The first legal mortgagor: a consumer without adequate protection?

This article contends that the UK government’s attempt to create a well-functioning consumer credit market will be undermined if it fails to reform the private law framework relating to the first legal mortgage. Such agreements are governed by two distinct regulatory regimes that are founded upon very different conceptions of the mortgagor. The first, the regulation of financial services overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority, derives from public law and is founded upon a conception of the mortgagor as “consumer”. The other is land law, private law regulation implemented by the judiciary and underpinned by a conception of the mortgagor as “landowner”. Evidence suggests that the operation of these two regimes prevents mortgagors from receiving fair and consistent treatment. The current reform of financial services regulation therefore will change only one part of this governance regime and will leave mortgagors heavily reliant upon a regulator that still has to prove itself. What this article argues is that reform of the rules of private law must also be undertaken with the aim of initiating a paradigm shift in the conception of the mortgagor from “landowner” to “consumer”. Cultural shifts of this kind take time but the hope is that this conceptual transformation will occur in time to deter the predicted rise in mortgage possessions

Virulence potential and host response to Cronobacter sakazakii

Cronobacter sakazakii is in the Cronobacter genus (previously known as Enterobacter sakazakii), which consists in total of seven species. C. sakazakii strains in the clonal complex 4 (CC4), including sequence type 4 (ST4), have been strongly associated with neonatal meningitis. In recent years, research on this organism has made substantial progress using improved identification and molecular methods including multilocus sequence typing. A number of virulence traits have been proposed but have not been studied to date with respect to detailed aspects of the virulence potential and host response. Therefore this project compared 34 isolates of C. sakazakii made up of clonal complex 4 (CC4; 21 isolates) and non-clonal complex 4 (13 isolates) strains for their virulence potential, and investigated whether CC4 strains have the ability to overcome the host barriers more than the other sequence types. The attachment and invasion of mammalian intestinal and brain cells by these strains were evaluated using colorectal adenocarcinoma epithelial cells (Caco-2), human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC), and rat brain capillary endothelial (rBCEC4) cell lines. Furthermore, the ability of the organism to translocate through different cell lines, including Caco-2 and HBMEC, was assessed

Strategy Transition Processes and Practices in Public Sector Organisations

Strategy processes and internal actors’ practices are crucial for organisations given their dynamic environment. Strategy processes including formulation, implementation, and evaluation have been treated as mutually exclusive, making how strategy is actually transitioned between them a matter of major concern (Whittington, 2007; Sorooshian and Dodangeh, 2013; Leonardi, 2015). Equally, particular groups of internal actors and their strategic practices have previously been researched in isolation from one another without expressing how they collectively interact to ultimately give strategy processes (Vaara and Whittington, 2012; Engen and Magnusson, 2015; Friesl and Kwon, 2016). These processes and practices have barely been researched in the public sector, and this in turn contextualises this research to study strategy transition processes and practices enacted in public sector organisations. Drawing on strategy-as-practice and Social Practice theory as meta-theoretical lenses, this research explores the dynamics of the strategy transition process stage by revealing the social practices of internal actors and other influential factors. A pragmatism approach was adopted for this research. The primary data collection was obtained through 27 semi-structured interviews with respondents from a single case study followed by survey of 381 respondents across five case organisations in Kuwait. The research identified four factors that interact and contribute to the complexity of the strategy transition process and practices of actors in the process. These are in order of significance; process design, actors’ social interactions, strategic awareness, and role of leadership. In relation to the social interaction and leadership factors, the research found that strategy practices can be influenced by the societal culture inherited by actors. Equally, it was revealed that the control mechanism adopted for the strategy transition process contributed to the enhancement of the strategy transition process design and strategic awareness between actors. Additionally, the dynamic interaction between these factors was found to affect strategy practice, which in turn either enables or impedes the smooth transition of organisational strategies from the formulation to implementation phases. The research also contributes to the understanding of Social Practice theory by introducing the interactivity as a cognitive construct to its boundary. Hence, the study and its findings extend our understanding of the contextual social practices that could help to enhance the strategy transition process among internal actors

Social Practice within Strategy Communication Process: Power Distance Tension among Top and Middle Managers

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. open access journal.We examine the role of power distance in regulating strategy communication practice among top and middle managers from a social practice perspective. We argue that power distance cannot be treated as a material factor that can be controlled and easily measured beyond organisation boundaries; rather, it is a cultural accumulation of social interactions between organisational members. Based on a single case study with 27 interviews drawn from a Kuwaiti public sector organisation, we found that strengthening communication practices among organisational members and aligning individual- and group-level cognition, are key drivers for successful communication of strategy in public sector organisations. Furthermore, we found that in a high-power distance culture, more powerful individuals are inclined to make autocratic decisions. Equally, organisations with high power distance cultures are prone to deliberate mismanagement and high cultural tension. Our research contributes to the culture literature by exploring the under-researched subject of power distance and the cognitive understanding of social practice

