BodyShock: A technology transfer case study

This case study presents a test of a technology transfer model developed by Karl Dakin of The Denver Technology Exchange Corporation. The model involves the creation of a new business organization dedicated solely to completing the transfer of a technology to a single application. In this case, the technology is the BodyShock, developed by Jim Hartway with JH Design, Inc., of Littleton, Colorado.     

Controlling bureaucracy: attitudes in the Alberta Public Service towards the Ombudsman

Abstract. The Ombudsman represents a recent and interesting example of the transfer of political institutions across cultural boundaries. The Ombudsman was established in Alberta both as an attempt to assist the consumer of government services in coping with an increasingly complex bureaucracy and as a legislative auxiliary for controlling bureaucracy. The degree to which the Ombudsman is accepted or rejected by the public service is an important variable in measuring the success of the transfer. The usefulness of the Ombudsman as an innovation in the field of citizen-government relations depends to a considerable extent on the impact which the Ombudsman has on the provincial bureaucracy. Other than correcting a relatively small number of cases of maladministration, does the Ombudsman contribute to improving public administration? Are there dysfunctional consequences (e.g. hidden costs) in imposing yet another control agency on bureaucracy? How does the presence of the Ombudsman affect the behaviour of officials? In this article the author analyses part of the data from an extensive survey of a representative sample of the Alberta public service concerning officials' perception of and attitudes towards the Ombudsman. Several diverse attitude measures show that in the aggregate the provincial public service has a remarkably positive attitude towards the Ombudsman. Several variables are considered in search of an explanation for this attitude structure. The findings allow predictions about officials' behaviour in official-client interactions, which are also tested against direct and indirect data on behaviour obtained in the survey. Sommaire. Le Protecteur du citoyen (‘Ombudsman’) constitue un exemple particulièrement intéressant illustrant bien la tendance récente à transposer des institutions politiques au dela des frontières culturelles. Le poste de Protecteur du citoyen a été créé en Alberta dans le but d'assister le consommateur de services des administrations publiques dans ses relations avec une bureaucratie de plus en plus complexe, et d'exercer une fonction d'auxiliaire législatif capable de contrôler cette bureaucratie. Le mesure dans laquelle le Protecteur du citoyen est accepté ou rejeté par la fonction publique constitue une variable importante permettant de mesurer le succès de l'institution. L'utilité du Protecteur du citoyen considéré comme phénomène nouveau apparu dans le contexte des relations entre les citoyens et les pouvoirs publics dépend dans une large mesure de l'influence qu'il exerce sur la bureaucratie provinciale. Abstraction faite des mesures correctives apportées à un nombre relativement réduit d'erreurs et de lacunes administratives, le Protecteur du citoyen contribue-t-il à améliorer la qualité de l'administration publique? Faut-il craindre que l'imposition d'un nouvel organe de contrôle à la bureaucratic n'engendre des consequences liées à des troubles fonctionnels (par exemple des coûts non apparents)? Comment la présence du Protecteur du citoyen affecte-t-elle le comportement des fonctionnaires? Dans cet article, l'auteur analyse une partie des données recueillies dans le cadre d'une analyse détaillée d'un échantillon représentatif de la fonction publique en Alberta effectuée pour déterminer l'idée que les fonctionnaires se font du Protecteur du citoyen, et kurs attitudes à son égard. Diverses evaluations des attitudes indiquent que, dans l'ensemble, la fonction publique provinciale se distingue par une attitude extrêmement positive vis-à-vis du Protecteur du citoyen. L'auteur examine plusieurs variables pour essayer d'expliquer pourquoi cette attitude est structurée de la sorte. Les conclusions permettent de formuler des prévisions au sujet du comportement des fonctionnaires au niveau des contacts fonctionnaire-client, lesquels font également l'objet d'une analyse comparative faisant intervenir des données directes et indirectes sur le comportement obtenues dans le cadre de l'étude.     

Twenty years of progress in violence risk assessment

Violence risk assessment has advanced considerably in the last 20 years. In the 1980s, leading professionals questioned the very possibility of valid violence risk assessments; now, many of the major risk factors have been identified, and professional debate focuses on how best to combine these risk factors into meaningful evaluations. An important contributor to this advance in knowledge has been the rise of meta-analytic reviews. Through quantitative summaries, the cumulative findings of small, potentially insignificant studies have provided important answers to questions concerning the effective assessment and treatment of violent offenders.     

Can Political Inequalities Be Educated Away? Evidence from a Large‐Scale Reform

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. We utilize a difference‐in‐difference strategy to analyze how a large school reform launched in Sweden in the 1950s, which lengthened schooling and postponed tracking, affected the likelihood of individuals with different family backgrounds to run for public office. The data come from public registers and pertain to the entire Swedish population born between 1943 and 1955. The empirical analysis provides strong support for the view that improved educational opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds can be an effective means to reduce the social bias of elected assemblies.     

The “Breadbasket” Is Empty: The Options of Sudanese Development Policy

Alison Des Forges, a renowned scholar and human rights activist of Central Africa, died in an airplane crash in 2009. Her life is a model of the conjunction of human rights activism and scholarship; it therefore illuminates the relations between these two forms of participation in African Studies. This article commemorates her work, showing how her scholarship enriched her human rights work, and how, in turn, her scholarship was driven by her sense of social justice. The article analyses five domains of her work: her 1972 dissertation; her participation in human rights reporting; a series of Human Rights Watch reports which she wrote or edited; her magisterial work on the genocide of 1994; and her continued scholarly publications after the genocide. From this, it argues that Des Forges's life work exemplified the mutually reinforcing nature of these two forms of commitment - scholarship and work towards human rights and social justice.     

Firm size,age and efficiency: Evidence from Kenyan manufacturing firms

Translog stochastic frontier production functions are estimated using an unbalanced panel of 235 Kenyan manufacturing firms in the food, wood, textile and metal sectors. The sectors are estimated individually in order to investigate whether technical efficiency is systematically related to the size and age of firms. The evidence suggests that firm size has a positive and significant effect in the wood and textile sectors. The age effect is less systematic, but is insignificant in all sectors, except textiles.