The creation of companies by local governments to provide public services—referred to as “corporatization”—is an example of systemic public entrepreneurship that is popular across the world. To build ...knowledge of the antecedents of public sector entrepreneurship, the authors investigate the factors that lead local governments to create companies for public service delivery. Using zero‐inflated negative binomial regressions to analyze secondary data from 150 major English local governments for 2010–16, the authors find that governments with higher levels of grant dependence and debt dependence are more involved in the creation and operation of companies, as are larger governments. Further analysis reveals that very low and very high managerial capabilities are strongly associated with more involvement in profit‐making companies, while local government involvement in companies is more prevalent in deprived areas. At the same time, government ownership of companies is more common in areas with high economic output.
Hybridisation of public services has increased under neoliberalism and New Public Management policies, over the past four decades since the 1980s. Hybrid arrangements for service provision blend ...public, private and nonprofit approaches to organising in ways imbued with a range of institutional logics impinging on their value creation mechanisms. Within this context, the corporatisation of public services represents a striking manifestation of hybridisation. However, comparatively little research has considered how hybrid organising through corporatisation shapes the mechanisms through which value is created in corporatized public services. To address this gap, through a field level study, this paper examines hybridity, institutional logics and value creation mechanisms in the corporatisation of adult social care in English local government. The study found that the use of different hybrid corporate forms – blended, segregated, segmented and blocked - to provide services to elderly and vulnerable citizens had important implications for the mechanisms through which financial and social values were created. Nevertheless, it was also apparent that different forms of hybrid organising could co-exist within the same organization along with multiple value creation mechanisms, underlining the unique dynamics of hybridisation pertaining to the corporatisation of public services.
A key institutional driver of current reforms within English local government is 'alternative service delivery'. Our review of councils' annual accounts between 2010/11 and 2016/17 suggests ...'corporatization'-the creation of local authority companies-is a growing phenomenon across the whole of English local government. This represents such a significant and far-reaching development in the governance, performance and efficiency of local public services that it constitutes a major field-level change at the interstices of the institutions of state, market, corporation and community. In this article, the authors briefly sketch ways corporatization could be regarded as a field-level change, before presenting findings and reflecting on their implications.
Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) are salaried members of police staff whose main responsibilities include providing reassurance to members of the public, primarily through high-visibility ...foot patrol. They are a cornerstone of community policing in England and Wales, meant to act as a bridge between the police and communities. The present study investigates how this liminal position is realised discursively. The analysis, grounded in linguistic ethnography and informed by interactional sociolinguistics, is applied to authentic interactions collected during nine months linguistic ethnographic fieldwork with PCSOs in a variety of contexts, including police-community meetings and fleeting encounters on the beat. The thesis argues that PCSOs' discursive practices can be characterised as heteroglossic (Bakhtin 1981), and it uses the lens of heteroglossia to explore three central themes. Firstly, the analysis shows how PCSOs perform and negotiate a multiplicity of roles. These roles represent a heteroglossic repertoire of resources, which can index the institution, communities and individual citizens. Secondly, the exercise and negotiation of authority in interaction is demonstrated. Authority claims are shown to be legitimised by a number of voices. And finally, talk about space is examined to reveal multiple layers of space that PCSOs and members of the public orient to in interaction. I consider how heteroglossia is realised through the multiplicity of linguistic resources used by PCSOs, such as specialised vocabulary and strategic use of pronouns, and multiple voices, reflective of the institutional rules and procedures as well as individual citizens and heterogenous communities. The findings suggest that community policing is inherently heteroglossic, and PCSOs discursively negotiate a range of tensions in their daily interactions with members of the public. Such thinking about community policing contradicts somewhat the central premise of PCSOs as serving a simple bridge between police and community.
COPD is a medical state characterized by chronically poor airflow, and typically worsens over time. Farmers have an increased risk of COPD because of being exposed to ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, ...inorganic dust, and organic dust. The quality of life of the ill depends on biomedical as well as psychosocial factors, the impact of which has not been a frequent subject of studies among COPD patients. The aim of the study was to indicate the factors that have negative and positive influence on the quality of life of farmers suffering from COPD.
The study was conducted among 84 farmers treated for COPD in the Department of Pneumology, Oncology and Allergology of the Medical University in Lublin, Poland. The differences between the farmers concerned: severity of the disease, level of education and income, frequency of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, kinds of support they receive from their families, and the level of depression and anxiety experienced by the patients.
The study revealed that most patients suffered from depressive and anxiety disorders, and the level of depression higher among the patients who smoked more. Lack of family support had significant influence on exacerbation of the patient's depressive and anxiety symptoms. Patients who had recently experienced a critical situation presented with more severe COPD symptoms, lower quality of life and a higher level of depression. Higher income of the patients had positive influence on their quality of life. Farmers addicted to alcohol suffered from a higher level of anxiety.
In Poland and worldwide, injury rates, as well as accident rates among children and adolescents still remain a social, health and economic problem, despite an attempt to inhibit the growing tendency ...of this phenomenon.
An attempt to evaluate current trends in injury rates among children and adolescents based on the example of two provinces in the Lublin Region of Poland during the period 2006-2010.
The retrospective study was conducted by the method of examination of documents, using the technique of content analysis. The research material was data from the Emergency Procedures Charts and Medical Emergency Team Response Charts, while the study group were children and adolescents aged from 6 weeks - 19 years, from the counties of Kraśnik and Świdnik in the Lublin Region.
Analysis of the research material showed that during the period examined the number of injuries and accidents in the study group remained on a constant level, with a slight decrease in the number of events at home, accompanied by an increase in the number of road accidents and events which occurred in the school environment and in a public place. It was also found that the spring-autumn season, and in particular the summer months, the age group 7-13 and male gender exerted an effect on the number of injuries and accidents. The analysis did not confirm that injuries related with employment of children and adolescents in agriculture and deaths due to external causes constituted a considerable percentage of the events registered.
Analysis of trends should be a basis for the planning of prophylactic actions and the promotion of safety in all environments in which the study population functions.
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