Unequal Partners? Local Government Reorganization and the Voluntary Sector

British local government has recently undergone its most far-reaching reorganization for twenty-five years. The impact of this reorganization was considerable within local authorities but it also substantially affected other organizations with which they worked at a local level. This paper explores the perspectives of voluntary sector organizations involved in social care: a set of actors which, prior to reorganization, had been encouraged by central and local government, through notions of partnership and through community care legislation, to undertake more direct roles in service delivery, consultation and strategic planning. During the consultative period prior to reorganization, many voluntary organizations reported that they had been marginal to the process. Reflecting on the process of reorganization itself, many voluntary organization respondents commented that it had been disruptive and provoked considerable anxiety. Post-reorganization, voluntary organizations felt that rebuilding of relationships was necessary and that the promise of partnership had meant little in practice at a time of potential crisis for local.     

Investigating the implementation of SME-friendly policy in public procurement

Public sector employees with responsibility for purchasing are under increasing pressure to implement small and medium enterprise (SME)-friendly policies. Such policies are intended to make it easier for SMEs to compete for and win public sector contracts. In spite of the socio-economic importance of this issue, there remains a dearth of evidence on what is happening in practice. Using primary survey data from 271 public buyers in Ireland, this paper examines the extent to which SME-friendly procurement policy is being implemented and the individual and organization factors that affect implementation. The findings reveal a gap between what government policy recommends public buyers and their organizations should do to facilitate SMEs versus what they are actually doing. Policy familiarity, procurement involvement, organization size and the maturity of the procurement function are shown to be positively associated with the implementation of SME-friendly policy. For managers and legislators, the findings underline the need to invest in the human capital dimension of public procurement if policy implementation rates are to improve.     

学习浙江"非公经济《实施意见》"有感

本文作者结合实际,认真学习浙江省政府颁布的《关于鼓励支持和引导个体私营等非公有制经济发展的实施意见》,其中对非公有制经济加大金融支持、放宽市场准入、加大财税支持以及维护非公有制企业合法权益等有关条文规定及其在落实中面临的困难,阐述了具有参考价值的意见。     

李渔生活审美研究综述——以《闲情偶寄》为考察对象

从整体上看,李渔研究包括李渔生平思想和李渔作品,已经非常全面深入。但是李渔美学研究,尤其是李渔生活审美研究还需深入。李渔美学研究突出了戏剧美学,而忽略了生活审美。在李渔生活审美研究中还存在概念把握不准、重复性高、较零散肤浅等问题。     

Women Underrepresentation in R&I: A Sector Program Assessment of the Contribution of Gender Equality Policies in Research and Innovation

Despite decades of efforts to achieve gender equality in research and innovation (R&I), all EU member states still face remarkable difficulties in driving forward the development of their innovation system while at the same time improving gender equality by using all the available research potential. In this paper we focus on the development of the share of women researchers in four national innovation systems, i.e. in Austria, Denmark, Hungary and Spain in the time period 2005-2015. The four selected cases represent countries with significant differences in their innovation capacity, gender regimes and progress of gender equality in R&I. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is carried out to conduct a sector program evaluation based on statistical data and qualitative studies to understand the dynamic development of the proportion of women researchers. The study aims to provide insights into the aggregated gender equality interventions and policies implemented in the four countries studied and their contributions to the development of the proportion of women scientists at the structural level. The analysis reveals that the development of the share of women researchers during the studied period has been particularly influenced by contextual factors, namely the relative size of the business enterprise sector and the share of women among holders of tertiary education. While this is the case, it is found that gender equality interventions need to be more widespread and more effectively designed to be a strong contributing factor to an increasing representation of women in R&I.     

Patterns of Informal Help and Caregiving in Sweden: A Thirteen-Year Perspective

This article analyses informal help and caregiving in Sweden with a focus on the scope and trends of change over time. The discussion is based on the results of three national surveys and of one survey conducted in the county of Stockholm. The results indicated that informal help and caregiving was common throughout the period under study. In the 1990s, the figures were fairly stable, while from the late 1990s to 2005 there seems to have been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of such support. Two interpretative perspectives are used to discuss this pattern. One locates its point of departure in recent welfare state changes and in the substitution argument, according to which cuts in welfare services put more pressure on people to provide informal help and care. The second perspective relates to the present debate on civil society and to its possible role in contemporary society. According to the civil society perspective, an increase in the prevalence of informal help and caregiving might be interpreted as an expression of growing civic involvement 'in its own right', without a straightforward and simple relationship to changes in the welfare state. It is argued in the article that the two frames of interpretation should not be viewed as mutually exclusive, but rather that they represent two partly complementary approaches to the understanding of the complex dynamics of unpaid work in contemporary Swedish society.     

双重的约束：女性科技人才成长的制约因素分析

近年来，我国的科技事业发展迅速。然而，科技人才队伍中的女性科技人才却发展较为缓慢，原因在于女性科技人才的发展受到了公私领域的双重约束即私人领域的家庭劳动、家庭决策、家庭教育投资以及公共领域的科技人才准入、培育和评价机制制约了女性科技人才的发展。在这种双重约束下，女性科技人才只能在具有性别排斥的科技领域中充当幕后支撑力量，相反，男性则在科技人才发展中占主导优势，成为主要的受惠群体。     

建构我国私营企业劳资战略伙伴关系——“三个代表”重要思想指导下的劳资关系发展方向述论

"三个代表"重要思想的提出及贯彻实施,为建构私营企业劳资战略伙伴关系提供了科学的理论基础和良好的外部环境,扫除了人们思想认识上的种种障碍,由此也对党和政府相关组织制度与工作思路的改进与创新提出了更高的要求.我国私营经济将迎来更加光明的发展前途.     

Private Action for Public Good?: The Public Role of Voluntary Sector Organizations

Voluntary sector organizations claim to be private institutions acting for the public good. However, if the concept of public is disengaged from the state and connected instead to citizenship, VSOs can be shown to have both private and public origins, as well as private and public impacts. As citizens, VSOs are public organizations serving the public good through their purported representation of the people and civic leadership. The legitimacy of their assumption of these public roles remains a continuing challenge.     

Civil Society and the Northern Irish Peace Process

Alternative accounts of the Northern Irish peace process are analyzed. It is noted that neither Unionist nor Republican accounts accord a significant or positive role to civil society in the reaching of a political settlement. It is only in what might be called the metropolitan liberal perspective that influence is attributed to the role of civil society in achieving a settlement. Two junctures at which civil society, centered on the third sector, played a prominent role in the peace process are analyzed: the Opsahl Commission before the launch of the peace process in 1993 and the nonparty Yes campaign during the referendum on the Belfast Agreement in May 1998. The paper then goes on to discuss why the influence of civil society has declined since the referendum, and draws attention to the conflict between the top-down implications of the consociational nature of the Belfast Agreement and the bottom-up promotion of political accommodation through civil society.