The human capital transition and the role of policy

Along with information and communication technology, infrastructure, and the innovation system, human capital is a key pillar of the knowledge economy with its scope for increasing returns. With this in mind, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate how industrialized economies managed to achieve the transition from low to high levels of human capital. The first phase of the human capital transition was the result of the interaction of supply and demand, triggered by technological change and boosted by the demands for (immaterial) services. The second phase of the human capital transition (i.e., mass education) resulted from enforced legislation and major public investment. The state’s aim to influence children’s beliefs appears to have been a key driver in public investment. Nevertheless, the roles governments played differed according to the developmental status and inherent socioeconomic and political characteristics of their countries. These features of the human capital transition highlight the importance of understanding governments’ incentives and roles in transitions

The Production of Style: Aesthetic and Ideological Diversity in the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1875--1914

What explains the aesthetic diversity of the Arts and Crafts movement? Typically, artistic movements are characterized by a single style but the Arts and Crafts produced both organic and geometric forms. Examining two Arts and Crafts retrospective exhibitions, I find that organic aesthetics predominated in Great Britain, Scandinavian countries, and Hungary and that geometric aesthetics were more prevalent in the United States, Germany, and Austria. This finding is largely consistent with previous sociological research on artistic form, which has found that stronger political-economies are more likely to produce geometric work while weaker political-economies are more likely to produce organic work. Austria, however, is a contradictory case and here the Arts and Crafts movement was more geometric than the political-economic model would predict.Through a comparative-historical study, I determine that the cause of aesthetic diversity of the Arts and Crafts movement was not per se a region's political-economic situation. Rather--and in contradiction to existing sociological theories of artistic style--the aesthetic variation of the Arts and Crafts was a function of whether, in a given country, the movement was backward-looking or forward-looking which, in turn, was function of which Arts and Crafts principles particular regions privileged. In regions where the members of the movement emphasized the value of labor (Great Britain) or regionalism (Scandinavia and Hungary), the movement was backward-looking and characterized by an organic aesthetic. In contrast, in regions that emphasized the democratization of the arts (the United States and Germany) or artistic unity (Austria), the movement was forward-looking and characterized by a geometric aesthetic. I further argue that in order to make sense of the ideological diversity of the movement, we must appreciate that the Arts and Crafts was a cultural manifestation of a period of political and economic turbulence characterized by the emergence of the first great world-wide depression, the decline of British hegemony, and the rise of American hegemony. The Arts and Crafts movement served to buffer the disruptive effects of this period and, in doing so, helped to usher in the modern age

A study protocol to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the Clinical Nurse Leader Care Model in improving quality and safety outcomes.

AimsPatients are harmed or die every year because of unsafe, inappropriate or inadequate healthcare delivery. Registered Nurses are a recognized patient safety strategy. However, variability in research findings indicate the relationship is not as simple as "more nurses=better outcomes." Hence, currently there exists no evidence-based frontline nursing care model. One emerging model is the Clinical Nurse Leader care model.DesignThis Hybrid Type II Implementation-Effectiveness study will evaluate the effect of the care model on standardized quality and safety outcomes and identify implementation characteristics that are sufficient and necessary to achieve outcomes.MethodsThis study leverages a natural experiment in 66 clinical care units in nine hospitals across five states in the United States that have implemented the Clinical Nurse Leader care model.ResultsFindings will elucidate Registered Nurse's mechanisms of action as organized into frontline models of care and link actions to improved care quality and safety