Rethinking policy options for industry:Appropriateness of policies for industry and UK farming and food

Purpose - Studies the implementation of lean supply and partnership relationships in the UK food and farming industry to assess if these types of interventions are effective. Design/methodology/approach - Reviews the challenges affecting the UK supply chain for red meat. Describes the initiatives that were set up to develop a lean supply chain management approach and examines their application in the UK pig and beef industries. Assesses if these changes benefited all participants in the supply chains. Uses semi-structured interviews with key actors in each stage of the supply chain to do this, identifying the power relations within the supply chains and how these affected the outcomes for those participating in the chain. Findings - Concludes that lean initiatives were appropriate for the pig industry but were of limited value for the beef industry. Even within the pig industry, highlights that benefits were not shared equally, with producers, in particular, losing out. Lastly, points out that lean supply chain management is unlikely to be appropriate operationally and commercially in all circumstances in one industry. Argues for a differentiated policy approach and sets out a framework which enables decision makers to select industrial policy options. Research limitations/ implications - Describes the analysis and the framework developed from it. Originality/value - Assesses the effectiveness of lean supply chain management.

Scientists, trade unions and labour movement policies for science and technology, 1947-1964

This thesis describes the history of the scientific Left beginning with the period of its most extensive influence in the mid-1940s as a movement for the planning of science and ending with the Labour Party's programme of 1964 claiming to harness science and socialism. Its central theme is the external and internal pressures involved in the project to align left-wing politics, trade unions and social responsibility in science. The problematic aspects of this project are examined in the evolution of the Association of Scientific Workers and the World Federation of Scientific Workers as organisations committed to trade union and science policy objectives. This is presented also in the broader context of the Association's attempts to influence the Trade Union Congress's policies for science and technology in a more radical direction. The thesis argues that the shift in the balance of political forces in the labour movement, in the scientific community and in the state brought about by the Cold War was crucial in frustrating these endeavours. This led to alternative, but largely unsuccessful attempts, in the form of the Engels Society and subsequently Science for Peace to create the new expressions of the left-wing politics of science. However, the period 1956-1964 was characterised by intensive interest within the Labour Party in science and technology which reopened informal channels of political influence for the scientific Left. This was not matched by any radical renewal within the Association or the Trade Union Congress and thus took place on a narrower basis and lacked the democratic aspects of the earlier generation of socialist science policy.

Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

This article addresses the reluctance of mainstream corporate and commercial media to critically address major environmental and conservation issues. The resulting public pedagogy largely reproduces the neoliberal ideology informing much conservation practice and discourse. Nonetheless, the media retains an unrealised critical educative potential that needs to be drawn upon by critical media practitioners and educators. To do this, educators need to be cognisant of the phenomenological experience of spectatorship, the aesthetic form and relational contexts of media consumption, production and informal learning. Referring to the work of Vivian Sobchack, Henry Giroux, Pierre Bourdieu and Gilles Deleuze, the article argues that if critical practitioner-educators apply an analytic framework informed by critical realism, counter-hegemonic elements found within corporate and independent media productions and conservation initiatives may be rearticulated and re-presented in a more positive manner. For this to occur, critical media practitioners-educators need to recognise that feasible political and normative alternatives are both available and practically possible. The article ends by discussing some relatively recent non-fiction productions that express a commonality between human and non-human animals and so form the basis of a critical environmental education-media practice.

Settlement policies for small and medium-sized towns in an African context

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Public procurement:international cases and commentary

In many countries and sectors, public procurement is developing from a functional orientation to an effective socio-economic policy lever. There is a great interest among managers and academics to learn from other countries’ and other sectors’ change initiatives and how they dealt with the challenges they encountered. This text provides such learning opportunities, presenting case studies of public procurement, covering diverse nations, sectors and issues. The cases are combined with editorial commentary and contextualizing chapters to assist the student reader in understanding this complex topic. The text combines descriptions of cases of public procurement with cross case analysis to draw out the key dimensions to enable further examination of the central themes. Each case study concludes with three questions to aid its use as a teaching and training text. Edited by a team of internationally recognised experts in the field this innovative text illustrates the strategies and innovations within public procurement on a global scale and highlights common problems that all countries encounter. Public Procurement is vital reading for anyone with an interest in this topical area.

Irrelevant or transformative power? The OECD DAC and foreign aid policies in Central and Eastern Europe

The paper examines the impact of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on the emerging foreign aid policies of the Central and Eastern European (CEEs) countries. The Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the DAC in 2013, and the committee has aimed to socialise them into the norms of the international development system. Generally, however, there is little evidence of impact due to the soft nature of the DAC’s policy recommendations, and the fact that the committee, reacting to the challenges to its legitimacy from non-Western donors, has become much less demanding towards potential members than in the past. The paper, however, argues that one must examine the processes of how the norm and policy recommendations of the DAC are mediated domestically. The case of the Czechepublic’s reforms in its foreign aid policy between 2007 and 2010 shows that domestic actors can use the OECD strategically to build support for their own cause and thus achieve seemingly difficult policy reform.