From design to operations: a process management life-cycle performance measurement system for Public-Private Partnerships

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) have become a critical vehicle for delivering infrastructure worldwide. Yet, the use of such a procurement strategy has received considerable criticism, as they have been prone to experiencing time/cost overruns and during their operation poorly managed. A key issue contributing to the poor performance of PPPs is the paucity of an effective and comprehensive performance measurement system. There has been a tendency for the performance of PPPs to be measured based on their ex-post criteria of time, cost and quality. Such criteria do not accommodate the complexities and lifecycle of an asset. In addressing this problem, the methodology of sequential triangulation is used to develop and examine the effectiveness of a ‘Process Management Life Cycle Performance Measurement System’. The research provides public authorities and private-sector entities embarking on PPPs with a robust mechanism to effectively measure, control and manage their projects’ life cycle performances, ensuring the assets are ‘future proofed’.     

Religious Social Identities in the Hybrid Self‐presentations of Sikh Businesspeople

This paper explores the identity work practices of Thai Sikh businesspeople. The paper focuses on two important social identities in participants’ self‐presentations – those derived from religious (Sikh) and western business discourses – and identifies powerful tensions in their hybrid identity work. Conducting discourse analysis on identity work practices within interview settings, the authors explore how participants resolve, accommodate or reject these discursive tensions while attempting stable and coherent hybrid self‐presentations. They identify several different forms of hybridity, including what they term ‘equipollence’, which occurs when two equally powerful, contradictory discourses are incorporated in self‐presentations, producing potentially irresolvable intersections and leading to a lack of coherence. Contributions are made to the literatures on religion and work, hybrid identity work processes and social identities.     

Nanotechnology risk perceptions and communication: emerging technologies, emerging challenges

Nanotechnology involves the fabrication, manipulation, and control of materials at the atomic level and may also bring novel uncertainties and risks. Potential parallels with other controversial technologies mean there is a need to develop a comprehensive understanding of processes of public perception of nanotechnology uncertainties, risks, and benefits, alongside related communication issues. Study of perceptions, at so early a stage in the development trajectory of a technology, is probably unique in the risk perception and communication field. As such it also brings new methodological and conceptual challenges. These include: dealing with the inherent diversity of the nanotechnology field itself; the unfamiliar and intangible nature of the concept, with few analogies to anchor mental models or risk perceptions; and the ethical and value questions underlying many nanotechnology debates. Utilizing the lens of social amplification of risk, and drawing upon the various contributions to this special issue of Risk Analysis on Nanotechnology Risk Perceptions and Communication, nanotechnology may at present be an attenuated hazard. The generic idea of "upstream public engagement" for emerging technologies such as nanotechnology is also discussed, alongside its importance for future work with emerging technologies in the risk communication field.     

Risk, Trust, and Safety Culture in U.K. Train Operating Companies

Organizational safety culture reflects the attitudes and behaviors that individuals share in considering and reacting to hazards and risks. We first argue that trust is an underdeveloped and important concept in relation to theories of safety culture and high-reliability organizations. The article then reports findings from a two-year qualitative study of train operating companies (TOCs) in the United Kingdom, which sought to explore in detail the linkages between safety culture and the postprivatized railway industry. In-depth interviews and focus groups were carried out with a sample of over 500 employees, from four organizations, and representing all key functional levels. Our analysis suggests that the 1993 privatization, and subsequent organizational restructuring of the U.K. railway industry, has had important repercussions for both safety culture and trust relationships. We explore our findings in relation to three key constructs within "safe organizations" theories (namely, flexibility, commitment, and learning), and discuss how the safe organization model might be usefully supplemented by a consideration of trust issues.     

An Empirical Test of Competing Theories of Hazard-Related Trust: The Case of GM Food

Few scholars doubt the importance of trust in explaining variation in public perception of technological risk. Relatively little, however, is known about the particular types of judgments that people use in granting or withholding trust. This article presents findings from an empirical study that explores several dimensions of trust relevant for citizens' judgments of scientists involved in the development of GM food. The relationship between particular dimensions of trust and perceptions of GM food risk is also explored, using structural equation modeling. Results suggest that trust judgments based on the perception of shared values are most important in relation to GM food risk, but that judgments about scientists' technical competence are also important.     

