The politics of knowledge in central Asia:science between Marx and the market

Through careful historical and ethnographic research and extensive use of local scholarly works, this book provides a persuasive and careful analysis of the production of knowledge in Central Asia. The author demonstrates that classical theories of science and society are inadequate for understanding the science project in Central Asia. Instead, a critical understanding of local science is more appropriate. In the region, the professional and political ethos of Marxism-Leninism was incorporated into the logic of science on the periphery of the Soviet empire. This book reveals that science, organizes and constructed by Soviet rule, was also defined by individual efforts of local scientists. Their work to establish themselves 'between Marx and the market' is therefore creating new political economies of knowledge at the edge of the scientific world system.

Exploring innovation in policy-making within central government:the case of the UK's Highways Agency

The first and main contribution of this article is its access to the decision-making processes which drive innovation in policy-making within central government. The article will present a detailed case history of how the innovation came about and conclude by highlighting analytic possibilities for future research. The policy in focus is the UK’s Traffic Management Act 2004, which passed responsibility for managing incidents on major roads from the police to the Highways Agency (HA), and has been interpreted as a world first in traffic management. The article tracks the Traffic Management Act 2004 from problem identification to a preliminary evaluation. It is then suggested that future research could explain organizational change more theoretically. By taking a longitudinal and multi-level approach, the research falls into a processual account of organizational change. The second contribution of the article is to highlight two novel ways in which this approach is being applied to policy-making, through an institutional processualist research programme on public management reform and empirical investigations using complex systems to explain policy change.

Equity market integration in the Asia-Pacific region:a smooth transition analysis

We use a smooth transition logistic function to test for equity market integration in a sample of Asia-Pacific countries. This allows us to gauge the speed at which a market is becoming integrated. Of the countries we examine we find that Thailand has the fastest pace of global integration. When we examine the extent to which local integration is taking place, we find that Singapore is experiencing the fastest rise in market integration. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Innovation in project management practices:a case of Indian organization in the petroleum industry

The Indian petroleum industry is passing through a very dynamic business environment due to the liberalisation of many government policies, vertical integration among organisations and the presence of multinational companies. This caused a competitive environment among the organisations in the Indian petroleum industry in the public sector. Effective project management for developing new infrastructures and maintaining the existing facilities has been considered one of the means for remaining competitive in this business environment. However, present project management practices suffer from many shortcomings, as time, cost and quality non-achievements are part and parcel of almost every project. This study focuses on identifying the issues in managing projects of the organisation in the Indian petroleum sector with the involvement of the executives in a workshop environment. This also suggests some remedial measures for resolving those issues through identifying critical success factors and enablers. The enablers not only resolve the present issues but also ensure superior performance. These are analysed in a quantitative framework to derive improvement measures in project management practices.

Innovation in healthcare services: a customer focused approach

Although the various tools and techniques of quality management are routinely deployed in order to improve healthcare quality, an integrated approach is lacking, which combines the customer focus to identify quality issues, analytical techniques for prioritising improvement measures and a project management approach to plan, implement and evaluate the improvement projects. This study develops an innovative framework using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and a logical framework in order to address this issue, and demonstrates its effectiveness using a case study on the intensive care unit of a hospital.