Exploring challenges of boundary-crossing performance dialogues in hybrids

Journal of Management and Governance - Literature on performance management in hybrid organisations remains lacking, even though they increasingly are providing public services. This study created...     

The Meanings of Family in Substance Users’ Change Talk During Motivational Interviewing: A Qualitative Study

Only a very small number of studies have examined the meaning of significant others in motivational interviewing (MI) sessions. The aim of this qualitative study is to provide insights into substance users’ experience of the meaning of family in the change process and to expand current understanding about the significance of family relationships in change talk during MI. The analyses are based on videotaped data consisting of 98 MI sessions in the Finnish Probation Service. The results show that family relationships are important and diverse factors that promote or hinder motivation to change in substance users’ change talk.     

The pharmaceutical industry of Puerto Rico: Ramifications of global competition

This paper utilizes a non-homogeneous production function to estimate the efficiency of the pharmaceutical industry of Puerto Rico using data from 1980 to 2008. Global competition in recent years has resulted in job loss and plant closures requiring strategies to profitably use the industry's excess capacity. The estimated results indicate operation at decreasing returns to scale mainly due to the decreasing output elasticity of the number of plants; labor productivity, however, is positive and increasing. Shifting production to generic drugs as a challenge to foreign competition is a top policy consideration.     

The Work Profiler: Revision and maintenance of a profiling tool for the recently unemployed in the Netherlands

For the public employment services of many Member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the importance of using profiling tools for job seekers is increasing rapidly in importance. With this trend, there is also widening concern about the risks of an over reliance on such tools. Part of the concern lies with a lack of transparency concerning how such tools work. This article aims to address this by offering a detailed investigation of the Work Profiler – the instrument used in the Netherlands by the Institute for Employee Benefits (Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekeringen – UWV) to predict re-employment success and provide a diagnosis of key factors hindering job seekers’ return to work. Professionals use these insights to deepen their understanding of the situation of job seekers and decide together with job seekers how to support their return to work. UWV decided to maintain and revise the Work Profiler through a large-scale study involving a sample of 53,238 people. Work Profiler 1.0 was developed in 2007–2010 and has been in use on a regional basis since 2011 and nationwide since 2015. This article explains how the new tool (version 2.0; implemented in 2018) works and, most importantly, demonstrates the choices made to ensure that it functions well and is used effectively by professionals. These latter two aspects are rarely discussed in the literature.