Collaborative governance is popular among practitioners and scholars, but getting a grip on the performance of collaborations remains a challenge. Recent research has made progress by identifying ...appropriate performance measures, yet managing performance also requires appropriate performance routines. This article brings together insights from collaborative governance and performance management to conceptualize collaborative performance regimes; the collection of routines used by actors working together on a societal issue to explicate their goals, exchange performance information, examine progress, and explore performance improvement actions. The concept of regimes is made concrete by focusing on the specific routine of organizing a collaborative performance summit; a periodic gathering where partners review their joint performance. Such summits are both manifestations of the performance regime and potential turning points for regime change. Using three local public health collaborations as illustration, this article offers a framework for understanding collaborative performance regimes, summits, and the dynamics between them.
Interactive routines such as collaborative performance summits are thought to help collaborating organizations assess and improve their performance. However, there is little systematic evidence to ...substantiate this claim. This study leverages a longitudinal dataset to examine the summit process and identify the difference between summits that have an impact on performance and those that do not. The study explicates the assumed causal process and traces 18 partnerships as they prepare, conduct, and follow‐up a summit. The analysis provides evidence for the positive impact of summits, but also shows that the process unfolds differently than expected. Neither the range of performance issues that actors bring to the summit nor the intentions for change they formulate at the end of the meeting are key differentiators. The hallmark of impactful summits emerges to be a large share of participants gaining comprehensive insights. These findings have implications for collaborative performance management research and practice.
Background. Organisms resistant to antimicrobials continue to emerge and spread. This study was performed to measure the medical and societal cost attributable to antimicrobial-resistant infection ...(ARI). Methods. A sample of high-risk hospitalized adult patients was selected. Measurements included ARI, total cost, duration of stay, comorbidities, acute pathophysiology, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation III score, intensive care unit stay, surgery, health care-acquired infection, and mortality. Hospital services used and outcomes were abstracted from electronic and written medical records. Medical costs were measured from the hospital perspective. A sensitivity analysis including 3 study designs was conducted. Regression was used to adjust for potential confounding in the random sample and in the sample expanded with additional patients with ARI. Propensity scores were used to select matched control subjects for each patient with ARI for a comparison of mean cost for patients with and without ARI. Results. In a sample of 1391 patients, 188 (13.5%) had ARI. The medical costs attributable to ARI ranged from $18,588 to $29,069 per patient in the sensitivity analysis. Excess duration of hospital stay was 6.4–12.7 days, and attributable mortality was 6.5%. The societal costs were $10.7–$15.0 million. Using the lowest estimates from the sensitivity analysis resulted in a total cost of $13.35 million in 2008 dollars in this patient cohort. Conclusions. The attributable medical and societal costs of ARI are considerable. Data from this analysis could form the basis for a more comprehensive evaluation of the cost of resistance and the potential economic benefits of prevention programs.
The adoption of the circular economy (CE) at the firm level has rarely intersected with human resource management (HRM) – here called ‘the human side of organizations’ – and these two fields remain ...largely separate areas of knowledge. While the literature on the CE is expanding, discussion of its implementation in organizations is, so far, rare, along with exploration of the necessary alignment of the CE with green human resource management (GHRM). In this article, we extend the state-of-the-art literature on CE business models through the inclusion of the ‘human side’ of such issues. This goal is met by offering an original integrative GHRM framework for organizations developing CE. The theoretical lenses of stakeholders' theory and the resource based view (RBV) form the foundation of this framework, which represents a ‘middle range theory’. We underline the practices and dimensions of the links between GHRM and the ‘ReSOLVE’ CE model. Through an exploration of this integrative framework, we propose a future research agenda along with original research propositions. Furthermore, the middle-range integrated theoretical framework we propose can serve both academics and practitioners in developing understanding of the human resource management (HRM) and change management aspects of the CE.
•Circular economy requires support from green human resources.•We use stakeholders' theory and resource based view to discuss this topic.•We add a discussion on the “human side” circular economy.•A framework for green human resource management and circular economy is proposed.•The framework suggests a number of original research propositions for future investigation.
