Kristin Lofthus Hope

European universities as complete organizations? Understanding identity, hierarchy and rationality in public organizations

Abstract This article investigates the form of European universities to determine the extent to which they resemble the characteristics of complete organizations and whether the forms are associated with modernization policy pressure, national institutional frames and organizational characteristics. An original data set of twenty-six universities from eight countries was used. Specialist universities have a stronger identity, whereas the level of hierarchy and rationality is clearly associated with the intensity of modernization policies. At the same time, evidence suggests limitations for universities to become complete, as mechanisms allowing the development of some dimensions seemingly constrain the capability to develop others.

Configuring Designers? Using One Agile Project Management Methodology to Achieve User Participation

The aim was to examine the possibilities and limits of involving end-users in applied knowledge-producing settings. Is it possible to have user participation as a part of the design process? The agile method DSDM supposed to enhance user participation as well as improve other aspects of the management of computer system design projects.

Reconfiguring health workforce: a case-based comparative study explaining the increasingly diverse professional roles in Europe

BackgroundOver the past decade the healthcare workforce has diversified in several directions with formalised roles for health care assistants, specialised roles for nurses and technicians, advanced roles for physician associates and nurse practitioners and new professions for new services, such as case managers. Hence the composition of health care teams has become increasingly diverse. The exact extent of this diversity is unknown across the different countries of Europe, as are the drivers of this change.The research questions guiding this study were: What extended professional roles are emerging on health care teams? How are extended professional roles created? What main drivers explain the observed differences, if any, in extended roles in and between countries?MethodsWe performed a case-based comparison of the extended roles in care pathways for breast cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. We conducted 16 case studies in eight European countries, including in total 160 interviews with physicians, nurses and other health care professionals in new roles and 600+ hours of observation in health care clinics.ResultsThe results show a relatively diverse composition of roles in the three care pathways. We identified specialised roles for physicians, extended roles for nurses and technicians, and independent roles for advanced nurse practitioners and physician associates. The development of extended roles depends upon the willingness of physicians to delegate tasks, developments in medical technology and service (re)design. Academic training and setting a formal scope of practice for new roles have less impact upon the development of new roles. While specialised roles focus particularly on a well-specified technical or clinical domain, the generic roles concentrate on organising and integrating care and cure.ConclusionThere are considerable differences in the number and kind of extended roles between both countries and care pathways. The main drivers for new roles reside in the technological development of medical treatment and the need for more generic competencies. Extended roles develop in two directions: 1) specialised roles and 2) generic roles.

Implementation and governance: Current and future research on climate change policies:

Central policymakers, governments, climate researchers, and research funders emphasize the necessity to develop, design, and implement climate change policies. This article investigates how this is dealt with in current social science research by analyzing relevant articles published in international academic journals. The search covers both interdisciplinary and more discipline-specific journals, focusing on publications within international relations, political science, public administration, and sociology. The results show that although climate change is a major contemporary research topic, there seems to be a lack of research focusing on existing government actions, multilevel governance, and implementation. The existing research is largely empirical and case-oriented. Cross-country comparisons are rare, and relatively few studies explicitly focus on theory development. A major proportion of the research is published in interdisciplinary journals, where vital insights from political science and public administration research might be lacking. This paper, through an analysis of extant research, will add to the body of literature on climate change policy from a public policy implementation perspective.

Policy Instruments in European Universities: Implementation of Higher Education Policies

This chapter focuses on the implementation of HE policies in European universities and how it varies across countries. Two aspects of policy implementation are focused. One is the substantive policies that are put in place in terms of policy instruments such as legislation, financial incentives and organizational arrangements. The second aspect is the process of implementation understood as patterns of participation and trust among the actors involved. The aim is to explain cross-national variation focusing on the relationship between political-administrative structures, implementation processes, policy instruments and substantive outcomes. By analyzing variation in the use of policy instruments as well as characteristics of the implementation processes, the approach goes beyond simplistic generalizations, categorizing countries globally as respectively high or low implementation performers.

Innovative government initiatives to prevent upper secondary school dropout: organisational learning and institutional change at the local level

This paper investigates how a specific public innovation in Norway, the New Possibilities Strategy, has influenced the implementation of anti-dropout measures at local education authority levels. In Norway, approximately 100% of all 16-year-olds start upper secondary education. However, about one-third of the students does not complete or graduate within a five-year period. Dropout rates have received increasing political attention as a societal problem, resulting in a number of different policy strategies. The paper aims to reduce the lack of knowledge on how innovations in education may contribute to solving an apparently stable educational problem, by enhancing learning outcomes and reducing the number of young people that do not complete and graduate from upper secondary education. Utilising a framework for government and public sector innovation and implementation, together with concepts of institutional change, will give a new understanding of how a public innovative strategy influences organisational learning.

Science Transformed? Debating Claims of an Epochal Break

equal inherent worth (108) but differential responsiveness is warranted both between and amongst them based on ‘capacities that the individual possesses and his or her social (and ecological) situatednesss’ (163). Here I examine only one aspect of Sandler’s picture of value. He argues that species as such have no inherent (interest-based objective final, 34) value, but may be valued subjectively as final ends (i.e. non-instrumentally). Individual members of species (even artefactual members), however, do have inherent value and have a good of their own by virtue of being ‘an internally organized goal-directed system, the product of some selection etiology’ (39). Sandler is forthright in recognizing that having a good of one’s own is not reason enough to ground inherent worth: it must also be shown that we ought to value that good (40). Sandler’s strategy here, however, seems to be to rely on the inherent worth of human beings as a given (40) and then to argue that there is no non-arbitrary capacity-based reason to deny the inherent worth of all other organisms (44). Still, one may be left feeling bereft of any particular reason to value the ‘goal orientation’ of a flu virus. Sandler’s book offers its readers a complex and yet remarkably clear picture of the ethics of species. It is well worth a close read.