The object of regulation: tending the tensions of food safety

“I’m struggling to see what it actually is,” says Alison, peering into a colander of defrosting meat. What “it” is, we propose in this paper, is helpfully thought of as “the object of regulation” in at least three senses, which together signal both our inheritance of a Foucauldian problematic and our departure from it. Our suggestion is that much of even the best work on biopolitics, biopower, and biosecurity that has been inspired and informed by these writings has replicated Foucault’s own struggle to get to grips with the complexity of matters that he variously refers to “natural” or “artificial” “givens”. By following science and technology studies (STS) scholars in using broadly ethnographic techniques to explore objects as and at the intersection of practices, we redress this balance somewhat by thinking through an empirical study of the securing of food safety, specifically Alison’s inspection of a restaurant kitchen. What we find is that the securing of meat as a material object of regulation is primarily done by involving multiple versions of the future, something which requires a great deal of usually under-recognised, under-valued, and under-theorised articulation work. With risk based regulation, cost sharing, and public sector cuts in the UK set to redefine the ways in which Alison and her colleagues engage with food business operators, we conclude by arguing for a greater appreciation of the skilful work of tending the tensions of food safety, as well as recognition of its limitation

Truth Commissions after Economic Crises: Political Learning or Blame Game?

This article addresses an important but understudied aspect of the recent Great Recession in Europe: the institutional strategies political elites deployed to learn from past policy failures and address accountability, more specifically, truth commissions. We raise two overlapping puzzles. The first concerns the timing of the decision to adopt an economic truth commission: while Iceland established a truth commission at an early stage of the crisis, Greece and Ireland did so much later. What accounts for ‘early’ versus ‘delayed’ truth seekers? The second concerns variations in learning outcomes. Iceland’s commission paved the way for learning institutional lessons, but truth commissions in Greece and Ireland became overtly politicised. What accounts for these divergences? This article compares truth commissions in Iceland, Greece and Ireland and identifies two types of political learning – institutional and instrumental – related to the establishment of a truth commission. It argues that political elites in countries with higher pre-crisis levels of trust in institutions and public transparency are more likely to establish economic truth commissions quickly; this is the ‘institutional logic’ of learning. The ‘instrumental logic’ of learning, in contrast, leads governments interested in apportioning blame to their predecessors to establish commissions at a later date, usually proximal to critical elections

Combined Effect of Dynapenia (Muscle Weakness) and Low Vitamin D Status on Incident Disability

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: There is little epidemiologic evidence considering the combined effect of dynapenia and low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25 (OH) D] on incident disability. Our aim was to investigate whether the combination of dynapenia and low 25 (OH) D serum levels increases the risk of activities of daily living (ADL) incident disability. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTINGS: English Longitudinal Study of Aging. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 4630 community-dwelling adults aged 50 years and older without ADL disability at baseline. MEASUREMENTS: The baseline sample was categorized into 4 groups (ie, nondynapenic/normal 25 (OH) D, low 25 (OH) D only, dynapenic only, and dynapenic/low 25 (OH) D according to their handgrip strength (<26 kg for men and <16 kg for women) and 25 (OH) D (≤50 nmol/L). The outcome was the presence of any ADL disability 2 years after baseline according to the modified Katz Index. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) adjusted by sociodemographic, behavioral, and clinical characteristics were estimated using Poisson regression. RESULTS: The fully adjusted model showed that older adults with dynapenia only and those with lower serum levels of 25 (OH) D combined with dynapenia had higher incident ADL disability risk compared with nondynapenic and those with normal serum levels of 25 (OH) D. The IRRs for lower 25 (OH) D serum levels combined with dynapenia were higher than for dynapenia only, however, the confidence intervals (CIs) showed similar effect for these 2 groups. The IRRs were 1.31 for low 25(OH) D only (95% CI 0.99-1.74), 1.77 for dynapenia only (95% CI 1.08-2.88), and 1.94 for combined dynapenia and low 25(OH)D (95% CI 1.28-2.94). CONCLUSIONS: Dynapenia only and dynapenia combined with low 25 (OH) D serum levels were important risk factors for ADL disability in middle-aged individuals and older adults in 2 years of follow-up

Really responsive risk-based regulation

Regulators in a number of countries are increasingly developing "risk-based" strategies to manage their resources, and their reputations as "risk-based regulators" have become much lauded by regulatory reformers. This widespread endorsement of risk-based regulation, together with the experience of regulatory failure, prompts us to consider how risk-based regulators can attune the logics of risk analyses to the complex problems and the dynamics of regulation in practice. We argue, first, that regulators have to regulate in a way that is responsive to five elements: (1) regulated firms' behavior, attitude, and culture; (2) regulation's institutional environments; (3) interactions of regulatory controls; (4) regulatory performance; and (5) change. Secondly, we argue that the challenges of regulation to which regulators have to respond vary across the different regulatory tasks of detection, response development, enforcement, assessment, and modification. Using the "really responsive" framework, we highlight some of the strengths and limitations of using risk-based regulation to manage risk and uncertainty within the constraints that flow from practical circumstances and, indeed, from the framework of risk-based regulation itself. The need for a revised, more nuanced conception of risk-based regulation is stressed