the social processes underlying moral panics. I propose that folk devils and moral panics be conceptualized as two distinct social phenomena. I present evidence from news articles published in the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulated newspaper, which illustrates how individuals can be labeled as folk devils when moral panics are not taking place. I conclude by considering how a distinct, folk devil research program can contribute to studies in the sociology of ‘evil’

Crescent: Proposed Arboretum Shade Structure

This is a sunshade structure that uses shells as the facade to create the enclosing of this structure

Planeamiento financiero herramienta para gestión operativa en cooperativa de ahorro y crédito de los trabajadores del Ministerio Público – Siempre Contigo

Objetivo Establecer como el planeamiento financiero se convierte en instrumento importante en actividades de operación para la cooperativa de ahorro y crédito, recurrió al método científico de tipo descriptivo-explicativo no experimental, correlacional su unidad de análisis compuesta por 68 individuos como directivos, contables, colaboradores y profesionales expertos en planeamiento financiero en cooperativas quienes se eligieron de forma probabilística, para efectos de comprobación se recurrió a la escala de Likert. Sus dimensiones compuestas: programación, organización, control y situación de liquidez. En la evaluación del nivel de confianza y legalidad de la data se recurrió al software informatizado SPSS, versión 28.00, así mismo se valida teniendo como base el modelo de Pearson, a un nivel de confianza del 95.00%, con utilización de Ji cuadrada. Resultados: Las contestaciones formulan mayor equilibrio (57.14%) juzgaron, estar muy satisfechos, como el planeamiento financiero es herramienta importante, en correspondencia a la gestión operativa esta se verá mejorada con la aplicación de importante herramienta financiera del cual un (50.00%) están muy satisfechos. Conclusión: el planeamiento financiero reconocida como instrumento es importante para el mejoramiento de la gestión operativa en la Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito de Trabajadores del Ministerio Público siempre contigo

The Creative Destruction of Management Buy-Outs

So, as we move forward post MBO without the original Entrepreneur at the helm it is acknowledged that we will face a great many challenges as we continue along the path leading towards longevity and continued success, for in essence we want to go from ‘Good to Great’ and become ‘Built to Last’. In common with other organisations in the same situation, to address these challenges we need to become both wily and innovative in a manner that we haven’t been in the past. The previous owner/leader has taken a substantial sum of money off the table (as a result of the MBO) and going forward is likely to be less driven than he was previously, spending less time in the business thereby creating somewhat of a void. In filling this void does an MBO transaction provide the organisation with a firm level version of the ‘creative destruction’ espoused by Schumpeter as being so essential to the development of new radical innovation? Are the management teams that led the MBO's the ‘New Men’ that Schumpeter noted were a prequel to innovation? The subject of this management report is therefore focused on the innovation challenges Small-Medium Enterprises face once the previous leader has exited (or virtually exited) the organisation, following a change of ownership (specifically via an MBO). In completing this study I propose to look in depth at a small number of organisations, the selection of which will be skewed towards identifying those that are directly comparably in terms of size, culture and characteristics to PJD. Given the size of this subject it is appropriate to refine the scope of this piece of work, accordingly, I will specifically focus on any changes that occurred in the fields of process innovation and team structure and their impact (if any) on the success of the organisation. In respect of the team aspect, I will look to identify changes as a direct result of the removal of the influence of the entrepreneur and endeavor to determine whether the management teams are indeed Schumpeter’s ‘New Men’

Creative haptics: an evaluation of a haptic tool for non-sighted and visually impaired design students, studying at a distance

Design students who are blind or sight-impaired face distinct challenges when studying a visually centric discipline such as design practice. Students who are sighted use computer-aided design (CAD) which is presented via high definition using a PC mouse. However, design students who are blind or sight-impaired are not able to use visual display technology; therefore, this creates a barrier to access for this community. The aim of this study is to present a haptic prototype trial (Haptic Application Prototype Test [HAPT]) designed to assist design students who are blind/sight-impaired to interact with prototype assembly at the Open University (OU). The study specifically assessed the user feedback and the efficacy of access to CAD interface through the affordances of the haptic interface. The experiment included two groups of participants: one group included students who were blind and sight-impaired and the second group students who were classed fully sighted. Both groups were tested in two conditions of haptic engagement – manual and virtual. The parameters examined were (a) time – set at an industry-recognized time taken to assemble a ‘sketch model’ or prototype, and (b) ncollision – the number of collisions created by a collision algorithm which calculated any random collisions with the virtual environment or objects therein. Quantitative results showed that there was little statistical difference between time and a between-group test. From this we can imply that the haptic interface had offered equal access to CAD for people in the trial who were sighted and blind/sight-impaired indiscriminate of their sight acuity. Further future work using HAPT could be developed to a wider audience and a larger more diverse range of sight-impaired users. Future work will focus on new explorations of teaching using of haptics for greater immersion for distance learners at the OU science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) labs