Engaging urban nature: improving our understanding of public perceptions of the role of biodiversity in cities

In recognition of the value of biodiversity for cities and citizens, a number of international programs have been designed to help municipal governments sustain, protect, and augment the biodiversity and ecosystem services within their jurisdictions. A key component of these programs is public engagement, where citizens assume a more active role in maintaining urban biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Yet, there are few studies which have as their focus public knowledge of the importance of nature, biodiversity, and ecosystem services in cities. To these ends, this study was conducted to develop a better understanding of how the public understands and interacts with urban biodiversity, particularly in comparison to subject matter experts. Using topics generated from expert interviews and the literature, an interview guide was developed for the general public, structured around the general themes of a definition of urban biodiversity, as well as the perceived benefits, costs, and threats related to urban biodiversity. While there were similarities in the responses of citizens and experts, some differences did emerge in terms of accounting for specific urban ecosystems, acceptable interventions to support and enhance biodiversity, and the character and extent of the cultural services derived from urban nature. Insights from this work can be used to inform education and information efforts for the public, as well as raise awareness among city planners and nature professionals of the array of urban ecosystem services recognized and made use of by the public.

     

The operations and effectiveness of public and private provision of solid waste collection services in Kampala

This paper compares the operations and discusses the effectiveness of public and private sector provision of solid waste collection in Kampala, Uganda. Household data suggest that the private sector is more effective than the public sector. Private sector companies provide services like container provision and providing timely and fixed collection time tables. Contrary to popular perception, fees charged by private companies are moderate. Public sector clients are charged fees even when the service is supposed to be free. Clients of private sector providers are more satisfied than those of public sector providers. It is however, revealed that while public sector serve mainly the low incomes, the private sector serves mainly the rich. In spite of these notable differences, clients of both public and private sector perceive the problem of solid waste management (SWM) in Kampala to be very serious. The effectiveness of public and private sector operations in solid waste collection in Kampala is hampered by corruption and lack of transparency. Given the situation of open competition for clients involving both public and private sector in Kampala, it is possible the public sector can operate effectively if they start commercial services officially like their private sector counterparts. This calls for a formal public-private partnership where the public and private sector can work together with the public sector dominating poor and marginalized areas while the private sector concentrates on rich neighborhoods.     

Sharing the Baton,Not Passing It: Collaboration between Public and Private Child Welfare Agencies to Reunify Families

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, public sector child welfare agencies are contracting with private agencies for the provision of specialized services to clients while maintaining oversight and case management responsibilities. At the same time, funders, both private and public, are demanding that service providers partner and collaborate with one another. In this article, we present results from a study of a unique partnership between two state child welfare agencies and a private child welfare agency aimed at reunifying families whose children have been removed and placed in foster care. Data was obtained from 41 key informants using a questionnaire and a structured interview. Findings support earlier studies of collaboration, and indicate the strengths of this partnership and factors that facilitated and hindered it. The results have implications for agencies that both contract for and provide a range of child welfare services as well as other interagency relationships.     

People as partners: Facilitating people's participation in public–private partnerships for solid waste management

Cities in developing countries are facing a double dilemma. On one hand, the urban population is growing rapidly, causing a huge increase in demand for waste management services. On the other hand, the traditional public sector is failing to respond to the increased demand for service. The public sector is constrained by resource and institutional limitations. It is often proposed that the solution lies in private sector participation. It is expected that the private sector, with its dynamism and flexibility, may fill in the service delivery gaps by forming partnership with the public sector. However, a third tier—the people—is often overlooked in the service delivery framework. Citizens can contribute significantly to service delivery. They can support the private sector with payment of service charges. But more importantly, they can play an active role in improving accountability and service quality of both public and private sector. This radical shift in people's role, from passive service receivers to active service partners, however, may not occur endogenously. External help from facilitating agencies may enable the public and private sector to form partnership with people for better service delivery. This article examines the role of facilitating agencies in developing tripartite partnership for solid waste management service in Bangladesh. The key lessons learned are: a number of obstacles prevented spontaneous partnership among the public sector, private sector and people; facilitating agencies were able to overcome the obstacles to form partnership of the three; and, the tripartite arrangement resulted in higher accountability and better service delivery.     

