Belgium has experienced widespread change in its public sector. The author describes the structure of community safety provision that has resulted. This article describes research…
Abstract
Belgium has experienced widespread change in its public sector. The author describes the structure of community safety provision that has resulted. This article describes research conducted in 4 Belgian cities. It argues for a conflict‐accepting model of partnership where the differing philosophies of the constituent agencies are accepted and where human creativity is respected. Such a model will reduce the problem of differential power relations that can lead to the exclusion of some social groups.
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Why have multi‐agency or “partnership” approaches to crime prevention and community safety been reported internationally with unfavorable results? Can groups and individuals from…
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Why have multi‐agency or “partnership” approaches to crime prevention and community safety been reported internationally with unfavorable results? Can groups and individuals from disparate government and non‐government sectors work together to reduce or prevent crime? This article will address these and other questions by using developments in Belgium as its case study. In 1992, Belgium launched its “safety and crime prevention contracts”, a series of locally based crime prevention initiatives which have attempted to contract federal, regional and local governments to a range of social and police oriented crime prevention endeavors. Traces the development of the Belgian crime prevention contracts and examines the difficulties experienced with “multi‐agency crime prevention” and suggests that much of the political rhetoric in Belgium calling for local, community and intersectorial “partnerships” has, like several other countries including England and Wales, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, lacked clear practical expression. However, some promising initiatives indicate that this prevention approach may be capable of producing effective crime prevention and community safety outcomes. Further research is needed to describe these initiatives and analyze the conditions under which they are developed.
Gordon Hughes and Adam Edwards
This article sets the scene for the contributions in this special edition of Community Safety Journal. It examines the political contexts of community safety initiatives, compares…
Abstract
This article sets the scene for the contributions in this special edition of Community Safety Journal. It examines the political contexts of community safety initiatives, compares transatlantic and European traditions and discusses convergent and divergent themes.
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Lisa Beasley, Sandra Grace and Louise Horstmanshof
Understanding how individuals respond and adapt to change is essential to assist leaders to manage transformational change effectively. Contemporary health care environments are…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding how individuals respond and adapt to change is essential to assist leaders to manage transformational change effectively. Contemporary health care environments are characterised by frequent and rapid change, often with unrealistic and challenging timeframes. Researchers have employed a range of assessment scales to assess individual readiness for change. Hence, to select the appropriate scale, it is critical to compare the properties of these instruments. A scoping review will be conducted to identify scales that measure an individual's response to change in the healthcare environment.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article the authors used the PIC (Population or Problem, Interest, and Context) design and undertook a comprehensive literature search conducted in Eric, MEDLINE, EmCare, CINAHL, PsychINFO and PubMed. Management databases were also searched including Business Source Premium (Ebesco) and Business Collection (InfoRMIT). Reference lists were scrutinized, and citation searches were performed of the included studies. The primary outcome was the quality of the literature searches and the secondary outcome was time spent on the literature search when the PIC model was used as a search strategy tool, compared to the use of another conceptualizing tool or unguided searching.
Findings
This scoping review identified eight scales used to measure an individual's response to change. This scoping review did not identify any individual change readiness scales specifically designed for use in the healthcare environment. However, two scales (the Acceptance of Change Scale and the Resistance to Change Scale) had applicability across a wide variety of organisational settings.
Research limitations/implications
Scoping reviews do not set out to comprehensively source all relevant literature but rather to ascertain the nature and extent of the published literature in the field. Therefore, it is possible that a systematic review might uncover additional relevant papers.
Practical implications
This scoping review will assist change leaders to gain a better understanding of the different scales used to measure individual response to change.
Originality/value
To manage change effectively, change leaders first need to develop an understanding of how individuals respond and adapt to change. Change leaders require the necessary scales to assist them to understand change processes, providing an understanding of where individuals are placed on the change continuum. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this scoping review is the first of its kind to identify and review scales to measure individual response to change.
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Annkatrin Mies and Peter Neergaard
In 2014, the European Union (EU) adopted the non-financial reporting Directive (2014/95/EU) making the disclosure of certain non-financial topics mandatory for large listed…
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In 2014, the European Union (EU) adopted the non-financial reporting Directive (2014/95/EU) making the disclosure of certain non-financial topics mandatory for large listed companies. They are required to report on policies, actions and outcomes regarding their environmental impact, social and employee matters, impact on human rights and corruption. Denmark introduced mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting already in 2009, while Germany had no specific legislation on CSR reporting before 2017. Some authors allege that regulation positively impacts CSR reporting, while others argue that the voluntary nature of CSR reporting is essential (Romolini, Fissi, & Gori, 2014). Critics of mandatory reporting claim that non-financial reporting should develop bottom-up, as mandatory one-size-fits-all solutions are inappropriate given the differences among companies (ICC, 2015). The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the effect of legislation on reporting quality by comparing Denmark with a long tradition for mandatory reporting and Germany introducing mandatory rather recently. However, a rich body of literature exists on factors impacting CSR reporting other than legislation. These are among others: firm size, ownership structure, industrial sector and culture (Hahn & Kühnen, 2013.)
