The Impact of Institutional Forces Upon Knowledge Sharing in the UK NHS: The Triumph of Professional Power and the Inconsistency of Policy

Academics, policy‐makers and practitioners are increasingly interested in the contribution that effective management of knowledge across organizational and professional boundaries can make to improved public services. Examining knowledge sharing within the context of the UK NHS, we ground our investigation in neo‐institutional organizational sociology. We highlight the influence of regulatory, normative and cultural‐cognitive aspects of institutions operating in the health care field on the boundaries that impede knowledge sharing. We illustrate how institutional isomorphic processes facilitate convergence within groups of organizations and occupations subject to the same institutional pressures, but, by the same token, inhibit convergence across different organizational and occupational groupings. In short, the development of a learning organization, where knowledge is shared freely across boundaries, will be difficult to realize.     

Reconstruction and reconciliation: Emerging from transition

I wish first to address some of the simplistic myths about solutions to social conflict, and then reflect on problems that I have experienced with aid efforts organised by the international community, through the UN. In this, I shall focus on Bosnia rather than on Africa. Bosnia, as part of Europe, did not suffer the apathy that characterised international responses to events in Rwanda and Burundi before 1994. The second part of my presentation will address what I see as the flawed assumptions that often underlie the emphasis on economic reconstruction in the wake of war and conflict.     

Diversifying Nature Protection: Evaluating the Changing Tools for Forest Protection in Canada and Norway

Governments increasingly struggle to protect representative nature types and ecological diversity within their territories only via the instrument of publicly designated protected areas. This article examines the rise of voluntary conservation and certification (i.e., private conservation) as tools for forest protection in Norway and Canada. We contrast the differing potential of these private conservation tools with protection through government legislation and regulation using four evaluative criteria: the representativeness of protected areas, the strength of protection, the longevity of protection, and the information generated through protection. We find that private conservation tools can match the strength of legal protection and help to dispel conflict, but that private tools create protection that is more likely to be reversed in the future. However, we also show that voluntary private conservation can become public protection, which highlights the importance of examining different paths toward secure and long‐lasting protection.     

Robbery, recession and real wages in Hong Kong

Between 1965 and 1975 Hong Kong experienced a dramatic increase in reported crime. Criminologists have put forward two major explanations for this: 1) modernization (or convergence) theory, and 2) the alleged break-up of the police-triad (Chinese secret societies) alliance following the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Data from the 1970s show a remarkably close relationship in Hong Kong between changes in real wages and robbery rates. In this paper we argue that declining wages are related to increased rates of such 'quick cash' crimes, particularly in societies lacking a safety net of unemployment benefits, universal health insurance and income security provisions. The results offer support for this alternative, but admittedly partial, explanation of Hong Kong's rising crime rate. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Testing Alternative Legal Paradigms: An Experiment in Designing Tax Legislation

This article reports on empirical research undertaken to test the claim made in a law reform project that citizens could be made more certain of their legal obligations by changing the legal paradigm used to express their rights and obligations. Our research tested a number of hypotheses involving different formulations of the claim being made. We find that the alternative paradigm being presented was inferior to current practice and offer some reasons that would explain our results and the significance of this work for other areas of legal research.     

A Contingent Approach to the Organization and Management of Public–Private Partnerships: An Empirical Study of English Health Care

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become a prominent feature of contemporary public policy. Although research shows variation in the contractual configuration of partnerships, there is little evidence of how these shape service and workforce organization. Through comparative ethnographic research on two PPP health care providers in the English National Health Service, this article develops the idea that PPPs exhibit “tight” and “loose” arrangements that relate to “downstream” service and workforce management. It induces four empirically grounded mediating factors to describe this relationship. The first relates to the “dependence” between partners in terms of financing, strategy, and resource sharing; the second to the “strategic orientation” of leaders; the third to the composition of the “professional workforce”; and the fourth to the “management approach” to service and workforce organization. The article contributes to the research literature by exploring the contingencies in how PPPs are operationalized on the ground.