NEIGHBORHOOD STABILIZATION: A Fragile Movement

This article presents some findings of a five year study of the neighborhood stabilization movement since 1956 in 15 urban communities across the U.S. This movement, an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, is the organized effort to maintain racial diversity in U.S. urban neighborhoods. Based on field research, historical review, and census data, the study offers three analytical models representing success, failure, and conditional efforts in this movement. Internal and external factors of success and failure are discussed and nine inductive hypotheses serve as speculative conclusions about the probability of success in maintaining neighborhood diversity.     

Divisionalization and transfer pricing: A review

This paper reviews the various transfer-pricing systems that have been commonly suggested for divisionalized companies. The properties of an ideal system are discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of each practical system are examined in relation to these properties. The fiscal restrictions that act on multinational companies are also considered. Finally, the contribution of operational research in establishing transfer pricing systems is discussed and criticized. Some very recent work is briefly looked at in the hope that this will form a basis for a more substantial contribution in the future.     

System reform in integrated health systems

As the debate progresses on health care reform and the ultimate form of the U.S. system, important lessons can be drawn from examinations of other health care systems. From the U.S. perspective, European health systems appear to have a certain homogeneity about them. Americans tend to look at all European arrangements as single-source financing systems. Because these systems all provide universal coverage, the assumption is that there must be a strong cohesion and similarity among them. Viewed from the European perspective, the reality appears to be rather different. In this article, the health cae systems of Nordic countries are analyzed in terms of their differences both from other European systems and from the United States approach.     

Organizational Restructuring in European Health Systems: The Role of Primary Care

The main goal of this paper is to review the strategies developed across European health care systems during the 1990s to improve coordination among health care providers. A second goal is to provide some analytical insights in two fields. On the one hand, we attempt to clarify the relationships between pro‐coordination strategies and organizational change in health care. Our main conclusion is that the specific features of health care impede the operation of either market or hierarchical coordination mechanisms. These can, however, be selectively successful if applied as levers to promote the role and impact of the pro‐cooperative coordination strategies which are ultimately required to foster adequate inter‐professional and inter‐organizational coordination. On the other hand, we try to cast some light on the ongoing debate on convergence versus path dependency within the broader field of welfare state reform. Evidence on pro‐coordination reforms in health care apparently supports some insights from previous work on the centrality of the socio‐political structure to account for varying patterns of selective path dependency across countries. In particular, the informal power resources of specialist physicians vis‐à‐vis primary care professionals and the state are critical to explain the different rhythm and fate of pro‐coordination reforms across Europe. Against received wisdom, the evidence examined suggests that selective path dependency might apparently be compatible with a general trend towards convergence understood as hybridization.