Governing multisectoral action for health in low- and middle-income countries

Kumanan Rasanathan and colleagues argue that the potential of multisectoral collaboration for improving health remains untapped in many low- and middle-income countries

Peering into the black box: A study of the front-line organizations implementing welfare policy in Michigan.

This study examines five local public and private offices of Michigan's welfare system to understand the ways front-line staff make sense of the multiple forces that structure their working lives. Unlike previous research, this analysis is focused on understanding the factors that front-line staff, themselves, see as essential in defining their work conditions and affecting their abilities to interpret and implement public policies. To accomplish this task, this study utilizes ethnographic methods--in-depth interviews, participant observation, document review--to paint a rich picture of front-line conditions. With the aid of Anthony Giddens' structuration theory, this analysis illustrates how the understandings that staff develop and the resources that they utilize structure their interpretation of future events. It shows how these same structures limit the range of actions front-line staff consider rational. In this way, the collective, subjective structures in these five organizations influence the implementation of policies. This process--whereby staff generate structures that give meaning and limit action--helps to explain why, in spite of six years of policy makers' attempts to reform Michigan's welfare system, policy ideals are not consistently reflected in organizational practices. It also helps provide an insider's explanation as to why the welfare system conveys mixed messages to clients about the new requirements of employment. These findings also pose serious questions about whether public managers' attempts to either limit discretion or assess organization outcomes substantially influence the motivations that shape front-line work.PhDPublic administrationPublic policySocial SciencesSocial workUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130820/2/9811180.pd