Municipal subsidies to French associations

A significant aspect of public policies in France is the decentralisation of the public sector and the increased importance of local voluntary associations to implement programmes and influence local political arenas. Subsidies to local associations are an important vehicle for the central government in managing its decentralisation policy. Based on a locality sample, data on subsidies to associations were collected in nearly 400 municipalities. Results show that the allocation of subsidies is highly uneven, and part of a complex network in which private non-profit services are linked to the services that were previously part of the public sector. Implications for the French non-profit sector and for the government's decentralisation policy are discussed.     

Access to Philanthropic and Commercial Income Among Nonprofit Community Service Organisations

Governments depend on nonprofit, voluntary sector organisations to deliver social and community services, and public funding is the sector’s most important income source. However, in many countries, public funding for social services is becoming more limited, conditional and precarious, and governments are encouraging nonprofits to diversify their funding base, and shift their reliance to income from market activity and private donations. This article is concerned with access to philanthropic and commercial funding among nonprofits, and the factors affecting it. It firstly discusses an emerging policy agenda to promote private funding among nonprofit community service providers. Then, multivariate analysis of survey data from 521 Australian nonprofits shows which organisations access income from client fees, business activities, community fundraising, and philanthropic foundations. By exploring inequalities in the distribution of these main sources of private funding, the article helps identify the types of organisations that face challenges in establishing and sustaining streams of private income, and which are likely to require ongoing public support.     

Do public relations professionals understand corporate governance issues well enough to advise companies on stakeholder relationship management?

The King Reports on Governance for South Africa are internationally respected for proposing integrated reporting in a triple bottom-line business context to improve corporate governance. The most recent report, King III, views stakeholder relationship management as a key tenet of corporate governance. This raises the question whether public relations professionals (PRPs) understand the principles of corporate governance well-enough to inform and guide organizations on the management of stakeholder relationships. The views of senior PRPs at selected top performing companies were elicited on their practice of stakeholder relationship management in line with corporate governance principles. It was found that their knowledge on corporate governance was limited, although they recognized its importance. They propose six role functions for managing stakeholder relationships on a strategic or managerial level; these role functions are aligned with the King III principles on stakeholder relationships. The following three were of particular importance: developing a corporate strategy, giving advice to senior management and managing crisis communication. Different terminologies were used to build relations with stakeholders and different approaches were used to profile stakeholders. It is recommended that organizations leverage their public relations functions on strategic and managerial levels in support of their corporate governance efforts. In turn, PRPs are encouraged to ensure a deep knowledge on corporate governance issues when counseling senior management on building stakeholder relationships.     

Talk: Managing Large Community Sector Organisations in the 1980s and 1990s

Abstract

The community sector is a major provider of human services in Australia. It is comprised of community or private not-for-profit organisations, but is not the only industry sector where this class of organisation is found. Like an industry sector, the community sector contains some large and many small organisations. During the 1980s large community sector organisations consciously sought to improve their management and performance in a number of ways. Nonetheless their managers face further challenges in the 1990s, some of which will tempt them into competition with the more numerous small organisations in the sector.     

Public-private co-operation for the development of low-income shelter

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the limits of public sector production of low-income housing in developing countries and explore ways in which the public sector can facilitate increased efforts of the private sector to provide shelter. Topics discussed below include the need for greater private sector involvement in shelter production for low-income people, constraints to increased private sector participation, and suggestions as to what steps may be taken by the public sector, including international development agencies, to stimulate action by the private sector.     

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT APPROACHES TO SERVICE DELIVERY: AN ANALYSIS FROM A TRANSACTIONS COST PERSPECTIVE

Municipal governments are less likely to contract out for service delivery if citizen preferences for the service are heterogeneous. This conclusion is based on an analysis that extends to the public sector the empirical industrial organization literature on transaction costs and the "make or buy" decision faced by private firms. Service delivery practices for sixty-three municipal services are examined. The findings are consistent with the proposition that the cost for writing and monitoring contracts may be an important consideration in municipal service delivery approach and that bureaucratic supply may not be as inefficient as some previous studies indicate.     

