Exploring identities and cultures in inter-professional education and collaborative professional practice

Although the concept of multi-agency working has been pursued and adopted as the most appropriate way to improve child care provision and health workforces in recent years, both in the UK and more globally, research suggests that participation in such work can be problematic. This article examines current developments in inter-professional education and collaborative professional practice. Drawing on desk research across the fields of Education, Health and Social Care, it applies a critical lens to re-examine inter-professional working using well-established concepts of profession, identity, culture, career, and training/work transitions. The article uses theoretical hooks to look for similarities and differences in the promotion of inter-professionality across the Education, Health and Social Care sectors, alongside those which occur within each. It looks towards a re-invigoration of knowledge creation and application through research. This is viewed as especially urgent in times of fragmentation, transformation, and arguably, disintegration, in the services its professional and academic educators and workers seek to serve.

Private property vehicles: the valuation of interests in limited partnerships

This paper examines the extent to which the valuation of partial interests in private property vehicles should be closely aligned to the valuation of the underlying assets. A sample of vehicle managers and investors replied to a questionnaire on the qualities of private property vehicles relative to direct property investment. Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique the relative importance of the various advantages and disadvantages of investment in private property vehicles relative to acquisition of the underlying assets are assessed. The results suggest that the main drivers of the growth of the this sector have been the ability for certain categories of investor to acquire interests in assets that are normally inaccessible due to the amount of specific risk. Additionally, investors have been attracted by the ability to ‘outsource’ asset management in a manner that minimises perceived agency problems. It is concluded that deviations from NAV should be expected given that investment in private property vehicles differs from investment in the underlying assets in terms of liquidity, management structures, lot size, financial structure inter alia. However, reliably appraising the pricing implications of these variations is likely to be extremely difficult due to the lack of secondary market trading and vehicle heterogeneity.

The management of positive inter-store externalities in shopping centres: some empirical evidence

In enclosed shopping centres, stores benefit from the positive externalities of other stores in the centre. Some stores provide greater benefits to their neighbours than others – for example anchor tenants and brand leading stores. In managing shopping centres, these positive externalities might be captured through rental variations. This paper explores the determinants of rent – including externalities – for UK regional shopping centres. Two linked databases were utilised in the research. One contains characteristics of 148 shopping centres; the other has some 1,930 individual tenant records including rent level. These data were analysed to provide information on the characteristics of centres and retailers that help determine rent. Factors influencing tenant rents include market potential factors derived from urban and regional economic theory and shopping centre characteristics identified in prior retail research. The model also includes variables that proxy for the interaction between tenants and the impact of positive in-centre externalities. We find that store size is significantly and negatively related to tenant with both anchor and other larger tenants, perhaps as a result of the positive effects generated by their presence, paying relatively lower rents while smaller stores, benefiting from the generation of demand, pay relatively higher rents. Brand leader tenants pay lower rents than other tenants within individual retail categories.

Land re-use, complexity and actor-networks: a framework for research

This paper will present a conceptual framework for the examination of land redevelopment based on a complex systems/networks approach. As Alvin Toffler insightfully noted, modern scientific enquiry has become exceptionally good at splitting problems into pieces but has forgotten how to put the pieces back together. Twenty-five years after his remarks, governments and corporations faced with the requirements of sustainability are struggling to promote an ‘integrated’ or ‘holistic’ approach to tackling problems. Despite the talk, both practice and research provide few platforms that allow for ‘joined up’ thinking and action. With socio-economic phenomena, such as land redevelopment, promising prospects open up when we assume that their constituents can make up complex systems whose emergent properties are more than the sum of the parts and whose behaviour is inherently difficult to predict. A review of previous research shows that it has mainly focused on idealised, ‘mechanical’ views of property development processes that fail to recognise in full the relationships between actors, the structures created and their emergent qualities. When reality failed to live up to the expectations of these theoretical constructs then somebody had to be blamed for it: planners, developers, politicians. However, from a ‘synthetic’ point of view the agents and networks involved in property development can be seen as constituents of structures that perform complex processes. These structures interact, forming new more complex structures and networks. Redevelopment then can be conceptualised as a process of transformation: a complex system, a ‘dissipative’ structure involving developers, planners, landowners, state agencies etc., unlocks the potential of previously used sites, transforms space towards a higher order of complexity and ‘consumes’ but also ‘creates’ different forms of capital in the process. Analysis of network relations point toward the ‘dualism’ of structure and agency in these processes of system transformation and change. Insights from actor network theory can be conjoined with notions of complexity and chaos to build an understanding of the ways in which actors actively seek to shape these structures and systems, whilst at the same time are recursively shaped by them in their strategies and actions. This approach transcends the blame game and allows for inter-disciplinary inputs to be placed within a broader explanatory framework that does away with many past dichotomies. Better understanding of the interactions between actors and the emergent qualities of the networks they form can improve our comprehension of the complex socio-spatial phenomena that redevelopment comprises. The insights that this framework provides when applied in UK institutional investment into redevelopment are considered to be significant.

The inter-temporal stability of real estate returns: an empirical investigation

This paper examines one of the central issues in the formulation of a sector/regional real estate portfolio strategy, i.e. whether the means, standard deviations and correlations between the returns are sufficiently stable over time to justify using ex-post measures as proxies of the ex-ante portfolio inputs required for MPT. To investigate these issues this study conducts a number of tests of the inter-temporal stability of the total returns of the 19 sector/regions in the UK of the IPDMI. The results of the analysis reveal that the theoretical gains in sector and or regional diversification, found in previous work, could not have been readily achieved in practice without almost perfect foresight on the part of an investor as means, standard deviations and correlations, varied markedly from period to period.

Union inclusiveness and temporary agency workers: the role of power resources and union ideology

This article investigates the determinants of union inclusiveness towards agency workers in Western Europe, using an index which combines unionization rates with dimensions of collective agreements covering agency workers. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we identify two combinations of conditions leading to inclusiveness: the ‘Northern path’ includes high union density, high bargaining coverage and high union authority, and is consistent with the power resources approach. The ‘Southern path’ combines high union authority, high bargaining coverage, statutory regulations of agency work and working-class orientation, showing that ideology rather than institutional incentives shapes union strategies towards the marginal workforce.