State Medicaid Budgeting in Hard Times: Implications for Long-Term Care

This qualitative analysis compares the annual Medicaid budgeting processes in Utah and Illinois from the late 1970s until 1985, explaining why Utah cut the proportion spent on nursing homes and Illinois did not. It posits rational, organizational, and political process interpretations of each state's choices. The states implemented Medicaid rationing (through preadmission screening, rate freezes and adjustments, and expansion of alternatives) in significantly different ways. Utah reduced utilization of nursing homes while Illinois contained rates. Such diverse policy choices have aggravated disparities among the states in access to and quality of long-term care. Rational planning for our aging society will have to overcome these growing disparities among state policies.     

Markets and politics in France's declining regions

France has adopted an explicit policy of countering the decline of its old industrial areas, by encouraging a process of reindustrialization in those regions. The French experience illustrates the challenge that such an approach encounters, including dificulties arising out of policies of the European Community, the efforts of the government to achieve national growth targets, the locational preferences of potential “replacement” industries, and political and financial constraints on regional governments when they assume an entrepreneurial role. In the end, the effect of government intervention proves complex. Although the principal effort is directed at cushioning the pressures of market forces, the net result of public policy is often to transmit such forces more directly than in the past.     

"I SPEAK FOR THE TREES…"

This article concentrates on the need for greater information resources management (IRM) education in public administration programs. The author argues that current management information systems training is much too limited in its approach, concentrating only on the technology of information transfers. A more comprehensive technique, emphasizing all of the issues of data handling from collection to distribution, is put forward. Because policy decisions are affected by critical information, public administrators must be keenly aware of their information resources. In concluding the article, the author offers a possible IRM curriculum that would prepare students of the discipline to be lucid practitioners.     

Kant's theory of punishment: Deterrence in its threat,retribution in its execution

Kant's theory of punishment is commonly regarded as purely retributive in nature, and indeed much of his discourse seems to support that interpretation. Still, it leaves one with certain misgivings regarding the internal consistency of his position. Perhaps the problem lies not in Kant's inconsistency nor in the senility sometimes claimed to be apparent in the Metaphysic of Morals, but rather in a superimposed, modern yet monistic view of punishment. Historical considerations tend to show that Kant was discussing not one, but rather two facets of punishment, each independent but nevertheless mutually restrictive. Punishment as a threat was intended to deter crime. It was a tool in the hands of civil society to counteract human drives toward violating another's rights. In its execution, however, the state was limited in its reaction by a retributive theory of justice demanding respect for the individual as an end and not as a means to some further social goal. This interpretation of Kant's theory of punishment maintains consistency from the earliest through the latest of his writings on moral, legal, and political philosophy. It provides a good reason for rejecting current economic analyses of crime and punishment. Most important of all, it credits Kant's theory in its clear recognition of the ideals intrinsic to libertarian government.     

Crimes of the State: The Persecution and Protection of Refugees

When refugees arrive at the borders and on the shores of the Global North they are increasingly criminalised and subject to a range of law and order type rhetoric and practices. This paper outlines an alternative criminological engagement with the condition of refugeehood that shifts the focus from the refugee to the practices of the state. First, it splices definitions of state crime with the highly legalistic refugee definition to offer alternative conceptualisations of persecution in the determination of who is accorded the legal status of refugee. Second, it applies state crime frameworks to the increasingly restrictive and punitive refugee policies of countries in the Global North. It concludes by locating theorisations of state crime within the broader project of reconceptualising notions of sovereignty.Sharon Pickering BA(Melb), MA(Soton), PhD(Melb) lectures in Criminal Justice and Criminology at Monash University Australia. She has worked with refugees and written on forced migration issues for the past five years including her recent book Refugees and State Crime (2005 Institute of Criminology Monograph Series/Federation Press).     

Large‐Scale Social Protest: A Business Risk and a Bureaucratic Opportunity

The public versus private nature of organizations influences their goals, processes, and employee values. However, existing studies have not analyzed whether and how the public nature of organizations shapes their responses to concrete social pressures. This article takes a first step toward addressing this gap by comparing the communication strategies of public organizations and businesses in response to large‐scale social protests. Specifically, we conceptualize, theorize, and empirically analyze the communication strategies of 100 organizations in response to large‐scale social protests that took place in Israel during 2011. We find that in response to these protests, public organizations tended to employ a “positive‐visibility” strategy, whereas businesses were inclined to keep a “low public profile.” We associate these different communication strategies with the relatively benign consequences of large‐scale social protests for public organizations compared with their high costs for businesses.     

The information-based organization: new dimensions for the public manager

Public management education should reflect the tremendous organizational changes brought about by information technologies and their applications. Increasing penetration of information technologies and the need for well-considered approaches to use those technologies will pose new opportunities and obstacles for public managers. This paper describes three key skill areas for curriculum consideration: information technology management, information management, and human resource management.     

Cultural dimensions of South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction

Abstract

This article aims to help communication practitioners know which cultural dimensions are associated with communication satisfaction. The meta-theoretical framework is the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management (Dozier, Grunig and Grunig 1995, 35). The conceptual theoretical framework; cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005, 39) and communication satisfaction by Downs and Hazen (1977, 68) and Gray and Laidlaw (2004, 427) fit into the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management. The research design was a quantitative survey with an online questionnaire as a data collection method distributed among a random sample. Validity was improved through pilot tests and the sampling technique. In terms of reliability this survey's scores sufficed as accurate and consistent, scoring above the acceptable score of 0.7 (Van Heerden 2001); 0.72 for national culture and 0.83 for communication satisfaction. Regression analysis was used to analyse the relationship between cultural dimensions (independent variables) and communication satisfaction (dependent variable). The findings clearly showed that national cultural dimensions have significant relationships with communication satisfaction. The implication was that internal communication practitioners could now be informed about the dynamics of the interaction between the cultural dimensions prevalent amongst South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction.     

Size doesn't matter: emotional content does not determine the size of objects in children's drawings

Abstract

In Experiment 1 we examined whether children spontaneously alter the size of objects in their drawings of emotionally-laden events. To do this, we evaluated children's drawings of their own personal, past experiences. Children were asked to draw a picture of an event that had made them happy and an event that had made them sad. We found no differences in the size of object that children drew in their positive and negative emotional events. In Experiment 2, we asked adults with and without clinical training to discriminate children's drawings of happy events from their drawings of sad events. There was no difference in the accuracy of raters as a function of clinical expertise. Moreover, performance for both groups was at chance when we removed drawings with specific emotional indicators from the set (e.g. smiles or tears). We conclude that the emotional interpretation of drawings on the basis of the size of objects in that drawing is fraught with difficulty. We question the projective use of drawings in forensic and clinical practice.