An evaluation of the effects of a National Health Service Trust merger on the learning and development of staff

Although mergers are increasingly common amongst National Health Trusts in the UK there is limited research on how National Health Service (NHS) mergers influence the learning and development of staff. This paper bridges the gap in the literature, through a case-study of a recent NHS Trust merger. It gives an account of the delivery of human resource development (HRD) post merger as seen through the eyes of staff from across the merged organization. The data were obtained from 21 unstructured interviews, nine group discussions, two focus group discussions and a form of micro-ethnography. In addition, quantitative data were used for triangulation purposes. Findings show that power differentials, cultural clashes and unequal access to training and development amongst staff have resulted in hostility towards the new organization. However, the strong management structures for professional members of staff have facilitated knowledge exchange across boundaries in the merged organization. The paper concludes by suggesting that without senior managers dealing with cultural issues and inequitable development opportunities, a number of unintended consequences of the merger are likely to occur.     

Can former Soviet Union top managers of large industries become successful leaders of privatized corporations?

Management training as a facilitative process in organizational change is a complicated undertaking even in the most innovative companies in the West. The Russian context adds problems of cultural and management unfamiliarity with the socio-business and the political environment within which Western management trainers operate. In the early 1990s 180 Russian senior managers from four large state corporations participated in a training-needs analysis, which was to estimate the level of knowledge of how market economy concepts work in the West. They were asked to 1) state their organization's training objectives, 2) indicate their understanding of the process, and 3) indicate the level of their personal ownership in carrying out the training objectives. The results showed that Russian top industrial management had no experience of top decisionmaking processes, and individually they felt disorientated by the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Their historical understanding of their professional roles and distrust of the present changes left them demotivated and without any constructive personal aspirations. By 1998, after a period of focusing solely on financial auditing training, large Russian companies began to be interested in management training and development programmes. These findings have some basic cultural implications for Western trainers working with Russian management.     

Framing microfinance in Australia – gender neutral or gender blind?

In Australia, microfinance is gaining visibility as a distinct poverty alleviation strategy. Within the Australian microfinance policy and program discourses, the microfinance sector is framed as targeting both men and women equally. Yet at the practice level, the majority of loan recipients are women. Such a gender neutral framing is in stark contrast to microfinance policy and practices developed elsewhere. This paper explores how gender is represented in microfinance policy and practice in Australia, drawing on an analysis of the policy and practice statements of Australian microfinance programs. It is argued that the robust feminist assessments of the relationship between microfinance and gender equality that have emerged in developing countries could usefully inform Australian developments in this area of social policy, but that this shift requires acknowledging gender in the framing of the problem Australian microfinance seeks to address.     

The Socialist Legal System with Chinese Characteristics: Its Structure,Features and Trends

中国特色社会主义法律体系的形成为研究中国法律体系的结构、特色和发展趋势 奠定了现实基础。可以规范性法律文件的归属和法律规范的性质两个向度作为研究法 律体系的框架。前者的目的在于描述中国立法的现状, 后者旨在分析不同性质的法律 规范在各个法律部门的分布。改革开放以来, 由于市场经济、民主政治、和谐社会、 生态文明、法制建设和全球化的影响, 使各类法律规范在不同法律部门中的分布发生 有意义的变化, 这种变化一方面反映世界各国法律体系发展的共性, 另一方面又有鲜 明的中国特色。

关键词: 法律体系 法律规范 公法与私法 实体法与程序法 国际法与国内法

The formation of the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics has laid the practical foundations for studying the structure, features and trends of China’s legal system. Our framework for such study is constructed along two dimensions: the classification of normative legal documents and the nature of legal norms. The aim of the former is to describe the current situation of China’s legislation, while the purpose of the latter is to analyze the distribution of different legal norms in different branches of law. Since reform and opening up, under the impact of the market economy, democratic politics, the harmonious society, ecological civilization, the construction of a legal system and globalization, significant changes have taken place in the distribution of various legal norms in different legal fields. On the one hand, these changes reflect shared features of the development of legal systems across the world; on the other, they are stamped with strong Chinese characteristics.     

