The Quality Dimension. Evaluating Quality of Service and Quality of Life in Human Services

Correspondence to Stephen P. Osborne, Public Sector Management Research Centre, Aston Business School, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET. Summary This paper addresses the issues, for those involved in planningand managing human services, of evaluating the quality of suchservices as part of the service provision process. It beginsby examining the nature of quality itself and moves on to lookat the links between quality of life and quality of servicein human services. It then assesses existing models of evaluationwhich might be applied and highlights their strengths and limitations. The paper argues that many of the models have their roots inareas outside of direct service provision and consequently arenot appropriate for implementation in this context. It concludesby reviewing some principles to guide the evaluation of servicequality by service managers, and suggests how these might beapplied in practice to the evaluation of the quality of humanservices.     

Bureaucracy as a Vocation: Governmentality and administration in nineteenth-century Britain

Abstract This paper focuses upon ethical conduct and liberal mentalities of government in the context of the historical sociology of administrative expertise in nineteenth century Britain. After a brief consideration of theories of moral regulation, the paper pursues, by way of a discussion of the government of India and of the famous Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Civil Service, the issue of the establishment of an appropriate bureaucratic persona in the nineteenth century.     

Social Inquiry Reports in One Juvenile Court: An Examination

Summary The paper begins by briefly outlining the current debate overthe usage of social inquiry reports in the juvenile court, particularlywith regard to the effect that their recommendations can haveupon the lives of young people appearing in that court. It thendiscusses the findings of research carried out by the authorinto the social inquiry reports presented to one juvenile court.In particular it examines the contents and format of these reports,the effect that concepts of ‘welfare’ and ‘justice’have upon the recommendations of these reports, and the differencesthat exist in the reports presented by the probation and socialservices. It concludes that there is a pressing need for a revisionin the presentation of these reports to the court as no consistentstandard of information is being offered. It also argues thatit is time to reassess the role of treatment in the juvenilejustice system, in the light of this and other recent research,and to separate more clearly the components of welfare and justicewithin this system.     

The Deceptively Simple Economics of Workplace Diversity

Legal, scholarly, and public discussion of work force diversity has proceeded largely without benefit of microeconomic theory. Existing analysis relies on incomplete information to explain why firms might have "unrepresentative" work forces. I build a model in which work force composition matters even given full information. My analysis both explains current labor-market trends and raises questions about the use by courts and government agencies of statistical evidence to test for employment discrimination.