The chapter applies a content analysis of 150 CSR reports from German and Danish listed companies between 2008 and 2017 from four different industrial sectors. The chapter finds that mandatory reporting improves overall report quality by lifting the quality floor, yet, without lifting the quality ceiling. Size is important as improvements in reporting are largest in small and medium-sized companies. Companies in environmentally sensitive sectors tend to disclose more relevant environmental information than companies in less sensitive sectors. Both culture and ownership structure has a moderating effect on report quality.
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Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in…
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Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.
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Sebastian Vith and Markus A. Höllerer
Over the last years, and under the umbrella of the “sharing economy,” various new social practices and novel business models have been established worldwide. Such practices and…
Abstract
Over the last years, and under the umbrella of the “sharing economy,” various new social practices and novel business models have been established worldwide. Such practices and models are perceived both as opportunity and challenge for existing (urban) public governance regimes. It is in this sense that the sharing economy has become a contested issue and regularly provokes bold governance responses. However, local governing authorities first need to interpret, negotiate, and establish what exactly is “at issue” in order to (re-)act adequately. While such “politics of signification” are well-studied, for instance, in social movements and public media discourse, research on the concerted framing activities of public administrations as well as on the strategic work that sets the stage for public policy-making is relatively sparse – and entirely lacking for the context of the sharing economy. In this chapter, the authors look behind the scenes of the policy-making in the City of Vienna, Austria. The empirical findings unearth six distinct mechanisms –“delimiting,” “negotiating,” “detailing,” “linking,” “justifying,” and “situating” – that are strategically applied to shape the “Viennese way” of governing the sharing economy. This research develops an in-depth understanding of what the authors conceptually dub “strategic issue work”: the manifold efforts that lead to, and underlie, in this case, the policy-making of a local government when it tries to come to terms with the governance challenges of the sharing economy.
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Helen MacLennan and S. Charles Malka
This paper aims to empirically establish necessity conditions within a relational context. The formulated necessary condition-based hypotheses are drawn from and are anchored in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to empirically establish necessity conditions within a relational context. The formulated necessary condition-based hypotheses are drawn from and are anchored in extant relational and psychology literature. The authors focus on three relational dimensions that have attracted considerable attention – relational culture, relational decency (RD) and relational readiness, as well as on workplace social inclusion. The three relational dimensions serve as the study’s independent variables as the authors explore their necessity for workplace social inclusion.
Design/methodology/approach
This study seeks to explore the civility dimensions of RD, culture and readiness, as defined by the workplace relational civility index and examine just how necessary they are for workplace social inclusion. Drawing on a sample of 160 employees from various industries, and using necessary condition analysis (NCA) to revisit key relational dimensions and the extent to which they are necessary for heightened social inclusion. Because NCA is fundamentally a bivariate analysis method, with only one X and Y being analyzed at a time, the method generates unique quantified parameters that allow for the selection of only those variables that meet necessity conditions for a desired level of an outcome.
Findings
Drawing on a sample of 160 employees from various industries, and using NCA, the authors find support for two out of three hypotheses. Specifically, a high level of RD and readiness emerge as statistically significant conditions that are necessary for a high level of social inclusion in today’s workplace. Relational culture emerged as an insignificant condition and thus appears to be unnecessary for ensuring high level of social inclusion.
Research limitations/implications
This study was limited to self-report measures, which are subject to recall and response bias. In addition, the sample size (n = 160), while robust, cannot be reliably used to make inferences about the greater population.
Practical implications
These results have practical implications for leaders, who are faced with managing a post-pandemic workforce that has presented some serious organization-level challenges. Workers who are in demand to fill new and existing jobs are leaving their current jobs in unprecedented numbers, making it necessary to consider new ways to attract and retain them. This research points to the importance of individual-level civility as a foundation for fostering an organizational culture of inclusion, employee job satisfaction and retention.
Social implications
In the sample of professional workers, capitalizing on behaviors that reinforce and promote decency and readiness may appear sufficient for social inclusion, yet they ought to be complemented by further nurturing, training and crafting of policies that safeguard inclusion. Both decency and readiness related behaviors emerge as priorities for in-house training and coaching that managers across industries cannot, and should not, ignore.
Originality/value
Workplace social inclusion as an outcome, is the study’s dependent variable. Although these capabilities are conceptually and empirically studied by several works, as the authors discuss next, most reported findings have been correlational in nature. Namely, they explored the average effect of a single variable, or the average effect of a combination of relational variables, on different outcomes. Yet, our review of the literature suggests that no empirical study has employed NCA as a research method, making our current effort a modest attempt to apply NCA to the relational field.
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Data are presented on staff dishonesty in the electrical retail sector deriving from a 1991 survey of 55 Dixons stores in the Dixons Stores Group. Two hundred and seventy seven…
Abstract
Data are presented on staff dishonesty in the electrical retail sector deriving from a 1991 survey of 55 Dixons stores in the Dixons Stores Group. Two hundred and seventy seven staff were interviewed about their colleagues' involvement in crime. The survey addressed seven interrelated questions: how many staff steal?, which staff steal?, what do staff steal?, why do staff steal?, where do staff steal from?, do staff get caught? and what stops staff theft? The data add an empirical dimension to an important, but neglected and inaccessible area.
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.