Business Process Re-engineering in the Public Sector: a Case Study of the Contributions Agency

There has been a growing literature which, from a social science perspective, seeks to critically assess the use of business process re-engineering (BPR) in effecting radical organisational change. Using a case study of the Contributions Agency, this article reports on the problems of using BPR in a public sector organisation, and discusses the findings in relation to the current critique of BPR.     

The development,implementation and operation of an undergraduate distance learning module in auditing: a teaching note

The development of a distance learning module, to be undertaken by students whilst out on work experience in a thick sandwich degree programme, was driven by the motive to maximize the students' time on placement, rather than the belief that the module could be more effectively taught in this manner. However, with many institutions offering work placement as an optional extension within a degree programme, our experiences may pave the way for introducing some academic input into the work placement. This paper outlines the development and operation of an auditing distance learning module, which is undertaken by students during their placement year in an Accounting and Finance degree in Scotland. The pitfalls of distance learning have been well documented and the profile of the cohort which would undertake the course exacerbated concerns. However, the Course Team have produced a model that has been implemented and is currently operating in a manner that has largely satisfied all respective stakeholders, (namely students, educators, employers, professional bodies, and external examiners). The data for the review was generated through informal discussions with the Course Team and a selection of employers. Focus groups with students were also conducted. These were deliberately unstructured in nature to facilitate the use of dialogue with which the participants were familiar. The rationale for this was to allow participants to identify and highlight salient issues as perceived by them, rather than to answer specific questions on topics that the authors believed to be of relevance.     

Assessing the needs of assisted reproductive technology users of an online bulletin board

Consumers who are infertile and decide to use assisted reproductive technologies undergo lengthy, expensive and potentially risky medical procedures in their quest for a pregnancy and a live birth. In this research we use a consumer model of decision making to analyse the process. We review information available to consumers and we assess use of an online bulletin board which gives consumers social support and medical information during the process. We conclude with the needs for consumer education and protection.     

Catering education and training in France and Britain: some implications for productivity

As the recruitment and retention of trained staff assumes increasing priority in an expanding British tourism and leisure industry, and as labour costs attract increasing attention in periods of recession, the hotel and catering industry is looking more searchingly at its levels of productivity. This report compares vocational education and training practice in France, where all the evidence suggests that hotel and catering production is higher than in Britain, and compares it with the British system. It suggests that the French, by retaining intact the relative importance of craft education and training and the proportion of total financial and other resources they allocate to it, have identified the key factor in effective manpower deployment.     

GROWTH,EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

The high rate of unemployment in South Africa stands out in an otherwise vastly improved set of macroeconomic fundamentals compared with the situation in the early 1990s. One might be tempted to argue that by this single indicator alone, the government's macroeconomic policies have been a failure. This paper explains why jumping to such a conclusion would be a mistake. Annual time series data on total formal sector employment is constructed dating back to 1946. The relationship between economic growth and formal sector employment is then measured and changes in the employment coefficient over time are described. The employment coefficient was found to be relatively stable, with a long‐term average value of 0.5. It returned to this value after a short‐lived collapse in the mid‐1990s. It is concluded that the main reason for the persistently high and rising rates of unemployment in South Africa since the mid 1990s was the very large increase in the labour force and not a historically deficient growth or employment performance of the economy.     

Utility of gambling II: risk,paradoxes, and data

We specialize our results on entropy-modified representations of event-based gambles to representations of probability-based gambles by assuming an implicit event structure underlying the probabilities, and adding assumptions linking the qualitative properties of the former and the latter. Under segregation and under duplex decomposition, we obtain numerical representations consisting of a linear weighted utility term plus a term corresponding to information-theoretical entropies. These representations accommodate the Allais paradox and most of the data due to Birnbaum and associates. A representation of mixed event-and probability-based gambles accommodates the Ellsberg paradox. We suggest possible extensions to handle the data not accommodated.      

HOW WELL HAS THE NEW DEAL FOR YOUNG PEOPLE WORKED IN THE UK REGIONS?

The UK New Deal for Young People (NDYP) is a mandatory active labour market programme aimed at helping unemployed young people into jobs. This paper examines how the programme affected hazard rates for unemployment exits across the UK regions in its first few years. The regional focus is motivated by the belief that differences between regional labour markets, between claimants, and differences in implementation may have led to differences in programme outcomes. The paper shows that NDYP increased outflows from unemployment in all regions but that its impact was larger in some regions than in others. The paper also shows differential NDYP impacts across the regions on destination-specific hazard rates from unemployment to employment, to education/training, to inactivity and to 'other'. Possible explanations for these results are then discussed.