Performance management in hybrid organisations: A study in social housing

The nature and role of social housing across the European States is growing more diverse every decade. From the wide range of social housing as a percentage of total housing stock, the many different housing options provided, to the vast array of housing allocation mechanisms and differing levels of equity delivered by such mechanisms, social housing across Europe presents an increasingly complex social challenge. As such a one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges is unlikely to present itself, and researchers are therefore forced to focus on the specifics of a region or state—this is the case with this study.Within the UK, Housing Associations (HAs) have played a fundamental role within successive government social housing policies for at least three decades. However, through a succession of legislative changes, welfare reform and the deregulation of their non-profit social role, HAs have been fundamentally challenged, and are now exposed to competition from private registered providers.This study poses the overarching research question; what role does performance management play in the transition to a competitive hybridised social housing sector? Exploring this question, the paper analyses the effect of this transition through institutional isomorphism and considers specifically how a sample of English HAs sense uncertainty within the social housing sector and respond to the coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic pressures at play.This study finds the primary mechanism by which HAs appear to sense and respond to external changes within the sector is through their strategic performance measurement systems and metrics. Social, political, and competitive changes in the sector are ‘sensed’ as a misalignment within the existing strategic performance metrics, exerting isomorphic pressures on the organisational governance team to respond by realigning the performance metrics with the sensed changes. In this way, we posit that strategic performance measurement is linked to and plays a much more pivotal role, in the hybridisation of third-sector organisations than previously reported within the literature.Examples of such realignment include the increased use of benchmarking performance as a normative practice, and the replication of perceived best practice from the private sector to remain competitive and sustainable. Such changes reflect on an increasingly hybridised position for HAs, which now focus on improving business-critical activities, rather than simply producing performance data as a means of demonstrating good governance and compliance to their regulatory body.     

The relative importance of planning and control systems in achieving good delivery performance

Amongst factors such as quick changeovers and workforce flexibility, managers in 533 UK manufacturing plants ranked a responsive planning and control system as the most important facilitator of good delivery performance on products made-to-order or assembled-to-order. The rankings indicate greater importance to companies in the Household and Engineering sectors than in Process and Electronics, where other factors are dominant. These results are combined with data such as customer lead times and item variety, to characterize and explain differences between the plants in these four sectors. Collectively the results indicate considerable differences in the production planning and control tasks. This implies that general statements on the importance of planning and control systems are inadequate. Practitioners need contextual information in order to ascertain when research is applicable to their circumstances.     

Social Enterprise in the United States and Europe: Understanding and Learning from the Differences

Since the 1980s both the United States and Europe have experienced a simultaneous expansion in social enterprise. However, little has been written comparing and contrasting American and European conceptions of social enterprise resulting in difficulty communicating on the topic and missed opportunities to learn and build on foreign experience. To address this need, this paper compares and contrasts American and European social enterprise through an extensive review of literature from the two regions and discussions with social enterprise researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. It outlines the definitions of social enterprise used by American and European academics and practitioners, identifies historical factors promoting and shaping different conceptions of social enterprise, and highlights the differing institutional and legal environments in which it operates. It concludes by identifying what Americans and Europeans can learn from each others’ experience with social enterprise.

公共部门绩效评估模型

平衡记分卡、卓越绩效评估模型、绩效三棱镜、ISO9000系列、公民宪章、标杆超越和CAF等都是欧美国家用于评估公共部门绩效的一些基本评估模型,笔者主要介绍了卓越绩效评估准则,并对模型在公共部门的适用性进行了评价。     

Evaluation of the Integrated Services Pilot Program from Western Australia

Independent evaluation of refugee-focused programs in developed nations is increasingly a mandatory requirement of funding bodies and government agencies. This paper presents an evaluation of the Integrated Services Centre (ISC) Pilot Project that was conducted in Australia in 2007 and early 2008. The purpose of the ISC program was to provide integrated support to humanitarian refugees in settlement, physical health, mental health and employment. The Pilot Project was based in two primary schools in Perth, Western Australia. The evaluation utilized a flexible qualitative ‘engaged’ methodology and included interviews, focus groups and telephone interviews with the key stakeholders, project staff and a small number of refugee families. The strength of the qualitative methodology (including data that is narrative rich) is that it highlights issues as perceived by each stakeholder and provides insights into the daily work by ISC staff that helped to uncover unintended outcomes. Despite the fact that the ISC evaluation was supposed to be a ‘before and after’ design, the researchers acknowledge a common weakness in many evaluations (including the ISC) that when baseline data is required, evaluators are recruited after the project has begun. This issue is discussed in the paper. It is critical that independent evaluators are able to begin collecting baseline data as soon as programs are launched, if not before.     

“第三代新儒家”刍议

“第三代新儒家”是沿用了目前大陆学界通行的说法,意指20世纪70年代末、80年代初以来即开始活跃于国际学术舞台的新一代新儒家学者。他们在继承前辈新儒家学说的基础上,又与时俱进,使当代儒学发展呈现出了新的特点,即多元化倾向、方法论的自觉、批判性与现实性、“道问学”的转向与“生活世界”的开掘。     

The coming revolution of biotechnology: A critique of Buttel

Frederick Buttel was one of the pioneers in studying the social impacts of biotechnology, claiming originally that it will involve profound changes in social structure. Recently Buttel turned around his argument proposing that, rather than revolutionary, biotechnology is more a substitutionist technological form to be applied to declining sectors of the economy than an epoch-making technology. This paper provides both external and internal critiques of Buttel's new position based on the concept of the third technological revolution, looking at the impact of new technologies as a global and interrelated phenomenon, and not on an individual case-by-case basis. The concluding section suggests the necessity of bringing into the analysis those living in the Third World: 60% of this population lives from agriculture and will be affected by the deployment of agricultural biotechnologies, whether through substitutionism or through totally new products.     

再论票据代理制度中的若干法律问题——从中日票据理论对比的角度

票据法相对于民法来说是特别法,且在商事法中属于技术性规范最强的一部法,因此在具体规则中应当允许其作适当的变通.票据行为作为民事行为的一种,民法上的代理制度当然适用于票据代理.不过,针对票据行为中的无权代理、越权代理、表见代理的处理方法,应该分别不同于民法上的适用规则提出适度的修改和补充,并对保护善意第三人的范围问题提出不同的见解.     

Lotus birth,a holistic approach on physiological cord clamping

Background

The positive effects of delayed cord clamping (DCC) has been extensively researched. DCC means: waiting at least one minute after birth before clamping and cutting the cord or till the pulsation has stopped. With physiological clamping and cutting (PCC) the clamping and cutting can happen at the earliest after the pulsation has stopped. With a Lotus birth, no clamping and cutting of the cord is done. A woman called Clair Lotus Day imitated the holistic approach of PCC from an anthropoid ape in 1974. The chimpanzee did not separate the placenta from the newborn.

诚实信用原则的功能及其司法适用

从论证诚实信用原则具有法创设功能入手,发挥其作为概括性原则的成文法漏洞补充作用。但是又反对直接引用诚信原则作为判案依据,主张借鉴英美法系的判例制度来实现法律规则的具体化,从而避免法官简单地向一般条款逃避。笔者又试图通过三审终审制的构建,来实现诚信原则被具体化以后具体规则的类型化及统一化,从而对法官可能滥用诚信原则作必要的限制。