Integrating Sexual Health Services Into Primary Care: An Overview of Health Systems Issues and Challenges in Developing Countries

ABSTRACT

Current attempts to address the high burden of sexual health morbidity and mortality in developing countries remain limited in scale due to a range of health system constraints. We conducted a literature review of the policy and programmatic issues that influence the integration of sexual health into primary care services in developing countries. Forty-seven reports were identified from a search of both peer-reviewed and gray literature. Key issues identified were intersectoral and intergovernmental coordination; management and organizational issues including decentralization, health sector reform, logistics, and referral systems; human resources, including training and support required to increase service scope; relationships between the public and private sectors; and scaling-up and financing issues.     

Comparing Public and Private Sector Decision-Making Practices

Public and private sector decision making is studied with anexperiment. The study compares decision making in a tax-supportedgeneral purpose governmental agency with that done by a businessfirm selling to a market, using a simulation to capture differencesin the preferences and practices of mid-level managers workingin the two sectors. The simulation calls for participating managersto assess the risk and prospect of adopting budgets tailoredto match each sector. A cognitive culture that stresses analysis,speculation, bargaining, or networking is employed to fashiona budget appropriate for a public and a private sector organization,each with a controversial and a noncontroversial budget amount.The literature on public/private differences was consulted tomake predictions, suggesting that public sector managers wouldfavor bargaining and networking and private sector managerswould favor analysis and speculation. The cognitive style literaturesuggests that managers favor budgets constructed with an approachthat is consistent with their preferred cognitive style andsee less risk in the choice, except in a public setting whererisk would be unaffected. The study finds that private sectormanagers are more apt to support budget decisions made withanalysis and less likely to support them when bargaining isapplied. Public sector managers are less likely to support budgetdecisions backed by analysis and more likely to support thosethat are derived from bargaining with agency people.     

Relationship building as a retention strategy: linking relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations to behavioral outcomes

The practice of public relations historically has focused on managing communications. Within the past 5 years, however, an increasing number of scholars have started to conceptualize the practice of public relations as relationship management, and have centred their research efforts on examining the factors that affect organization–public relationships. Recent research has shown that effectively managed organization–public relationships affect key public member attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors. In the current investigation, 122 participants were surveyed to determine whether student–university relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations distinguished those who returned to a university from those who did not. The results show that respondent relationship attitudes differentiate those who returned to the university from those who did not, which provides a quantitative illustration of the benefits of incorporating a relationally-based grounding for the practice of public relations. Implications of the findings, suggestions for managing organization–public relationships, and limitations to the investigation also are presented.     

Public sector delivery of waste management services: cases from the Indian Sub-Continent

This paper discusses the role of public sector institutions in the delivery of urban services, with a particular focus on waste management in the Indian Sub-Continent. Public sector institutions are the major stakeholders in the delivery of urban sevices. They hold the major responsibilities, funds and employ a large number of staff. The public sector institutions are also exposed to political influence and the institutional changes are often politically or donors driven. However, since new institutions such as non-government organisations and private sector are taking important roles in the actual delivery of services, there is a greater need to understand the existing linkages to promote integration. The informal sector also provides services to a large number of population. In order to promote efficient and effective delivery of urban services, it is important to work on the integrated approaches involving key stakeholders.     

Adaptive governance to promote ecosystem services in urban green spaces

Managing urban green space as part of an ongoing social-ecological transformation poses novel governance issues, particularly in post-industrial settings. Urban green spaces operate as small-scale nodes in larger networks of ecological reserves that provide and maintain key ecosystem services such as pollination, water retention and infiltration, and sustainable food production. In an urban mosaic, a myriad of social and ecological components factor into aggregating and managing land to maintain or increase the flow of ecosystem services associated with green spaces. Vacant lots (a form of urban green space) are being repurposed for multiple functions, such as habitat for biodiversity, including arthropods that provide pollination services to other green areas; to capture urban runoff that eases the burden on ageing wastewater systems and other civic infrastructure; and to reduce urban heat island effects. Because of the uncertainty and complexities of managing for ecosystem services in urban settings, we advocate for a governance approach that is adaptive and iterative in nature—adaptive governance—to address the ever changing social order underlying post-industrial cities and offer the rise of land banks as an example of governance innovation.     

