COMPULSORY COMPETITIVE TENDERING FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THE EXPERIENCES OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND 1988-1992

This article examines the response of a sample of local authorities in the North of England to the introduction of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (Cm) following the 1988 Local Government Act. It analyses the Organizational implications of CCT and highlights how officers, councillors and trade union representatives viewed the changing nature of management within local authorities in the period following the award of the first service contracts. In particular, it examines the different reactions to the development of a more commercial approach to the management of services and ends by assessing the specific impact of CCT in the context of other important changes in local government.     

'FATCATS' and Prosecution in a Regulatory Agency: A Footnote on the Social Construction of Risk1

This paper explores what, in the context of occupational health and safety regulation, the idea of risk means to legal actors whose task is to assess and act upon risks. It argues that while the occupational risk to the worker is important because it may prompt a regulatory response and it informs decisions about enforcement strategy, the decision-maker contemplating formal legal action will become preoccupied with the risks posed by the legal process to the successful prosecution of the case. The legal risks arise from the nature of regulatory work and the form and character of regulatory law. Legal decisionmakers respond to these risks in a systematic fashion preferring to prosecute cases which are quick, straightforward and unlikely to be defended. This leads to the selection of cases which are breaches of absolute (rather than general) duties and violations of provisions relating to safety rather than health, thereby skewing the application of enforcement.     

ORGANIZATIONAL STATUS A PERFORMANCE: SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

Hypotheses derived from the public choice and other literatures on the relationship between ownership and performance were tested on ten UK organizations which had undergone status change, within the public sector or between the public and private sectors, in the last twenty years. Results on tests of performance in productivity, employment, and financial ratios against change in status, competition and internal management failed in most cases to support the thesis that change in ownership improves enterprise performance, even in its more sophisticated form where ownership change is assumed to be accompanied by increased competition and improved managerial incentives.     

DIFFERENTIAL REINFORCEMENT THEORY EXAMINED

It is argued that the attempts of Burgess and Akers and of Adams to formulate Sutherland's differential association theory in the language of operant conditioning theory fail to preserve Sutherland's interesting insights by reducing his theory to the mere claim that criminal behavior is operant conditioning behavior. Questions are then raised about the truth of even this claim. Some attention is also given to the question of the verification of both Sutherland's original theory and the operant Conditioning reformulations of it.     

African Students in Great Britain

The writer of this article served in the administration of NorthernRhodesia, and is now in charge of the Welfare Department ofthe Colonial Office.