Can the Use of Recommended Procurement Practices Save Money?

Procurement is an essential business function of government. Despite the importance of effective procurement practices to government efficiency, very little is known about what local governments do in practice, and how procurement practices affect government spending. This paper reports the results of a survey on procurement practices used by New York State school districts. To examine the potential costs savings from adoption of particular procurement practices, the authors estimate cost models for materials, supplies, and equipment spending. Results from the cost model indicate that the use of competitive bidding, purchasing calendars, central warehouses, and bidders lists are associated with significant cost savings.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM IN THE UK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions – health care, housing, and social services – significant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.     

INDIVIDUAL DECISIONAL CONSISTENCY ACROSS COLLEGIAL COURTS

This article examines the decisional consistency of U.S. Supreme Court justices with lower collegial court experience in a twofold effort to expose the potential policy implications of consistent or inconsistent behavior and to show the value of longitudinal analysis of individual rather than aggregate decisional patterns. The results show a fairly high level of consistent behavior but with marked differences across the case subjects. The article concludes with an assessment of the implications for justice selection processes and Supreme Court decision-making theory.     

Reclaiming Futures: A Model for Judicial Leadership in Community Responses to Juvenile Substance Abuse

Juvenile courts across the country have become the leading service delivery system for youths with substance abuse problems, not by choice, but by necessity. At 10 communities around the nation, judges and project staff are in their fifth year of pioneering changes to the way the juvenile justice system helps teens in trouble with drugs, alcohol, and crime. These judges are part of Reclaiming Futures, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and they are working with local leaders to re‐invent the way law enforcement, courts, probation, detention facilities, treatment providers, families, schools, and the community work together to help troubled youths succeed. Together, they have written a guide for judges, court administrators, government entities, community leaders, and interested citizens to share the knowledge and experience they have gained from the nationwide Reclaiming Futures initiative. Their goal is to encourage and motivate others to launch similar projects in their communities, and to provide a blueprint for judges and others striving to undertake this level of collaboration.