Characteristics of entrepreneurs and public support for NTBFs

This paper studies the role of the characteristics of entrepreneurs as determinants of public financial support for New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs). Using a single database about the profile of Spanish technology entrepreneurs from 2001 to 2009, we analyze the relationship between NTBF participation in the NEOTEC program run by the main Spanish public agency for R&D and four dimensions of the entrepreneurial team: its human capital, its links to the public system of R&D, its motivation at the time the company was created and the extent of its planning to initiate the business activity. Our results show that NTBFs founded by entrepreneurs who have less experience in management, have planned less, are more oriented toward growth and have closer ties to the public system of R&D are more likely to participate in the public aid program.

Margaret Thatcher, Dress and the Politics of Fashion

Through Margaret Thatcher’s private and public performances, the micro-politics of dress translated into the macro-politics of power. Thatcher’s changing career can be traced through her dress (see Young 1991: 416-417); analysis of her dress leading up to and during her Premiership reveals both her aspirations and increasing power. Understanding of Thatcher’s agency in her embodied, dressed performances can be informed and developed through Butler’s (1999) conceptualization of performativity. Through adaptation, repetition and divergent dress, Thatcher constructed different identities, some of which became iconic symbols of her self and her politics. Examination of Thatcher’s dress refines the understanding of the relationship between constraints and agency experienced by actors in the public realm. Upon becoming party leader, Margaret Thatcher’s gender, class and ideological viewpoints were incongruent with her unprecedented political status and she faced many challenges in attempting to overcome this. Dress became a potentially destabilising focus for her critics and symbolic of her “outsider” status. Yet in the face of these challenges she recognized and learned from the expectations of others, adapting and changing her dress. However, this was not an instantaneous, complete or permanent transformation. What Thatcher achieved, as she crafted her dressed performances, was agency over a further aspect of her life and her politics. There was also an evolving alignment of her dress with her political ideology and domestic and international roles over time.

A voice for change? Trust relationships between ombudsmen, individuals and public service providers

There has been a debate for years about what the role of the ombudsman is. This article examines a key component of the role, to promote trust in public services and government. To be able to do this, however, an ombudsman needs to be perceived as legitimate and be trusted by a range of stakeholders, including the user. This article argues that three key relationships in a person’s complaint journey can build trust in an institution, and must therefore be understood as a system. The restorative justice framework is adapted to conceptualize this trust model as a novel approach to understanding the institution from the perspective of its users. Taking two public sector ombudsmen as examples, the article finds that voice and trust need to be reinforced through the relationships in a consumer journey to manage individual expectations, prevent disengagement, and thereby promote trust in the institution, in public service providers, and in government.

A view, different proposals: Concept of gender and public policy

This article analyzes the meaning of “gender” as a category of analysis in public policy. The concept has been transferred from the feminist theories and this has meant that the United Nations and European Union have incorporated the inequality as a structural inequality and an issue justice. So, the feminist demands enter the political agenda as an integral project which is characterized by the adoption of the gender perspective and its application from a transversal methodology (“gender mainstreaming”). In this sense, the "gender ideology" is a new paradigm against the “patriarchal ideology”. Now, political actions should be articulated in a double movement of correction and promotion to achieve real equality in societies more democratic and ultimately more just.

Sound Art and Public Engagement in the Built Environment: Reflections from an Architecture Center

This article explores the deployment of sound in architectural-curatorial and community engagement contexts through the work of PLACE, a multidisciplinary not-for-profit architecture center in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The author, who worked with PLACE and contributed to the projects discussed here, contextualizes architecture centers and their relationship with sound before examining the specific case of sound and sound art in Northern Ireland and case studies of projects delivered by PLACE. Specifically, the article evaluates two sound installation artworks and three community engagement projects for young audiences. As a means of curating urbanism and architecture, sound-art-as-public-art affords useful strategies to examine, describe or critique the environment as alternatives to traditional architecture exhibition formats. Sound’s temporality and materiality allow sound art works to exist as temporary sculptural interventions in the urban sphere, with attendant implications for public art procurement and urban acoustics. Rich territories of engagement are opened when using sound in a community participatory context.

Personal and Public Involvement Consultation Scheme (PDF 149KB)

The current structure of the health and social care system in Northern Ireland has its origins in the Review of Public Administration (RPA) which was initiated by the Northern Ireland Executive in June 2002. The purpose of RPA was to review Northern Ireland’s system of public administration with a view to putting in place a modern, citizen-centred, accountable and high quality system of public administration. The structure was designed to be more streamlined and accountable and aimed at maximising resources for front-line services and ensuring that people have access to high quality health and social care. Another key feature is the placement of public health and wellbeing firmly at the centre of the system, with a greater emphasis on prevention and support for vulnerable people to live independently in the community for as long as possible.  

