Role redesign in a modernised NHS: the case of health care assistants

This article examines role redesign in the National Health Service (NHS), which has been central to the Labour government's modernisation agenda, focusing on the role of health care assistants (HCAs). Drawing on data from two acute hospital trusts, this article focuses on variation in HCA roles between trusts, indicating that there may not have been a uniform expansion of the HCA role as the government's HR agenda and most commentators suggest. Although the modernisation agenda has curtailed registered nurses' role in direct care, there are significant variations in the degree to which HCAs undertake a ‘relief’, ‘substitute’ or ‘apprentice’ role at trust level. These variations in HCA role stem from distinctive models of the nursing workforce with differing assumptions about the respective roles of registered and non‐registered nurses. The variations in HCA role have important consequences for the prospects for role redesign and HR policy in the NHS.     

Biotechnology in the agricultural sector: a challenge to consumer welfare

The promises and pitfalls of agricultural biotechnology have long been debated. The public is often thwarted because consumers frequently perceive as risky, and therefore undesirable, those advances that they do not understand or of which they are unaware. A comparative study of the introduction of a biotechnology innovation in the United States (US) and in the European Union (EU) is a case in point. In the US, despite concerns of consumer protection and environmental groups that the use of genetically produced growth hormone in milk‐producing cows will adversely impact the safety of the milk supply, scientific evidence and governmental findings appear to indicate that milk from treated cows is identical in quality, taste and nutritional value to milk from untreated cows. Experience to date in the US demonstrates some consumer resistance to milk from those cows that have received the growth hormone, which typically leads to a 10% increase in milk production. In fact, if there is no perceived differentiation between the two forms of milk, the issue offers little choice to consumers at large, and may result in economic benefit only to selected dairy farmers, as well as the producers of the genetically produced growth hormone. This situation in the US is an example of dysfunctional technology transfer, with perceived desirable benefits to a few, and perceived undesirable benefits to society‐at‐large. The information suggests that the US may have reacted hastily in approving the use of bovine growth hormone in milk‐producing cows. The EU has taken a divergent approach by enacting moratoriums against its use. The differences identified in this study, contrasting responses to the bovine somatotrophin issue in the US and EU – driven in part by general consumer attitudes towards biotechnology – may provide insights into the issues and challenges that will be faced by both advocates and opponents of global proliferation of certain advances in biotechnology.     

A comparison of environmental visions of university students in Israel and Palestine

Young people's complex and contradictory understandings of the future are inevitably influenced by their past experiences and the environment in which they currently live. Where this environment is itself particularly complex or contradictory then the understandings young people hold of the future will be affected. This paper, based on foresighting workshops held at three Israeli/Palestinian universities, examines the differing environmental attitudes and understandings of the future that young people hold in Israel and Palestine, before analysing the implications of these for achieving more sustainable development in the region. Despite the very real challenges the region is facing, these foresighting workshops showed that young people think systematically and rationally about the future. They are not filled with pessimism but recognise the challenges they face and can identify realistic solutions to those problems which they see as being of the greatest importance. The foresighting workshops showed that there was some common understanding of the participants about the key future environmental challenges that they face together with possible means for tackling these challenges.     

Measuring Human Development

The uneven distribution of resources, income and wealth in the world makes it desirable to devise a method for evaluating the relative levels of human development in different countries, but a satisfactory approach needs to go beyond calibration of output per head. This paper explores key issues concerning the measurement of human development and examines the UNDP's modified Human Development Index, assessing its potential usefulness and limitations in enabling comparisons across countries. The extent to which the approach can provide the basis for a profile of an individual country is also analysed, using Singapore as a case study.     

Action embedded in social structure: A systematic theory Part I,theory and evidence

This research develops a systematic theory, which premises a responsible and reasonable actor, of how social structure can affect rational social action, applies this general theory to explain 29 specific empirical findings about voting, and illustrates how deductive theories can synthesize prior empirical findings and provide a focus for subsequent empirical research. Part II, Explanations applies the systematic theory to account for specific empirical propositions that relate social statuses to the decisions voters make. Voters are classified by such graduated social statuses as socioeconomic class, age, and education; and by such nominal social statuses as religion, urban or rural residence, region, gender, race, and ethnicity. Positions on two key issues affect voting choice, the desire for economic equity and the desire for social equality. The members of the various social groups interpret these issues as they affect their own self-interest, and align with the party they perceive as furthering their interests. To corroborate aspects of the theory and to quantify the effects of the variables, survey data are analyzed.     

Network analysis of a new export grouping scheme: The role of economic and non-economic relations

Export grouping schemes can be viewed as an attempt to manage network development. This article examines a new Australian export grouping scheme in terms of its role and impact on the industrial network of which it is a part. The role played by non-economic exchange relations as well as economic, buyer-seller, exchange relations are emphasised, including competitive and potential interfirm relations and the way informal interpersonal relations. Spawned initially by formal grouping processes, were found to play an important part in group functioning and in outcomes from group activities.     

Book review

Corporate Technological Behaviour: Cooperation and Networks, H. Hakanson, Andover, Routledge, 1989, 210pp., $30.00.

Technology and Power, David Kipnis, Springer, New York, 1990, 150pp., DM50.

The Practical Guide to Joint Ventures and Corporate Alliances: How to Form,How to Organise, How to Operate, Robert Porter Lynch, New York, John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1989, 336pp., $44.00 hb.

In the Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power Shoshana Zuboff Oxford, Heinemann Professional Publishing, 1988, 460pp., $17.00

Directory of American Research and Technology 1990: Organizations Active in Product Development for Business K. R. Bowker New York, 1990, 24th edition, 740pp., $215.