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Purpose – Police violence involving minority citizens is a significant problem in the United States. Efforts to explain the disparate treatment of minorities have often relied on structural-level racial threat hypotheses. However, research framed by this macro-level approach fails to consider meso-level characteristics of spatially specified places within cities. The place hypothesis maintains that police see disadvantaged minority neighborhoods as especially threatening and, therefore, use more violence in them. Reconceptualizing the racial threat model to include meso-level characteristics of place is essential to better explain police violence.

Design/methodology/approach – The argument is investigated using literature drawn from quantitative analyses of structural predictors of police violence and qualitative/quantitative studies of the police subculture and police behavior within disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Findings – Research on the effects of city-level racial segregation on police violence supports the place hypothesis that the incidence of police violence is higher in segregated minority neighborhoods. City-level segregation is, however, only a proxy for the degree of concentrated minority disadvantage existing at the meso-level. Community-level studies suggest that the police do see disadvantaged places as especially threatening and use more violence in them. Plausibly, meso-level neighborhood characteristics of cities may prove to be better predictors of the incidence of police violence than are structural-level characteristics in cross-city comparisons.

Originality/value – This analysis builds on structural-level racial threat theories by demonstrating that meso-level characteristics of cities are central to explaining disparities in the use of police violence. A multilevel approach to studying police violence using this analytic framework is proposed.

Australia was only one of the many countries to embark on a major program of management reform during the 1980s. A particular feature of the Australian approach was the attention given to the balance between aggregate budgetary control and performance at the organisational and program level. This emphasis reflected a perception that many overseas reform efforts had failed because they emphasised one of these elements, often at the expense of the other. Creating and maintaining an aggregate control framework which encourages improved organisational and program performance remains an ongoing challenge.

‘Never more urgent’ Mr Gunter speaks on training ‘The need for training and re‐training was never more urgent than it is at the present time and I regard this as one of the most important responsibilities of my Ministry,’ said Mr Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, at the official opening of the Blackburn Government Training Centre on 5th January, 1966.

Reviews the crisis of the inherited career Civil Service system in Sub‐Saharan African countries and argues for a small career service that would be adjusted to the imperatives of a market economy and political pluralism. Concludes with suggestions on the rationalization of employment and pay, the enhancement of efficiency and productivity and capacity building.

Within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), a NIST technical division has initiated a Baldrige‐based effort to increase the effectiveness of its research and services. The Precision Engineering Division is responsible for providing US industry with practical access to the international and national standards of length and for conducting a diverse program of R&D and services in measurements and standards. These measurements and standards relate to industrial control of dimensional tolerances on features of manufactured goods. The start‐up of this Baldrige‐based effort reported factors such as has involved: introductory training of all staff on the basic concepts of the MBNQA and team processes; training on leading and facilitating teams and site visits to other agencies and industry organizations carrying out TQM‐type programs. This paper reports on employee‐identified successes and failures, managerial lessons learned, and some potential next steps in the start‐up effort’s further development.

“With a host of furious fancies, whereof I am commander …” Thus might R. D. Macleod announce himself in the office, charging the atmosphere with vitality. To be middle‐aged was very Heaven. The hardships and struggles of youth were behind him: the terrors and trials and loneliness of old age as yet unknown. But all was not sweetness and light. He had the true Celtic temperament,—up in the heights, down in the depths,—and on other mornings he might come in heavy with depression, and the atmosphere be laden with his ill‐humour. The office was that of a library department of W. & R. Holmes, to whom R. D. was consulting librarian.

This chapter examines the changes proposed to the current media ethics and regulation regime in Australia following a government inquiry by former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein. The inquiry was prompted by The News of the World phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom, which resulted in that publication being closed down by its publisher, News International, and principal shareholder Rupert Murdoch. While finding no evidence of similar misbehaviour by journalists and proprietors in Australia, Finkelstein recommended the establishment of a statutory News Media Council, and the inclusion of online media outlets in this new regulatory regime. This chapter argues that such a regime is unlikely to come into effect, given that it will be opposed by media proprietors and working journalists alike, as well the Federal Opposition, and the taxpayer funded ABC, and that a government with low levels of political capital is unlikely to risk much of that capital in a fight with the media industries in an election year.