Redesigning procurement in the public sector will be a vital part of meeting budget reductions.

In 2008/09, the public sector spent £220 billion on goods and services alone, accounting for one third of all spending. However, there is multiple overlap in terms of procurement processes and structures across the public sector and collaboration across organisational boundaries has been slow to develop. Chris Cox and Paul Rainford report from a recent seminar organised by the London School of Economics and the Design Council in which it was argued that innovative procurement will be crucial if the public sector is to reduce duplication, provide value for money and survive austerity.

Structural change in the presence of network externalities: a co-evolutionary model of technological successions

The paper examines the conditions under which technological successions can occur in the presence of network externalities. A two-stage, multi-agent simulation model is presented in which product designs co-evolve with consumer preferences. It provides a rich framework in which to study the complex phenomenon of quality. Following an initial period, in which old technology firms develop their designs and externalities accrue, a technological shock occurs. New technology firms and new consumer classes enter the market. Data from the simulation model is analysed by identifying a robust econometric model of the probability of succession, given the immediate state of the post-shock market. 4 factors affecting the probability of a succession are identified. First, succession can occur if gains in direct utility from higher quality new technology goods outweigh the network utility of old technology goods. Second, sailing ship effects are possible. Old firms can innovate in order to see off the new entrants. Hence, a better initial (new technology) design does not guarantee succession. Third, a trade-off exists between quality and price. A succession will not occur if cost (price) differentials favour the old technology. Consequently, increasing returns in production enjoyed by established firms are an important barrier to successful entry. The fourth factor is time: the relative length of time old firms have to develop their products, and that which new firms have to develop their products.research and development ;

The scattering of ff- and pp-modes from ensembles of thin magnetic flux tubes - An analytical approach

Motivated by the observational results of Braun (1995), we extend the model of Hanson & Cally (2014) to address the effect of multiple scattering of f and p-modes by an ensemble of thin vertical magnetic flux tubes in the surface layers of the Sun. As in observational Hankel analysis we measure the scatter and phase shift from an incident cylindrical wave in a coordinate system roughly centred in the core of the ensemble. It is demonstrated that, although thin flux tubes are unable to interact with high order fluting modes individually, they can indirectly absorb energy from these waves through the scatters of kink and sausage components. It is also shown how the distribution of absorption and phase shift across the azimuthal order m depends strongly on the tube position, as well as on the individual tube characteristics. This is the first analytical study into an ensembles multiple scattering regime, that is embedded within a stratified atmosphere.Comment: 20 pages, 8 Figure

Nonprofit Management Tools and Trends 2014

The heightened importance of strong nonprofit management calls attention to a wide range of management practices that we call tools. Despite their importance, to date there has been no systematic attempt to understand what tools are being used or how effective they are. This report aims to fill that knowledge gap. It creates a "consumer report" for nonprofit leaders seeking to apply one or more of 25 popular tools to the challenges at hand. These tools can help organizations live up to their missions and meet funders' expectations for results. Many of the tools on our list, such as scenario planning and benchmarking, migrated from the business world. Others, such as funding models and constituent engagement, evolved specifically with nonprofit needs in mind.To understand how many tools a typical nonprofit uses, for what purposes, and how they perform, The Bridgespan Group developed a survey of the top nonprofit tools and trends in the social sector, nominated by a panel of more than two dozen practitioners, funders, and intermediaries. Overall findings confirm nonprofits' widespread use of management tools and their interest in using more in the future. The survey also provides insights into how well those tools help leaders respond to trends in the sector. It is our intent that this report will be repeated at intervals and should serve to stimulate questions, test practices, spark experiments, and ultimately help managers to get better results

Power spectrum multipoles on the curved sky: an application to the 6-degree Field Galaxy Survey

The peculiar velocities of galaxies cause their redshift-space clustering to depend on the angle to the line-of-sight, providing a key test of gravitational physics on cosmological scales. These effects may be described using a multipole expansion of the clustering measurements. Focussing on Fourier-space statistics, we present a new analysis of the effect of the survey window function, and the variation of the line-of-sight across a survey, on the modelling of power spectrum multipoles. We determine the joint covariance of the Fourier-space multipoles in a Gaussian approximation, and indicate how these techniques may be extended to studies of overlapping galaxy populations via multipole cross-power spectra. We apply our methodology to one of the widest-area galaxy redshift surveys currently available, the 6-degree Field Galaxy Survey, deducing a normalized growth rate f*sigma_8(z=0.06) = 0.38 +/- 0.12 in the low-redshift Universe, in agreement with previous analyses of this dataset using different techniques. Our framework should be useful for processing future wide-angle galaxy redshift surveys.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, version accepted by MNRA