NHS Inquiries and Investigations; an Exemplar in Peculiarity and Assumption

There is little research focussing on how bereaved families experience NHS inquiries and investigations. Despite this gap, there is a consistent assumption that these processes provide families with catharsis. Drawing on my personal experiences of NHS investigations over a five‐year period after the death of our son, Connor Sparrowhawk, I suggest the assumption of catharsis is misplaced and works to erase the considerable emotional ‘accountability’ labour that families undertake during these processes. I further question whether inquiries or investigations are an effective way of holding stakeholders to account. I conclude with two points: first, qualitative research is needed to better understand bereaved family experiences of inquiries and investigations and second, the ‘lessons learned’ objective underpinning inquiries should be replaced with ‘leading to demonstrable change’, which is what families typically want.     

NHS Inquiries and the Problem of Culture

If inquiries are about learning the lessons of the past, why do they appear to find the same failings time and again? Bristol, Mid Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay, Liverpool Community Health are all examples of where culture went wrong. The lack of learning from inquiries is a prominent concern and one raised elsewhere in this issue. In this article, I explore why it might be that culture is repeatedly found to be the cause of healthcare failures. I start by reviewing perspectives on what culture is and the degree to which it is possible change it. I examine how culture was described in the Bristol, Mid Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay and Liverpool inquiries and question whether these are the same cultures, with the same problems, or whether they are different. I discuss possible explanations for apparent similarities, describe how cultural change occurs and conclude by drawing out the implications of focussing on culture as a threat to patient safety.     

A Tale of Two Inquiries: Sans Everything and Ely

The government acknowledged scandalously poor care of long‐stay patients in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in 1969. This followed the Ely Hospital inquiry, which emerged in the aftermath of revelations of abuse at seven hospitals described in Barbara Robb's book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer (1967). Allegations in Sans Everything and at Ely were similar. However, the inquiry committees which investigated, ‘disproved’ those in Sans Everything and upheld those at Ely. The Ely inquiry became pivotal to NHS policy reform for long‐stay mental illness and mental handicap hospitals, and for giving patients and their families a greater voice if they had concerns about inadequacies. This paper explains the relationship between Sans Everything and ‘Ely’ and analyses the impact of Robb's work—her high‐profile press campaign, networking, and determination to achieve improvement—which triggered revelations at Ely and elsewhere, and helped shape the course and constructive outcome of the Ely inquiry.     

组织学习：管理学视角下的多元理论

就管理学领域中关于组织学习的理论进行了比较系统的研究.在彼得·帕沃夫斯基提出的五大类组织学习理论的分类基础上,进一步对每类理论下各种研究视角和研究思路进行了更为系统的规范分析.主要是对管理学中关于组织学习问题研究的各种理论的缘起、分化、进程及现状进行了系统的分析与评价.研究发现,由于学者们对组织学习的本质的看法、研究视角以及研究范式的不同,使得组织学习问题的研究呈现出理论多元化倾向.但近年来,一些从不同角度研究组织学习问题的理论,又正在趋向于新的整合.认为,关于组织学习问题的更为系统的看法,将建立在关于组织学习本质的多元视角而形成的综合观点基础之上.     

Learning about Learning: Discovering the Work of Policy

The development of policy rests on skilled practice by knowledgeable practitioners – ‘policy work’ – and it is important to know what skills and knowledge this work calls upon, and where these are learned. Although there is substantial academic knowledge and courses in this field, many practitioners will argue that policy work is ‘as much an art as a science’ and is something that ‘you learn as you go’. This article reports on an exploratory study of policy practitioners’ accounts of their practice, what counts as knowledge, and in what contexts it is ‘useful’. We examine the discourses through which policy work is accomplished, the way in which people learn to do it, and the place of academic work in the constitution of these discourses. Drawing on our respondents understanding of policy practice, we discuss what more might be done to facilitate learning about the work of policy.     

Ideology,Learning, and Policy Diffusion: Experimental Evidence

We introduce experimental research design to the study of policy diffusion in order to better understand how political ideology affects policymakers’ willingness to learn from one another's experiences. Our two experiments–embedded in national surveys of U.S. municipal officials–expose local policymakers to vignettes describing the zoning and home foreclosure policies of other cities, offering opportunities to learn more. We find that: (1) policymakers who are ideologically predisposed against the described policy are relatively unwilling to learn from others, but (2) such ideological biases can be overcome with an emphasis on the policy's success or on its adoption by co‐partisans in other communities. We also find a similar partisan‐based bias among traditional ideological supporters, who are less willing to learn from those in the opposing party. The experimental approach offered here provides numerous new opportunities for scholars of policy diffusion.     