Selecting a Computer-Based System to Assist Fund-Raising and Development Operations

Abstract

Increasingly, non-profit organizations and agencies must turn to the private sector to raise money to finance their work, and to increase the scope of their services. Computer software is available to assist and enhance organizational development efforts involving direct mail, “events,” and broadcast appeals. Social Work professionals may be responsible for selecting software systems for their agencies. What functions should such software perform? What criteria should it meet? The software should contain features that support each stage of a development cycle, manage mailing lists, provide financial and fund-accounting functions, produce letters and other communications, and generate statistics and reports for management control. Each of these functions is examined in some detail, as considerations to bear in mind when evaluating systems are discussed.     

Systems Development and Difficulties in Implementing Procedures for Elder Abuse Prevention Among Private Community General Support Centers in Japan

The present study examines differences in systems development and difficulties in implementing procedures for elder abuse prevention in 1,119 private and 606 public community general support centers under the public long-term care insurance program in Japan. The private community general support centers showed more difficulty implementing procedures than the public community general support centers. Controlling for the type of municipality, progress in systems development did not differ between the private and public community general support centers. Further research should examine how the characteristics of municipal governments are related to systems development in community general support centers.     

Privatisation Results: Private Sector Participation in Water Services After 15 Years

Privatisation of public infrastructure has been the mantra of many development agencies since the late 1980s. Water supply is no exception, and various forms of private sector participation (PSP) have been tried in the water and sanitation sector. This article examines the results of these experiments. It suggests that PSP has had mixed results and that in several important respects the private sector seems to be no more efficient in delivering services than the public sector. Despite growing evidence of failures and increasing public pressure against it, privatisation in water and sanitation is still alive, however. Increasingly, it is being repackaged in new forms such as that of public‐private partnership.     

Two faces of union voice in the public sector

Summary and Concluding Observations Employee voice through unions is manifest in various ways in the public sector including unionization itself, strikes, political activity, and challenging managerial prerogatives. In each of these areas there are two faces to voice just as there are two faces to unions. Voice can be used in a more influence-peddling and muscle-flexing bargaining fashion to enhance rent seeking and noncooperative behavior with negative effects on productivity, competitiveness, and resource allocation. Voice can also be used more positively by articulating preferences and trade-offs, improving communications, and involving employees and enhancing their commitment to the organization. In all likelihood both faces of voice apply to unions in the public sector just as they do in the private sector. In the private sector, however, the negative monopoly face of unions has been increasingly constrained by competitive market forces such as globalization and trade liberalization as well as by the industrial restructuring to services and the information economy. Rents are obviously harder to obtain when there are fewer rents on the bargaining table. There is little survival value to pricing yourself out of the market now that market forces are more prominent. In such a private sector environment, unions have generally declined, strikes have dissipated, and managerial prerogatives have been enhanced.     

‘Doing Something Meaningful’: Gender and Public Service during Municipal Government Restructuring

Research on the gendered dimensions of workplace restructuring often focuses on management strategies and their structural consequences. Less attention is paid to employees’ gendered practices. In this article, we analyse material from in‐depth interviews with front‐line public‐sector employees following a major reorganization of their jobs and workplaces. Our study makes three contributions to theory and research on gender and organizational change. Firstly, it highlights the micro‐level dynamics at the heart of restructuring by showing how workers engaged with an ideal that was central to their understanding of public‐sector work — the public‐service ethic — which they believed was threatened. Secondly, it highlights the importance of gendered meanings and identities in shaping how workers engaged with the public service ethic. Thirdly, the study shows that front‐line employees did not passively accept management plans for change but struggled to resist or transform them in gendered strategies for dealing with organizational change.