The price of fear: Estimating the financial cost of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England

Using a spectrum of measures, this paper estimates some of the financial costs of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England. By means of specific impacts resulting from bullying and harassment to staff health, sickness absence costs to the employer, employee turnover, diminished productivity, sickness presenteeism, compensation, litigation and industrial relations costs, we conservatively estimate bullying and harassment to cost the taxpayer £2.281 billion per annum.     

Lean and mean in the civil service: the case of processing in HMRC

The public sector has been importing private sector methods and practices aimed at generating efficiencies and cost savings. However, the consequences of these changes on the working lives of civil servants are under-researched. This article uses detailed fieldwork to investigate the impact of Lean on labour processes in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). We argue that Lean has a detrimental effect on employees, their working lives, and the service that is provided to the public. The consequences of Lean on public sector work are highly problematic, which is of serious concern given its progressive impact on other civil service departments in the UK.     

基于供需平衡的社会型长期护理保险缴费水平研究——以长沙市为例

在界定老年人失能状态的基础上,将多状态马尔可夫模型与ILO筹资模型相结合,构建了一个供需平衡下的社会型长期护理保险缴费模型。同时,对50岁及以上各年龄段人群的健康状态转移概率矩阵进行估计,结合人口数据估算和预测未来处于不同失能状态的人口数量;并对长沙市未来缴费人口和社会平均工资水平进行预测,估算了未来长沙市社会型长期护理保险缴费水平。     

Tracking the international proceeds of corruption and the challenges of national boundaries and national agencies: the UK example

ABSTRACT

Corruption is a major inhibitor to economic growth, discouraging to domestic and foreign investment and destabilizing of governments. Unsurprisingly, international attention has intensified in recent years with global initiatives to counter corruption and address the proceeds of corruption. These have placed requirements upon national governments to increase transparency, reducing opportunities for use of the legitimate legal and financial infrastructure to disguise and move the proceeds of corruption. This paper reviews the boundaries at national and agency level that can create challenges for those agencies tasked with investigating and returning the proceeds of corruption to the countries from which they came. The paper considers the mechanisms that the agencies in a returning country—the UK—have at their disposal and whether national policy changes can affect their focus and operation. Specifically it reviews the role and future of the International Corruption Unit of the National Crime Agency.     

Public Support for Older Disabled People: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing on Receipt of Disability Benefits and Social Care Subsidy

In England, state support for older people with disabilities consists of a national system of non‐means‐tested cash disability benefits and a locally administered means‐tested system of social care. Evidence on how the combination of the two systems targets those in most need is lacking. We estimate a latent factor structural equation model of disability and receipt of one or both forms of support. The model integrates the measurement of disability and its influence on receipt of state support, allowing for the socio‐economic gradient in disability, and adopts income and wealth constructs appropriate to each part of the model. We find that receipt of each form of support rises as disability increases, with a strong concentration on the most disabled, especially for local‐authority‐funded care. The overlap between the two programmes is confined to the most disabled. Less than half of recipients of local‐authority‐funded care also receive a disability benefit; a third of those in the top 10 per cent of the disability distribution receive neither form of support. Despite being non‐means‐tested, disability benefits display a degree of income and wealth targeting, as a consequence of the socio‐economic gradient in disability and likely disability benefit claims behaviour. The scope for improving income/wealth targeting of disability benefits by means testing them, as some have suggested, is thus less than might be expected.     

The New Civic Leadership: Place and the co-creation of public innovation

This paper discusses the role of place-based leadership in stimulating the co-creation of inclusive public services and outcomes. A conceptual framework, designed to illuminate the forces shaping the power of place, and to provide a fresh way of envisaging the changing nature of modern local leadership and public management, is presented. This New Civic Leadership (NCL) framework, one that can be contrasted with the outdated idea of New Public Management (NPM), is being used to guide the development of the One City Approach to urban governance in Bristol, UK. This effort to unite public purpose in a city is discussed, and emerging themes relating to the role of place-based leadership in spurring new ways of co-creating public service futures are explored.     

Ritual legitimation, de-coupling and the budgetary process: managing organizational hypocrisies in a multinational company

The study of participation in the budgetary cycle has formed a prominent part of the research literature concerned with the budgetary process. More recently there has emerged a body of literature concerned with exploring the political and symbolic nature of the budgetary process. The paper reports upon the outcomes of an empirical study of the introduction of `budgetary participation' in a division of a European subsidiary of a large North American car manufacturer. We detail the long process of consultation and negotiation within the subsidiary, and between it and the European Headquarters. The study provides a revealing instance of the roles of formal budget participation as a ritual of control and legitimation without the substantive involvement of middle managers and suggested to us the introduction of de-coupling and organizational hypocrisy alongside the introduction of budget participation. The study pays close attention to the contingent effects of the wider political context of the division and the relationships between the division, its organizational context and organizational environment, and how this context played upon the budgetary process in the division. The outcomes that we analyse at `Delta' reflect the de-coupling strategies and organizational hypocrisies commonly found in public sector organizations. In this wider setting the corporation persists with the ritual of `tight' budget negotiation and target setting and apparent underachievement in performance. Yet we conclude that the complex technological and political context to the formation and siting of Delta continued and may continue to support its existence.$g0