Learning,political regimes and the liberalisation of trade

In this article, the probability of opening to trade is related to a country's propensity to learn from other countries in its region. It is argued that countries have different motivations to learn, depending upon the responsiveness and accountability of their political regimes. Whereas democracies cannot afford to be dogmatic, authoritarian regimes are less motivated to learn from the experience of others, even if they embrace policies that fail. Using data on trade liberalisation for 57 developing countries in the period 1970–1999, it is found that democracies confronting economic crises are more likely to liberalise trade as a result of learning; among democracies, presidential systems seem to learn more, whereas personalist dictatorial regimes are the most resistant to learning from the experience of others.     

Policy Failure and Policy Learning: Examining the Conditions of Learning after Disaster

The policy learning literature indicates that governments can and do learn after a policy failure but not always. The purpose of this study is to examine the conditions under which policy failure leads to policy learning. It asks two questions. First, is policy failure associated with policy learning? Second, if policy is associated with policy learning, does the failure initiate different types of learning? Using the policy failure and learning literatures as an organizing framework, this paper analyzes three comparative cases of policy failure revealed by tornados in Greensburg, Kansas (2007); Joplin, Missouri (2011); and Moore, Oklahoma (2013). It finds that failure of the policy process in agenda setting is associated with instrumental policy learning. It also finds that there are two types of failure of decision making: failure to make a timely decision and failure to make any decision. The two types of decision‐making failure are associated with different types of policy learning. In addition, the contextual factors underpinning the link between policy failure and learning are prior experience with the policy problem and capacity to learn.     

Organizational Learning and the Development of a Networked Company

Through use of an exploratory case study, this research examines the concepts that distinguish a networked company from other organization models. These concepts are then applied in a field case study to a networked company called the Port Arthur Remediation Team (PART). PART was formed in 1996 by an integrated petroleum company, an environmental engineering concern, and a heavy construction firm to manage the remediation of an oil refining facility. How this networked firm learned to organize, coordinate activities, attain goals, and link its operational components in a useful way are described.     

国学研究的跨文化理念与方法

国学与国学研究是两个不同层面上的问题。国学虽是近代产生的概念,但其内涵却可以涵盖中国古代的学术文化,它主要属于价值层面,是"德性的学问"。国学研究才是近代学术发展的产物,它将国学视为研究对象,主要属于知识层面,是"文献的学问"。国学研究应该暂时搁置价值争端,提倡一种"学无中西"的跨文化理念与方法,以便更好地弘扬中国传统国学。     

Political Learning from Rare Events: Poisson Inference, Fiscal Constraints, and the Lifetime of Bureaus

David E. Lewis Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: delewis{at}princeton.edu How do political actors learn about their environment when the"data" provided by political processes are characterized byrare events and highly discontinuous variation? In such learningenvironments, what can theory predict about how learning actorswill take costly actions that are difficult to reverse (e.g.,eliminating programs, approving a risky new product, revisinga security policy, firing or recalling an appointed or electedofficial)? We develop a formal model for this problem and applyit to the termination of bureaucratic agencies. The conventionalwisdom that "the older a bureau is, the less likely it is todie" (Downs 1967, Inside Bureaucracy) persists but has neverbeen properly tested. This paper offers a learning-based stochasticoptimization model of agency termination that offers two counterintuitivepredictions. First, politicians terminate agencies only afterlearning about them, so the hazard of agencies should be nonmonotonic,contradicting Downs's prediction. Second, if terminating agenciesis costly, agencies are least likely to be terminated when politiciansare fiscally constrained or when the deficit is high. We assessthe model by developing a battery of tests for the shape ofthe hazard function and estimate these and other duration modelsusing data on U.S. federal government agencies created between1946 and 1997. Results show that the hazard rate of agency terminationis strongly nonmonotonic and that agencies are less likely tobe terminated under high deficits and divided government. Forthe first 50 years of the agency duration distribution, themodal termination hazard occurs at five years after agenciesare enabled. Methodologically, our approach ties the functionalform of a hazard model tightly to theory and presents an applied"agenda" for testing the shape of an empirical hazard function.With extensions, our model and empirical framework are applicableto a range of political phenomena.     

Investigating the Institutional Norms and Values of the Productivity Commission: The 2011 and 2015 Childcare Inquiries

The Productivity Commission (PC) has a mandate to provide independent advice to government that promotes community wellbeing. Whilst it plays a significant role in social and economic reform, the underlying institutional values and norms of the PC that shape its advice have not been examined. This paper examines policy problematisations (Bacchi 2009, 2012) across two PC ‘inquiries’ into childcare (2011, 2015) between Labor and Coalition governments, and the advice provided by the PC. In doing so, this research demonstrates that PC recommendations are imbued with economic values that are highly institutionalised. These values give preference to targeted social welfare and traditional gender norms, despite current evidence suggesting alternative approaches would have better social and long‐term economic outcomes. Our findings raise questions over the conflict between the traditional economic values of the PC and providing social policy advice that reflects best practice, indicating that further investigation into the PC is urgently needed.     

