Human motivation and professional practice: of knights, knaves and social workers

Efforts to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of public services by harnessing the self-interest of professionals in state agencies have been widely debated in the recent literature on welfare state reform. In the context of social services, one way in which British policy-makers have sought to effect such changes has been through the "new community care" of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. Key to this is the concept of care management, in which the identification of needs and the provision of services are separated, purportedly with a view to improving advocacy, choice and quality for service users. This paper uses data from a wide-ranging qualitative study of access to social care for older people to examine the success of the policy in these terms, with specific reference to its attempts to harness the rational self-interest of professionals. While care management removes one potential conflict of interests by separating commissioning and provision, the responsibility of social care professionals to comply with organizational priorities conflicts with their role of advocacy for their clients, a tension rendered all the more problematic by the perceived inadequacy of funding. Moreover, the bureaucracy of the care management process itself further negates the approach's supposedly client-centred ethos. The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com

Symmetry properties of one- and two- electron molecular integrals

The maximum numbers of distinct one- and two-electron integrals that arise in calculating the electronic energy of a molecule are discussed. It is shown that these may be calculated easily using the character table of the symmetry group of the set of basis functions used to express the wave function. Complications arising from complex group representations and from a conflict of symmetry between the basis set and the nuclear configuration are considered and illustrated by examples.

Conflicts of interest in dermatology

Conflicts of interest exist in dermatology when professional judgement concerning a primary interest, such as research validity, may be influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain from a for-profit organization. Conflict of interest is a condition and not a behaviour, although there is clear evidence that gifts influence behaviour. Little has been written about conflicts of interest in dermatology. This series of papers raises awareness of the subject by exploring it in greater depth from the perspective of a dermatology researcher, an industry researcher, a dermatology journal editor, a health services researcher and a patient representative. Collectively, they illustrate the many ways in which conflicts can pervade the world of dermatology publications and patient support group activities.