Managing from the Inside Out: Drawing on 'Receptivity' to Explain Variation in Strategy Implementation

With the rise of 'New Public Management' (NPM), government policy has encouraged public-sector organizations to downsize and outsource their services. There is, however, local variation in the use of outsourcing – this is 'managing from the inside out'. This paper draws on the notion of receptivity for organizational change to explain variation in strategy implementation. Four receptivity factors are identified which seem to explain the success of two contrasting English local government outsourcing strategies: ideological vision, leading change, institutional politics and implementation capacity. The organization level of change is interconnected with two other levels of change (the public service and environment levels) to illustrate the dynamic nature of change.     

Calculating the density and distribution function for the singly and doubly noncentral F

Simple, closed form saddlepoint approximations for the distribution and density of the singly and doubly noncentral F distributions are presented. Their overwhelming accuracy is demonstrated numerically using a variety of parameter values. The approximations are shown to be uniform in the right tail and the associated limitating relative error is derived. Difficulties associated with some algorithms used for exact computation of the singly noncentral F are noted.     

Constructing women's psychological health in anti-abortion rhetoric

This paper considers the ways in which anti-abortion activists construct women's psychological experience of abortion and explores the rhetorical significance of this discourse in advancing the anti-abortion project. In particular we examine how the psychological concept of 'denial' contained in the (proposed) diagnostic category of 'Post-Abortion Syndrome' allows anti-abortionists to 'psychologise' and therefore undermine alternative constructions of the experience of abortion. Further, we explore how this construction of women's experience allows particular constructions of the foetus (ie, 'unborn child') to be advanced (and naturalised) without reference to overtly political argumentation. The significance of this development of the abortion debate and its implications for the dynamics of political mobilisation are discussed.     

LEGISLATING LOVE: The Effect of Child Support and Welfare Policies on Father–child Contact

Reducing non-marital childbearing and making nonresidential fathers take greater responsibility for their children were identified as goals of numerous policy changes since the 1980s. Child-support award rates for children born to unmarried parents have been quite low historically, leading lawmakers to focus on increasing both award and payment rates for this group. Nonmarital fathers are also much less likely to have contact with their children. Although evidence suggests that policy efforts increase child support awards and receipt, the link between child support policies, child support outcomes, and father-child contact has received less attention. This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation on children born between 1985–1997 to investigate the relationship between child-support award and receipt and the amount of contact that fathers have with their non-residential children. Since it is likely that both of these behaviors are, in part, determined by unobservable characteristics of the father, we estimate an instrumental variables Tobit model. The model is identified by our assumption that child support policy variables can impact child support awards and payments, but father-child contact cannot be directly legislated. Our results suggest that there are unintended, but desirable effects of child support establishment and collection. Policies to collect child support not only increase financial resources to families, but through their impact on payments increase visitation and contact between these children and their fathers. The estimated impact of receiving child support on contact is more than 27 days per year.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Economic Association, Washington DC, January 2003 and the Annual Meetings of the Association of Public Policy and Management, November 2003. Support from NICHD Grant # HD30944 is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank Suzann Eshleman for excellent computer programming and James Scully for providing us with data on genetic testing laws.     

"Languaging" factors affecting clients' acceptance of forgiveness intervention in marital therapy

Forgiveness is a significant intervention for healing interpersonal injury. Yet therapists do not often use forgiveness intervention. Employing a semantic perspective and a survey design (n = 307), this study investigated whether the language used to rationalize forgiveness intervention (set at five levels: personal growth, relationship reconciliation, spiritual issue, others' growth, and pardoning/condoning) may affect its acceptability. Gender, problem type, and choice were also included in the analyses. Overall, forgiveness was found to be an acceptable intervention. A pardoning/condoning rationale led to significantly lower acceptability ratings. Other results are discussed. We conclude that therapists should be less apprehensive about using forgiveness, but need to inform themselves better concerning its purpose, process, and articulation.