中西文明互鉴中的三种知识汇通模式

明末清初耶稣会士来华所引发的知识汇通,是中西文明互鉴的客观需求和重要表现。中西文化交流过程中形成了三种知识汇通模式:“中学为本”“西学为本”和“中西学并举”。它们分别以“西学东源”“中学西源”和“中西学异源”学说为理论依据,在不同历史时期都曾发挥了主流作用。在中西文化交流频繁的当下,如何将中西知识实现恰如其分的对接,仍是一个十分现实的问题。明末清初以来形成的三种中西知识汇通模式或可提供一些借鉴。     

全面加强和改进新形势下高校党的建设建立和完善高校学习型党组织

全面加强和改善高校党的建设,建立和完善高校学习型党组织,是新形势对高校党的建设提出的新课题,是党的事业发展对高校发展提出的新要求,也是高校自身发展的需要。高校要顺应发展要求,发挥高校优势,努力成为建设学习型党组织的积极探索者和带头实践者,就必须对高校建立和完善高校学习型党组织现状进行深入了解和研究,采取切实措施,使高校学习型党组织建设朝着规划目标合理化、学习内容形式丰富化、学习机制长效化、学习创新全面化发展,才能不辱使命。     

Patterns of Disagreement in Democratic Politics: Comparing Germany, Japan, and the United States

An important ingredient in democratic politics is the experience of disagreement through social communication and political discussion. If people fail to encounter contrary viewpoints, their own views are never challenged, they are never forced to reconsider initially held opinions, and they are effectively excluded from democratic deliberation. This article examines patterns of political agreement and disagreement within the communication networks of citizens in Germany, Japan, and the United States. Several questions are addressed. Are there cross‐national differences in patterns of agreement and disagreement among citizens? To what extent are these patterns subject to individual attitudes, to the structure of communication networks, and to levels of aggregate support for particular preferences and opinions? Finally, what are the implications of disagreement for civic capacity and political engagement? Empirical analyses are based on cooperative election surveys conducted in each country during the early 1990s.     

国学与和合学

当今,人类共同面临的是一个病态的世界,是一个充满着错综复杂的冲突和危机的世界。概而言之,人与自然、社会、人际、心灵、文明之间的冲突带来生态、社会、道德、精神和信仰以及价值危机。人类的这些病态不是在减少,而是在扩大,世界上任何地区、国家、民族、宗教以至个人,都在深受其害。依据中华民族五千多年来特别丰富的国学人文资源,以及人与自然、社会、人际、心灵、文明之间交往所积累的宝贵经验和智慧主体卓越的洞见,可以提出国学和合学的和生、和处、和立、和达、和爱五大原理,作为化解人类病态、建构和谐世界的基本原理。     

Comparing Implementation of Internet Diffusion in the United States and France: Policies,Beliefs, and Institutions

Comparing Internet diffusion policies in the United States and France from an implementation perspective brings to light institutional and historical differences, even though both countries used the same top‐down approach. We find that France not only followed the technological lead of the United States in information technology but also emulated some of its more business‐oriented approaches in the implementation of the Internet, despite its own longstanding tradition of government intervention in industrial and commercial matters. This policy shift appears to be spurred by the global economy. Traditionally state‐controlled national economies are now increasingly leveraging private interests for successful industrial policy. When applying Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith's advocacy coalition framework to the American and French diffusion of the Internet, we find policy communities actually expanding to private and public actors, including industry captains, legislators, and civil servants. These subsystems work together through classic lawmaking and lobbying under technological and economic constraints.     

Institutional Change Through Policy Learning: The Case of the European Commission and Research Policy

Research initiatives to enhance knowledge‐based societies demand regionally coordinated policy approaches. By analyzing the case of the European Commission, Directorate‐General Research and Innovation, this study focuses on examining the cognitive mechanisms that form the foundation for institutional transformations and result in leadership positions in regional governance. Drawing on policy learning theories, the study emphasizes specific mechanisms of institutional change that are often less noticeable but can gradually lead to mobilizing diverse groups of stakeholders. Through historical and empirical data, this study shows the importance of policy learning through communication processes, Open Method of Coordination initiatives, and issue framing in creating a stronger foundation for policy coordination in European research policy since the 2000s.