Understanding the Sustainability of Insurgency Conflict in Thailand

Abstract

This article seeks to model the insurgency conflict in the three southern border provinces of the Kingdom of Thailand: Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. In so doing, it will explore the sustainability of the conflict by representing it in terms of a conflict life cycle that is responsive to complexity and change. The cycle arises from the cybernetic viable systems theory of ‘living systems’, and is able to foster a better understanding of what is happening empirically on the social level in these provinces, in respect to a situation characterized as one of incessant conflicts. This conflict model that arises suggests that there is an interconnection between the agents involved, and their individual and interactive dynamics. The conflict involves five types of politically related behaviours that occur between two interactive agents: the state (engaged in searching for and making arrests of insurgents) and the insurgents (engaged in violent acts of shooting, bombing, and arson). These agents are studied to the end of being able to determine the precise interactive nature of the political conflict in which they are engaged. In carrying out this investigation both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. The research was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, time series techniques were used to determine inferentially whether the conflict is both rational and involves interactive behaviours. Stage two adopts the Weibull distribution technique to assess the political conflict. In the third stage, a statistical analysis is conducted of the conflict situation in political terms. Finally, it is explained how the model and the methods used in this article may be used to deal with intractable conflict in other social environments, incidentally tracking the likelihood of conflicts being sustainable. Other agencies could utilize this approach in examining other political conflicts so as to be better able to prepare suitable approaches for coping with intractable conflicts to the end of fostering sustainable peace processes.     

Changes in mortality and life expectancy: Some methodological issues

Measuring and explaining the effects of mortality changes on life expectancy has been discussed for the past three decades. Different approaches have been proposed using discrete or continuous methods. Two basic ideas underlie these approaches. The first compares two different mortality schedules and quantifies the contribution of each age group to the increase in life expectancy. The second analyzes how the progress in the mortality schedule translates into progress in life expectancy. This paper discusses and compares the approaches proposed by the United Nations (1982), Arriaga (1984), Pollard (1982, 1988), and Vaupel (1986), identifying their problems, advantages, and the types of situations where each one can best be applied.     

Understanding the Downshifting Phenomenon: A Case of South East Queensland,Australia

A quality of life survey of a sample of households across the Brisbane‐South East Queensland region has identified about 28 percent of people as ‘downshifters.‘ They are defined as people who voluntarily make a long‐term change in their lifestyle – other than planned retirement – which reduces income and adjusts their lifestyle conditions. A typology of downshifters is developed on the basis of their motives for downshifting and their socio‐economic and demographic characteristics using a Two Step Cluster Analysis. Results indicate that the social and economic circumstances and the reasons and methods of downshifting tend to vary substantially across the clusters.     

Living in the shadow of OD: HRD and the search for identity

The paper attempts to describe the similarities and differences between organizational development (OD) and human resource development (HRD). While it is argued that HRD practitioners need to acquire some of the skills of OD consultants, these are likely to be limited to the development of personal skills and learning in the attempt to achieve intrapreneurialism and personal transformations. We argue that HRD is living in the shadow of OD because it is slow to recognize its roots in the debates of that discipline. It is therefore suggested that HRD will recognize its true potential only when it identifies its core knowledge and skills. We argue that HRD can find its essential identity in four main ways: by focusing on the organization's business strategy; by devolving responsibility to line managers; by adopting an employee-centred approach to learning; and by emphasizing workplace learning. However, a wider behavioural understanding and a greater degree of reflectiveness in relation to the politics of change and the skills of the change agent must inform this identity.     

复杂性与社会经济系统建模

复杂性是当前学术研究中的一个热点，由于缺乏严格的形式化理论，至今尚未形成统一的定义。文章从系统理论的处理技术的发展过程着手，直面社会经济系统的复杂现象，探讨了目前处理复杂性的可能手段和不足之处，认为理论和现实之间的矛盾主要来自如何应对系统的结构性变迁问题。经典的系统理论致力于特定时刻系统与边界的划分，通过对各部分之间因果逻辑关系的分析，建立的动态系统模型无法克服牛顿还原论的影响。只有从方法论和认知论的高度，重新审视我们的理论范式；关注进化理论和还原论方法的结合，并借助现代计算机的强大运算能力，似乎是一条可资借鉴的道路。     

Taiwan's identity in formation: in reaction to a democratizing Taiwan and a rising China

The formation of Taiwanese identity is a good example to make sense of the theoretical debate between primordialism and constructivism. Based on the two-level multinomial logit results, this paper proves that primordial ethnicity in Taiwan becomes less salient; rather, changing sociopolitical contexts turn out to be the dominant factor in shaping ethnic identity. Specifically, it indicates how the democratic transition has brought about various types of mechanisms, which smoothly disenchant the dominant Chinese identity. As the Taiwanese renaissance emerges to take a leading role in Taiwan's political platform, ethnic identity might be reshaped in accordance with this mainstream Taiwanese ideology. This study also shows that reformation of ethnic identity in Taiwan relies as much on cognition of state boundaries as on the evaluation of political-economic conditions on both sides of the Taiwan straits.