Indigenous Peoples’ Health Care: New approaches to contracting and accountability at the public administration frontier

Abstract

This article analyses reforms to contracting and accountability for indigenous primary health care organizations in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. The reforms are presented as comparative case studies, the common reform features identified and their implications analysed.

The reforms share important characteristics. Each proceeds from implicit recognition that indigenous organizations are ‘co-principals’ rather than simply agents in their relationship with government funders and regulators. There is a common tendency towards more relational forms of contracting; and tentative attempts to reconceptualize accountability. These ‘frontier’ cases have broad implications for social service contracting.     

A buyer's perspective on collaborative versus transactional relationships

This research examines collaborative and transactional relationships in buying firms to determine whether collaborative relationships offer greater benefits than transactional relationships, and to ascertain which relational factors drive satisfaction and performance for both collaborative and transactional relationship types. Factor analysis, t-tests and step-wise regression were used to analyze data from a survey of buying firms. Results show that collaborative relationships offer higher levels of satisfaction and performance than transactional relationships. Satisfaction factored into two separate constructs: satisfaction with the relationship and satisfaction with the results. Of the relational factors examined, trust is the most important predictor of performance and satisfaction with the relationship regardless of the type of relationship examined.     

How well do urban growth boundaries contain development? Results for Oregon using a difference-in-difference estimator

Urban containment policies, including urban growth boundaries (UGBs), are a common tool used by city planners to promote compact development. We analyze how well UGBs do in containing development using fine-scale GIS data on cities in Oregon. Earlier studies on UGBs yield mixed results, with some authors finding no effects of UGBs on housing market variables and urbanization rates and others finding significant effects. A challenge in measuring these effects is that the location of the UGB is unlikely to be an exogenous determinant of a land parcel's value for development. The panel structure of our dataset allows us to estimate the UGB's effect on the probability of development using a difference-in-difference estimator applied to a narrow band of plots along each city's UGB. This estimator controls for time-invariant unobservable variables and common temporal effects among plots, thereby mitigating the potential for biased estimates due to the endogeneity of the UGB's location. We also pursue a novel approach to controlling for time-varying factors that exploits our fine-scale data. We find that UGBs contain development in many of the Oregon cities we examine, although there are some cities in which development rates are the same inside and outside of the UGB. Our results reveal that, in most cities, the effect of the UGB is small relative to pre-existing differences in development probabilities. This suggests that it may be difficult to identify UGB effects with cross-sectional data, the approach commonly taken in previous studies.     

Verteilungswirkungen des EEG

The Renewal Energies Act has so far been one of the cornerstones of the energy revolution. As a result of the Act the production of electricity from renewable sources has been considerably increased. As the most expensive forms of renewable energies have grown fastest, average costs have not shrunk but have risen significantly. The ongoing growth led to increasing subsidies for renewable energies and growing costs for electricity consumers in business and private households. It would be insufficient to look at absolute cost developments only, as distribution effects may be critical. As electricity consumption only slightly depends on household income, higher income leads to lower significance of electricity costs. Therefore, low income households bear a relatively higher burden of costs for renewable energies. Furthermore, wealthy households could benefit from the subsidies as they can invest in renewable energy systems.     

THE IMPACT OF FUNDHOLDING ON PRIMARY HEALTH CARE: ACCOUNTS FROM SCOTTISH GPS

At the inception of the internal market in health care GP fundholding was seen rather as a 'sidesho' to the main reforms. But as the reforms have worked through, GP fundholding has emerged as pivotal to the purchaserlprovider agenda and the changes now associated with GP fundholding will be major issues in directing future health care policy initiatives. Drawing on empirical data from three Scottish regions, this paper argues that fundholding is now significant because GPs perceive benefits for primary health care. The paper uses the data collected from the case studies in the regions to assess these gains on two levels: the 'micro' impact of fundholding on primary health care processes and the 'macro' issues raised for health care policy by involving GPs more closely in resource management. Some GPs wish to use resource management as a vehicle for enhancing equity within the NHS, others are more concerned to manage resources so as to expand their practices into sites which combine primary, secondary and community health care, still others envisage developing the market to include monetary rewards for 'efficient' practices.     

The practice of corporate social performance in minority- versus nonminority-owned small businesses

This study compares corporate social performance in terms of charitable contributions of minority-owned and nonminority-owned small businesses. In this sample, minority-owned small businesses are younger, have less full-time employees, and lower annual sales. Minority-owned small businesses donate more funds to religious organizations than nonminority-owned small businesses. When annual sales are accounted for, minority-owned businesses contribute more total dollars to all charitable organizations than nonminority-owned firms. Suggestions for future research in this area are delineated.Judith Kenner Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Business and Society at the University of New Mexico. Her work has appeared inResearch in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, Business Forum, and theJournal of Small Business Management.Jacqueline N. Hood is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of New Mexico. Her current research interests include gender issues in business, small business and entrepreneurship, and corporate social performance.     

Students' persistent preconceptions and learning economic principles

Economic views held by the general public tend to differ significantly from those of economic experts. Would these differences fade away if people were exposed to some economic instruction? In this article, the authors identify college students' preconceptions about economic issues at the beginning of the semester, verify their persistence throughout the semester, and test whether their beliefs are correlated to course performance. The authors conduct a survey at the beginning and end of the semester on a sample of first-year students taking an economic principles course. They find evidence of preconception persistence and reasoning inconsistencies, pointing to some cognitive biases as a plausible cause. Most students do not integrate the newly learned tools into their thinking process, even if they perform well in tests.