Growth and Public Transportation Investments: Growth Management Strategies to Reduce Transportation Capital Costs In and Near Midwestern Urban Areas, 1995

Transportation and land-use are independent, inter-active systems. Land-use patterns shape local transportation demand, but transportation systems in turn influence land-use patterns. In attempting to satisfy transportation demand created by existing land-use patterns, transportation planners directly, if not always consciously or intentionally, influence future land-use patterns. This study examines that complex relationship. The purpose of the study was threefold: to compile the body of knowledge already existing; to apply this body of knowledge to the context of midsize cities in the Midwest; and, to make the knowledge accessible both to transportation planners and to public officials who make key decisions about land use.

Integrity and public sector governance : a democratic deficit?

Chronic low back pain among French healthcare workers and prognostic factors of return to work (RTW): a non-randomized controlled trial

International audience

Health as a Public Good

The purpose of the article is to present different conceptualizations of health as a public good. Author considers whether analytical tools and conceptual framework developed in the studies on the issue of public goods might be useful in order to analyze health. It was noted that health belongs to the special group of exceptional goods, since it carries the characteristics of both private and public good. It was emphasized that the distribution of public goods is a complex issue that requires an appropriate system of incentives as well as instruments in charge of its proper functioning. In the article it is argued that the widespread social anxiety and growing fear of further integration and globalization to a large extend results from the wrong management and unequal provision of global public goods.

Controlled Vocabulary Enhancement through Crowdsourcing: Project Andvari, Micropasts, and Public Quality Assurance

Proceedings paper published by Society of American Archivists. Presented at conference in 2015 in Cleveland, OH (http://www2.archivists.org/proceedings/research-forum/2015/agenda#papers). Published by SAA in 2016.

Disentangling patient and public involvement in healthcare decisions:why the difference matters

Patient and public involvement has become an integral aspect of many developed health systems and is judged to be an essential driver for reform. However, little attention has been paid to the distinctions between patients and the public, and the views of patients are often seen to encompass those of the general public. Using an ideal-type approach, we analyse crucial distinctions between patient involvement and public involvement using examples from Sweden and England. We highlight that patients have sectional interests as health service users in contrast to citizens who engage as a public policy agent reflecting societal interests. Patients draw on experiential knowledge and focus on output legitimacy and performance accountability, aim at typical representativeness, and a direct responsiveness to individual needs and preferences. In contrast, the public contributes with collective perspectives generated from diversity, centres on input legitimacy achieved through statistical representativeness, democratic accountability and indirect responsiveness to general citizen preferences. Thus, using patients as proxies for the public fails to achieve intended goals and benefits of involvement. We conclude that understanding and measuring the impact of patient and public involvement can only develop with the application of a clearer comprehension of the differences.

Timeliness, efficiency and public procurement in hip surgery in Italy

Considering different perspectives, the scope of this thesis is to investigate how to improve healthcare resources allocation and the provision efficiency for hip surgeries, a resource-intensive operation, among the most frequently performed on the elderly, with a trend in volume that is increasing in years due to population aging. Firstly, the effect of Time-To-Surgery (TTS) on mortality for hip fracture patients is investigated. The analysis attempts to account for TTS endogeneity due to the inability to fully control for variables affecting patient delay – e.g. patient severity. Exploiting an instrumental variable model, where being admitted on Friday or Saturday predicts longer TTS, findings show exogenous TTS does not have a significant effect on mortality. Thus suggesting surgeons prioritize patients effectively, neutralizing the adverse impact of longer TTS. Then, the volume-outcome relation for total hip replacement surgery is analyzed, seeking to account for selective referral, which may be present in elective surgery context, and induce reverse causality issue in the volume-outcome relation. The analysis employs a conditional choice model where patient travel distance from all regions' hospitals is used as a hospital choice predictor. Findings show the exogenous hospital volume significantly decreases adverse outcomes probability, especially in the short run. Finally, the change in public procurement design enforced in the Romagna LHA (Italy) is exploited to assess its impact on hip prostheses cost, surgeons' implant choice, and patient health outcomes. Hip prostheses are the major cost-driver of hip replacement surgeries, hence it is crucial to design the public tender such that implant prices are minimized, but cost-containment policies have to be weighted with patient well-being. Evidence shows that a cost reduction occurred without a significant surgeons’ choices impact. Positive or no effect of surgeons specialization is found on patients outcomes after the new procurement introduction.

Atividades circenses na educação física escolar : equilíbrios e desequilíbrios pedagógicos

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física