Non-governmental organizations and the development of social services. Meeting social needs in local communities in post-communist Hungary

This article describes and evaluates the role of non-governmental organizations in responding to social care needs in post-communist Hungary through the development of new forms of social services. It compares and contrasts this with the lessons arising from the similar role that non-profit organizations undertake in relation to public services in the western market economies. It argues that the key factor determining the success or otherwise of this role is the relationship, and its management, of these organizations to government in Hungary. It concludes by exploring this relationship in detail and by highlighting the key issues to be addressed in the future. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Making the most of the best: Formulating a knowledge management strategy for a government advisory body

‘Well, there seems to be a growing consensus among companies doing knowledge management that the correct focus should be neither on the individual nor the enterprise, but instead on some grouping of people who share common context, stories and passion, around a subject’ (Larry Prusak).¹ What do you get when some 20 people meet every three or four months, each one at the top of their respective fields and from different organisations and with different backgrounds, in different cities around Australia? In the case of the Family Law Council you get scintillating intellectual pyrotechnics, sharing of insights and even, in a typically understated Australian way, passion. The Family Law Council (the Council) is a government advisory body. Advisory bodies have two primary functions: to provide expert and representative advice in an increasingly specialised and complex social environment; and to open up channels of communication between government and the people (Hughes 1995). This article examines how the tools and analytical techniques of knowledge management (KM) can add value to the two primary functions of the Council. Drawing on the conceptual framework of KM, and on the basis that the Council forms a knowledge system, this article will examine the workings of the Council. It will look at its statutory role, environmental background and logistics, in order to propose a KM strategy adapted to its specific circumstances. And it will, where appropriate, illustrate points with discussions based on methodologies and case studies from the flourishing academic field of KM.     

The significance of gas chromatographic impurity patterns obtained from illicitly produced amphetamine

This paper describes a series of experiments designed to assess the evidential significance of gas chromatographic impurity patterns obtained from illicitly produced amphetamine. The experiments, based on the Leuckart route of amphetamine manufacture, were designed to investigate: the effect of reaction conditions on the production of known impurities, and the possibility that different chemists could produce amphetamine with identical impurity patterns by rigidly following the same synthetic procedure. The study provides strong support for the assumption that, if two illicit samples have the same impurity pattern, they have originated from the same batch.     

An Exploratory Study of Youth Mentoring in an Urban Context: Adolescents' Perceptions of Relationship Styles

The goal of this study was to empirically distinguish a range of mentor relationships and to evaluate their differential influence on adolescent outcomes. The study makes use of data that were collected as part of a national evaluation of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America. The evaluation included 1138 youth, ranging in age from 10 through 16 (M=12.25), who were assigned randomly to either a mentoring relationship or a control group and followed for 18 months. A series of analyses, based on the matched youth's accounts of the relationships, suggested 4 distinct types of relationships (i.e., moderate, unconditionally supportive, active, and low-key). The 4 groups tended to distinguish themselves from one another on the basis of perceived support, structure, and activity. Relative to the controls, youth who characterized their mentor relationships as providing moderate levels of both activity and structure and conditional support derived the largest number of benefits from the relationships. These included improvements in social, psychological, and academic outcomes. Implications of the findings for research and intervention are discussed.     

What's Yours is Mine: Rent-Seeking and the Common Law

The paper develops a rent-seeking theory of the common law.The general finding is that the law's form depends on thecomparative advantage each group has in production versusappropriation generally, and appropriation via litigation inparticular. The model generates new interpretations ofdevelopments in United States common law, and is used both tosupplement and to criticize two dominant theories of such law,the efficiency theory associated with the law and economicsmovement and that generated by critical legal studiesscholars.