Leadership in the British civil service: an interpretation

This article is essentially a polemic. The argument is that when politicians and officials now talk of ‘leadership’ in the British civil service they do not use that word in the way in which it was previously used. In the past leading civil servants, acting in partnership with ministers and within constitutional constraints, exercised leadership in the sense of setting example, inspiring confidence and encouraging loyalty. The loosening of traditional constitutional patterns, the marginalization of senior officials in the policy process and the emergence of business methods as the preferred model for public ­administration have led to a political and administrative environment in which leadership in the British civil service is now about encouraging patterns of behaviour which fit in with these changes. Leadership skills are now about ‘delivery’; they are not about motivation. It is time for politicians, officials and scholars to be open about this

A vidéki táj használatában bekövetkezett változások társadalmi reakciók tükrében

Kutatásunk alapvető célja a hazai vidéki táj használatában bekövetkezett változások vizsgálata, valamint az ezzel kapcsolatos társadalmi reakciók feltárása. Ennek során azt kívánjuk elsősorban megvizsgálni a Kiskunsági Nemzeti Park példáján, hogy a táj kezelése során milyen módon és eszközökkel törekedtek a korábbi mezőgazdasági művelés területeinek művelési ág váltására, és a természetközeli állapotok visszaállítására, illetve e folyamatban milyen eredményeket értek el. A téma időszerűségét az is jelzi, hogy az elmúlt év végén a védett területek kb. 20 %-át a Nemzeti Földalap kezelésébe adta az állam, tehát sorsuk a természetvédelem szempontjából újra bizonytalanná válhat

Health Diplomacy the Adaptation of Global Health Interventions to Local Needs in sub-Saharan Africa and Thailand: Evaluating Findings from Project Accept (HPTN 043).

Study-based global health interventions, especially those that are conducted on an international or multi-site basis, frequently require site-specific adaptations in order to (1) respond to socio-cultural differences in risk determinants, (2) to make interventions more relevant to target population needs, and (3) in recognition of 'global health diplomacy' issues. We report on the adaptations development, approval and implementation process from the Project Accept voluntary counseling and testing, community mobilization and post-test support services intervention. We reviewed all relevant documentation collected during the study intervention period (e.g. monthly progress reports; bi-annual steering committee presentations) and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with project directors and between 12 and 23 field staff at each study site in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand and Tanzania during 2009. Respondents were asked to describe (1) the adaptations development and approval process and (2) the most successful site-specific adaptations from the perspective of facilitating intervention implementation. Across sites, proposed adaptations were identified by field staff and submitted to project directors for review on a formally planned basis. The cross-site intervention sub-committee then ensured fidelity to the study protocol before approval. Successfully-implemented adaptations included: intervention delivery adaptations (e.g. development of tailored counseling messages for immigrant labour groups in South Africa) political, environmental and infrastructural adaptations (e.g. use of local community centers as VCT venues in Zimbabwe); religious adaptations (e.g. dividing clients by gender in Muslim areas of Tanzania); economic adaptations (e.g. co-provision of income generating skills classes in Zimbabwe); epidemiological adaptations (e.g. provision of 'youth-friendly' services in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania), and social adaptations (e.g. modification of terminology to local dialects in Thailand: and adjustment of service delivery schedules to suit seasonal and daily work schedules across sites). Adaptation selection, development and approval during multi-site global health research studies should be a planned process that maintains fidelity to the study protocol. The successful implementation of appropriate site-specific adaptations may have important implications for intervention implementation, from both a service uptake and a global health diplomacy perspective

Piloting different approaches to personalised offender management in the English criminal justice system

© 2018 University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. Various approaches to personalisation are well-established in the UK social care sector and are now starting to ‘travel’ to other sectors. In this paper we report findings from an evaluation of a pilot to test elements of personalisation in the management of offenders in probation services within the English criminal justice system. Following a review of evidence from social care, three different approaches to personalised-practice were developed and tested on a small-scale in three separate sites. The evaluation finds that all three approaches were implemented reasonably successfully, but challenges were identified including that personalised approaches are more time-consuming, that staff need support to exercise professional discretion and that balancing greater choice with managing criminogenic risk requires new ways of conceptualising the relationship between case manager and service user. Overall, ‘deeper’ approaches to personalisation, such as co-production, will take time to emerge. This paper makes two important contributions to the debate on personalisation in public services. First, it addresses the question of how transferable the concept of personalisation is from the social care sector to other sectors in the UK, in this case the criminal justice system. Secondly, it outlines a methodology for developing and evaluating personalisation pilots, prior to a wider roll-out

Back the bid: the 2012 summer games and the governance of London

The Olympic Park being developed in east London for the 2012 Games is one large urban renewal project among many in the city. The impact of the Games on urban development may be of less significance than the impact on city politics. Bidding for and delivering the Games has contributed to a reassessment of the recent experiment with mayoral government. The paper examines these changing representations of the structures of London government that are now seen as a success. Much of the literature on Olympic cities is highly critical of the impact of the games, but the (current) substantial support for London2012 also needs to be explained. We examine how London has created opportunities for support, and moments and spaces for celebration when political leaders and Londoners can come together around particular representations of themselves and the city

Operationalising desistance through personalisation

This article reports on the early stages of a project to develop a model of offender rehabilitation that operationalises the concept of desistance. The concept of desistance is influential but operationalising it remains a challenge. The aim of this article is to assess whether personalisation of offender rehabilitation has potential as a mechanism for operationalising the concept of desistance. We identify learning from the design and implementation of personalisation in social care, but challenges include the roll out of personal budgets, developing a local market to support consumer choice and the limited evidence base on the effectiveness of personalisation. We specify a project to pilot personalisation in the English probation sector that tests concepts relating both to the design and commissioning of personalised services, including community capacity building to support the supply of personalised services at the local or even micro level. A project evaluation design is also outlined

Contemporary ethnic minority entrepreneurship in the UK: A quantitative exploration of break out and entrepreneurial quality

Purpose: Ethnic minority entrepreneurs (EMEs) are traditionally associated with lower growth industry sectors. The purpose of this paper is to draw on the theory of mixed embeddedness to determine if more recent EMEs have been able to break out of lower growth sectors and if break out varies across ethnic minority groups. It also compares entrepreneurial quality in terms of weekly hours worked, weekly earnings and job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative inferential statistical analysis is undertaken on data drawn from the large scale, social sciences data set for the UK, Understanding Society. Findings: The study finds that break out is not associated with being a recent EME but does vary across ethnic minority groups. Break out is found to be associated with gender, education, English language proficiency and occupational status. Some variation in entrepreneurial quality is found for both recent EMEs and across ethnic minority groups. Practical implications: Understanding the nature and quality of ethnic minority entrepreneurship is important since it informs public debate about migration, informs policy and shapes activities of future EMEs. Originality/value: The study provides a theoretically grounded interpretation of the explanatory variables associated with EME break out and entrepreneurial quality. Second, it provides a large confirmatory study of break out and finally, it also finds an important empirical nuance to the concept of opportunity structure by identifying a variation over time in both external and socio-demographic factors