The Spectrum of the Universe Hill, Ryley; Masui, Kiyoshi W.; Scott, Douglas
Applied spectroscopy,
05/2018, Letnik:
72, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Cosmic background (CB) radiation, encompassing the sum of emission from all sources outside our own Milky Way galaxy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, is a fundamental phenomenon in ...observational cosmology. Many experiments have been conceived to measure it (or its constituents) since the extragalactic Universe was first discovered; in addition to estimating the bulk (cosmic monopole) spectrum, directional variations have also been detected over a wide range of wavelengths. Here we gather the most recent of these measurements and discuss the current status of our understanding of the CB from radio to γ-ray energies. Using available data in the literature, we piece together the sky-averaged intensity spectrum and discuss the emission processes responsible for what is observed. We examine the effect of perturbations to the continuum spectrum from atomic and molecular line processes and comment on the detectability of these signals. We also discuss how one could, in principle, obtain a complete census of the CB by measuring the full spectrum of each spherical harmonic expansion coefficient. This set of spectra of multipole moments effectively encodes the entire statistical history of nuclear, atomic, and molecular processes in the Universe.
Collaborative governance arrangements are frequently criticized for achieving collaboration at the expense of legitimacy and accountability. We explore the conditions under which legitimacy and ...accountability can occur in collaborative governance, ultimately aiming to discover whether collaborative arrangements can 'have it all', simultaneously being both legitimate and accountable. We leverage the Collaborative Governance Case Database to analyse a diversity of cases, employing a rich, qualitative comparative analysis. We find that legitimacy and accountability do co-exist in some cases and identify competing sets of conditions for this concurrence. Based on this exploration, we formulate propositions for future research.
Advancing public health through prevention necessitates collaboration among public, private, and community actors. Only together can these different actors amass the resources, knowledge, and ...community outreach required to promote health. Recent studies have suggested that university medical centres (UMCs) can play a key role in regional prevention networks, given their capacity to initiate, coordinate, drive, and monitor large partnerships. Yet, the literature often refers to prevention activities in general, leaving underexplored what UMCs can add to primary, universal prevention networks specifically. Moreover, UMCs operate in a crowded field of other organizations with extensive experience in primary prevention, who will already have an idea about what role UMCs should play in the network. This article presents a case study examining the potential role of a UMC within a densely interconnected stakeholder environment in the surroundings of a large city in the Netherlands. Combining insights from public health studies and network governance research, and integrating data from various methods, this study concludes that UMCs can enhance their contributions to prevention by assuming the role of network servants rather than network leaders. Stakeholders consider public health authorities or municipal governments as more logical candidates for coordinating the network. Moreover, partners often perceive-deservedly or not-UMCs as overly focused on the medical aspects of prevention, potentially neglecting social interventions, and as favouring universal treatments over tailor-made community interventions. At the same time, partner organizations hope that the UMCs join collaborations within the community, using their expertise to measure the impact of interventions and leveraging their prestige to generate attention for primary prevention. By synthesizing theoretical insights from multiple disciplines and analysing the empirics of network leaderships through multiple methods, this study offers UMCs a contextually-informed perspective on how to position themselves effectively within primary prevention networks.
Abstract
This article considers the state of human rights protection in the European Union (EU) after the Treaty of Lisbon. The Lisbon Treaty introduced significant changes to human rights protection ...in the EU, the most significant of which lie in the amendments to Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union. These provide that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is now legally binding, having the same status as primary EU law, and that the EU 'shall accede' to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In the two years since the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the Charter has been referred to on many occasions by the European Court of Justice, and now operates as the primary source of human rights in the EU. This article examines the import of this case law, some of it ground-breaking and controversial, as well how the higher profile for human rights under the Charter is likely to change the nature of the EU's relationship with the ECHR. The article also examines the complex procedure for the EU's accession to the ECHR, which is now underway, highlighting particularly significant aspects of this. The article concludes with some general reflections about the status of human rights protection in the EU, suggesting that this has become one of the most significant areas of EU law which has had, and continues to have, a crucial impact on the EU's relationships with its Member States, the EU and international law.
In The Fragile Balance of Terror, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, ...others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables.The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger.The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, brings together a diverse collection of rigorous and creative scholars who analyze how the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. Scholars, pundits, and policymakers who think that the spread of nuclear weapons can create stable forms of nuclear deterrence in the future will be forced to think again.Contributors: Giles David Arceneaux, Mark S. Bell, Christopher Clary, Peter D. Feaver, Jeffrey Lewis, Rose McDermott, Nicholas L. Miller, Vipin Narang, Ankit Panda, Scott D. Sagan, Caitlin Talmadge, Heather Williams, Amy Zegart
PDF
