The Climate of Hope

Hogg Foundation for Mental Healt

What informs a firm’s Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner? The development of a survey instrument.

Strategic alliances are defined as inter-organisational collaborative arrangements whose purpose is to achieve the strategic targets of partners (Das and Teng, 1998). Within the pharmaceutical industry, they represent a key form of disintegration that enables organisations to create a network based on partnerships, whereby the overarching goal is to pursue a set of agreed-upon goals, in which they share the benefits (Chen and Chen, 2002). Despite the high prevalence of strategic alliances within this industry, only 50% are considered stable or achieve performance perceived by the partners as satisfactory (McCutchen et al., 2008) and up to 70% terminate early (Kogut, 1989; Park and Russo, 1996; Park and Ungson, 1997). Nevertheless, 85% of the senior executives still believe alliances are and will continue to be essential or important to their business (Powerlinx, 2014), and as such have invested significantly in becoming attractive alliance partners, or partner of choice. Further, both conceptual and empirical evidence has signaled that a partner’s attractiveness can have significant contribution to the success of the alliance itself (Coombs and Deeds, 2000; Lee, 2007). Despite this evidence, there is no validated approach for a firm to test how attractive they are perceived to be by prospective partners. Without this, a firm is not able to tangibly understand what their perceived strengths and weaknesses are, and how these evolve over time. The purpose of this research is to address this gap. Further, the research aims to understand the impact of firm’s Alliance Strategy on their attractiveness scores. As such, this research makes three overarching and significant contributions; (1) the identification of two key antecedents of a firm’s Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner (2) the development of a self-assessment questionnaire for a firm to use in order to quantify their attractiveness, and (3) the development of research propositions for how an Alliance Strategy moderates the relationship between Attractiveness and its antecedents. This research applies Network Theory, which, in its most simple terms, refers to a firm’s relationships with others that have important and desired resources (Ireland et al., 2002). Networks promote alliance formation and firm success through ‘social capital’, described as the benefits a firm derives from their relationships (Coleman, 1988). Social capital increases in alliances with greater diversity within their networks (Baker, 2000) and with the quality of the alliances themselves (Glaister and Buckley, 1999). As such, this theory plays a key part in explaining the identified antecedents of Attractiveness - Previous Alliance Performance and Alliance Portfolio Diversity. In turn, this research extends Network Theory in two ways. Firstly, by introducing the novel concept of Attractiveness as an Alliance Partner as an indicator of a firm’s success or performance. Secondly, by introducing the novel concept of an Alliance Strategy as an important condition that will moderate a firm’s attractiveness. A mixed method approach has been used, comprising of four Empirical Studies in order to develop and finalise the research propositions and questionnaire. This research has been conducted within and for the pharmaceutical industry specifically but can be applied to other industries

Tackling Anti-Social Behaviour: A Critical Review

Over the past decade, anti-social behaviour (henceforth referred to as ASB) has become a focus of much policy-making and debate within central and local government and the police. Clear definitions of ASB are lacking, but the term is usually understood to refer to relatively minor criminal activity and non-criminal ‘nuisance’ behaviour that affects the social and/or physical environment of public or semi-public places. The term ASB is frequently used synonymously with ‘disorder’, and is sometimes associated with the concept of ‘incivilities’. Policy-makers and strategists, at national and local levels alike, reiterate that problems of ASB can have a massively detrimental effect on neighbourhoods as a whole, and on the lives of individuals. Hence strenuous and wide-ranging efforts are being made to support, develop and implement schemes for tackling ASB – involving a variety of enforcement and preventive measures

Citizens in policing:The lived reality of being a Police Support Volunteer

The focus of this article is the Police Support Volunteer (PSV), a brand of non-warranted and usually non-uniformed volunteer that was introduced in England and Wales from the 1990s onwards. The article draws on participatory action research with PSVs in Lancashire Constabulary. The background to greater use of volunteers within policing is discussed with particular reference to the political projects of austerity and responsibilisation – the later involving calls for citizens to take greater responsibility for their own safety and security. In these contexts, the article considers volunteers’ motivations, skills and deployment. The article focuses particularly on the lived reality of being a PSV, including the assumed role of PSVs within the wider police family. A subordinate relationship with other paid colleagues within the police family is challenged. The effective use of PSVs is discussed, including the introduction of police powers for volunteers with the 2017 Policing and Crime Act. Implications for our understanding of policing, and for the future of non-warranted volunteers, are discussed

What are the police for? Re-thinking policing post-austerity

In the context of the global financial crisis and after inheriting a record budget deficit, the British Coalition Government decided in 2010 that the best way forward was a programme of austerity. What followed were major cuts to public expenditure, including a substantial reduction in police budgets. Whether this was the right decision is beyond the remit of this chapter. However, the effect on the police has been substantial. The police in Britain had enjoyed a sustained period of growth – both in terms of police numbers and increased responsibilities undertaken by police personnel – despite increases in competition and falls in recorded crime (Millie and Bullock, 2012; Millie, 2013). This was to change. In Scotland cuts came through the merging of all eight forces into a single Police Service of Scotland (Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012). With the 2010 Comprehensive spending Review (HM Treasury, 2010) government funding of the police in England and Wales was reduced by 20 per cent through to 2015. The scale of these cuts was unprecedented and has required police services to reconsider their priorities. At the same time the police have had to deal with major change in governance structures with the introduction of elected Police and Crime Commissioners in November 2012 – albeit following an election where only 15 per cent of the electorate turned up to vote (Rogers and Burn-Murdoch, 2012). The new policing landscape of fewer resources and (assumed) greater democratic accountability has generated a lot of uncertainty among serving police officers and questions over what form policing will take post-austerity. In this context the question of what the police are for becomes pertinent and is the focus for this chapter

Guerrilla gardening as normalised law-breaking::Challenges to land ownership and aesthetic order

This article considers guerrilla gardening that involves taking on other people’s land for gardening, usually without their permission. It is a practice that is overlooked largely by criminology, yet it can tell us something about attitudes to law and land ownership and challenges the approved aesthetic order of where we live. It can soften the look and feel of the city, leading to a different emotional and affective interaction with urbanity. Evidence is presented from a qualitative study of guerrilla gardeners from the North West of England. The discussion is informed theoretically by work on aesthetic criminology, do-it-yourself and temporary urbanism and the idea of urban commons. In this study, guerrilla gardening is found to be a normalised form of law-breaking that, despite not necessarily being to everyone’s taste and the gardeners having an autocratic view of property, is a form of urban intervention that is broadly accepted and welcomed, even by those who enforce the law