Measuring Citizen Satisfaction with Aspects of Public Services from a Local Authority and Determining Their Importance: A Case Study

The measurement of service quality is a theme of great importance to service providers, particularly public agencies. Over the years their role has been changing by providing more and more high quality services, away from basic ones. In this paper the service quality of a local government is analyzed through the measurement of customer satisfaction. The analysis, based on a questionnaire survey, identified and classified the most essential factors that make up the customer satisfaction with the services provided by the Demographic Department of Gioia del Colle, a town in southern Italy.

Social Politics and Policy in an Era of Globalization: Critical Reflections

This paper critically examines the ways in which social policy is said to be affected by globalization. The prevailing approach has been framed in terms of the impact of "external" economic forces on national welfare states. Globalization is said to undermine the economic and political conditions on which welfare states were built, erode national policy autonomy and force the marketization and residualization of welfare states. These predictions are found wanting on the grounds that they share many of the assumptions, and therefore also the faults, of "strong" globalization theory. A more nuanced account of the way in which social politics and social policy are affected by globalization is needed and a global governance perspective is outlined. This, it is argued, better captures the political and institutional environment in which social policy is formulated and implemented. It also recognizes the importance of "local" factors and their interaction with global ones in shaping political responses, including social policy, to globalization. The discussion highlights the enduring power of "local" forces—those which are at the level of and internal to states—and of politics and ideology in shaping the process of globalization and ultimately its implications for welfare states and social policies.     

Time? money? both? the allocation of resources to older Parents

We provide estimates of a reduced-form model of the allocation of household time and money resources. We consider four demands for these resources: time spent working, time spent providing care for noncoresident elderly parents, time spent performing housework, and monetary transfers to noncoresident elderly parents. We focus on the effects of wage rates and parental characteristics on the allocation decisions of adult children and their households concerning these four demands. We find that households with individuals earning high wages rely relatively more on cash transfers and relatively less on time transfers than do lower-wage households. We also find evidence consistent with an unmeasured tendency of some families to provide multiple sources of support.     

Flattening the learning curve of leadership development: reflections of five women higher education leaders during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020

ABSTRACT

For an adult, non-traditional student focused college, the pandemic brought into stark reality the challenges that the dislocation brought ‘home,’ literally, for many people. This article presents a set of reflections of five women leaders at a public institution of higher education. Through their reflections, they discuss their responses to the challenges faced by faculty, staff and students during the pandemic. Issues of gender, race, class, precarious work, technological access, and related challenges are raised to the surface. We offer three implications for HRD and leadership development research and practice.     

Commissioned analysis of surgical performance using routine data: lessons from the Bristol inquiry

The public inquiry into paediatric cardiac surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary commissioned the authors to design and conduct analyses of routine data sources to compare surgical outcomes between centres. Such analyses are necessarily complex in this context but were further hampered by the inherent inconsistencies and mediocre quality of the various sources of data. Three levels of analysis of increasing sophistication were carried out. The reasonable consistency of the results arising from different sources of data, together with a number of sensitivity analyses, led us to conclude that there had been excess mortality in Bristol in open heart operations on children under 1 year of age. We consider criticisms of our analysis and discuss the role of statisticians in this inquiry and their contribution to the final report of the inquiry. The potential statistical role in future programmes for monitoring clinical performance is highlighted.     

Rights of Foreign Workers and the Politics of Migration in South-East and East Asia

The issue of cross‐border migration in South‐East and East Asia is linked to the integration of regional, if not global, labour markets. The types of labour that are currently in demand have changed substantially since the 1990s in terms of (1) overall magnitude, (2) gender composition, and (3) increased diversification. This paper, however, focuses upon those workers classified as unskilled as they constitute numerically the largest and most vulnerable group. The challenges to provide adequate protection from, and prevention of, exploitative and abusive practices that seriously minimize the socio‐economic benefits for these workers are linked to migration policies and the issue of rights in the origin and destination countries. This paper's objective is to provide a broad outline of the emerging trends and issues revolving around contemporary cross‐border labour migration and the politics of migrants' rights in South‐East and East Asia, illustrated by the difficulties experienced with the ratification of the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of All Migrants and their Families (ICMR). The data this paper is based upon were collected for a report commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with fieldwork carried out in seven countries located in the Asia Pacific region. It is argued that ratification of the ICMR is obstructed by politics and by a lack of political will. A rights‐based approach to the protection of migrant labour is thus related to a number of macro and micro level issues, revolving around development and practices of “good governance” in addition to interstate relations. This means that the promotion of migrants' rights requires a holistic approach addressing national and transnational issues in an era of increasing mobility across borders.     

A unique collaboration of female medical providers within the United States Armed Forces: rehabilitation of a marine with post-concussive vestibulopathy

Uncle Sam's loyal nieces have come a long way from the days of World War I. The development of occupational and physical therapy was heavily influenced by an early relationship with medical specialists during the First World War. This relationship can be considered largely responsible for the eventual acceptance (by the Armed Forces) of women working in this area. Over the past decade active duty women have seen many changes in opportunities to serve and are now stationed aboard aircraft carriers, performing roles previously considered for male personnel. We report a case study of the medical care provided by both military and civilian women working for the United States Armed Forces. Initial assessment was conducted in a battalion aid station of a United States Marine Corp base and the subject was then referred to a military medical center with highly technical vestibular assessment and rehabilitation services. The subject's case represents a unique collaboration of women therapists, enabling a Marines' access to timely and accurate assessment, treatment and ultimately, successful return to active duty. This case study is one of many examples of the acceptance and successful integration of women as providers of medical care within the Military's medical framework.     

Independent Living: gender, violence and the threat of violence

In what ways is independent living for young adults with disabilities compromised by violence and its threat? A qualitative study of 42 young adults with severe physical disabilities explored their perceptions and concerns about independent living, access to services and the meeting of needs. Young women especially experienced difficulties about leaving home, because of their own and their parents' fears about vulnerability; some who did leave home experienced highly restricted social lives because of anxiety about neighbourhood violence. Few had established partnerships, but violence and sexual abuse from partners emerged as an issue for which there is little policy. Control and abuse within caring relationships are serious issues for those who need personal care. Violence and lack of protection may undermine independent living, especially for women.     

An Adaptive Simulation Framework for the Exploration of Extreme and Unexpected Events in Dynamic Engineered Systems

The end states reached by an engineered system during an accident scenario depend not only on the sequences of the events composing the scenario, but also on their timing and magnitudes. Including these additional features within an overarching framework can render the analysis infeasible in practical cases, due to the high dimension of the system state‐space and the computational effort correspondingly needed to explore the possible system evolutions in search of the interesting (and very rare) ones of failure. To tackle this hurdle, in this article we introduce a framework for efficiently probing the space of event sequences of a dynamic system by means of a guided Monte Carlo simulation. Such framework is semi‐automatic and allows embedding the analyst's prior knowledge about the system and his/her objectives of analysis. Specifically, the framework allows adaptively and intelligently allocating the simulation efforts preferably on those sequences leading to outcomes of interest for the objectives of the analysis, e.g., typically those that are more safety‐critical (and/or rare). The emerging diversification in the filling of the state‐space by the preference‐guided exploration allows also the retrieval of critical system features, which can be useful to analysts and designers for taking appropriate means of prevention and mitigation of dangerous and/or unexpected consequences. A dynamic system for gas transmission is considered as a case study to demonstrate the application of the method.