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Even though the balanced scorecard (BSC) has become a highly popular performance management tool, usage in local public sector National Health Service (NHS) organisations is still rare. This paper conditionally outlines some grounds in supporting such usage. In particular underlying conceptual concerns with the BSC system and its implementation pitfalls require full consideration. This paper then outlines some factors to be taken into account for “successful” BSC implementation in a NHS multi‐agency setting. These findings emerged from a series of focus groups that took place with contributors drawn from all the key organisations within the Bradford Health Action Zone. Finally, this paper argues that if key criteria are met, successful implementation of the BSC may then proceed. However, “blind” BSC implementation without consideration of these factors may result in potential “failure”.

Building energy efficiency is an inescapable part of the solution to Africa's sustainable development; its implementation can result in cost effective ways that can contribute to economic and social development as well as environmental sustainability. Despite this, a number of factors including financial barriers and market barriers are perceived by policy makers and building designers to influence the efficient use of energy in buildings. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of architects in relation to the challenges of building energy efficiency in Ghana.

From a review of pertinent literature 18 factors were identified as challenging. Empirical investigation was carried out using survey questionnaire. The consideration of overlapping aspects of the study largely motivated the use of factor analysis to analyse the data which made it possible to make scientific deductions and built explanations from the results.

The study derives five brands of uncorrelated variables that better explains challenges faced in implementing building energy efficiency in Ghana. These variables include financial barriers, information barrier, private sector participation, behavioural barriers and production barrier. The study provides insight on the contextual provision of realities faced in implementing building energy efficiency in Ghana.

Key contribution of the paper to the body of knowledge is manifested in the use of the principal component analysis. This has rigorously provided understanding into the complex structure and the relationship between the various knowledge areas of building energy efficiency barriers in Ghana.

The UK government has recently implemented the Green Deal, a new pay-as-you-save policy which seeks to fundamentally reform the existing housing stock to make it more energy efficient. Regarded by its proponents as a ‘revolutionary programme to bring our buildings up to date’ (HM Government 2010: 2), generate cash savings for householders, and simultaneously yield environmental benefits by reducing energy consumption, it promises much. However, there have been many critiques of the Green Deal from industry, environmental pressure groups and housing professionals. Moreover there has been very limited take up of Green Deal loans by householders, and those measures which have been installed offer perhaps only minimal improvements in overall energy efficiency. This paper therefore considers the potential generative and productive outcomes of the Green Deal by looking across three related issues: households with low incomes and in fuel poverty; the potential impacts on elements of the housing system; and, the extent of environmental benefits. The paper concludes by suggesting that the instead of being a revolutionary way to improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s domestic building stock, the Green Deal may potentially perpetuate existing social injustice and environmental degradation. The effort should, instead, focus on understanding how energy demand is created in the first place (e.g. desire for larger homes, energy-hungry appliances, heating in every room) through householders’ expectations and changing domestic practices.

This study aims to undertake the evaluation and examination of the productivity change of the Egyptian banking sector. Using a novel data set covering 14 banks operating in the Egyptian market from 1997 to 2013. We use a nonparametric approach (based on data envelopment analysis (DEA)) to investigate the productivity change in the Egyptian banking sector. Input-oriented Malmquist indices of productivity change are estimated with DEA to measure total factor productivity (TFP) change. The TFP changes are decomposed into the product of technological change and technical efficiency change (catch-up). In the second stage, we study potential determinants of productivity change using a regression model. We find that the Egyptian banking sector as a whole shows a productivity regress of 0.9% per year, mainly due to the technological improvements. The estimated regression model identifies some variables that significantly influence the productivity of banks in Egypt. The banks with higher loan to deposit ratio and higher returns on equity have higher productivity growth reflecting on their strong strategic and managerial skills. The size of a bank seems to be associated with an increase in productivity. The maturity of a bank (measured by age) is associated with higher productivity. The NIM and NIETA variables do not seem to be affecting the productivity of banks. Surprisingly, our results reveal that the financial crisis was negatively and statistically insignificant, hence it had no effect on the Egyptian banks.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a robust macroeconomic performance (MEP) index of the State economies of an emerging market economy, i.e. India.

Two variants of data envelopment analysis (DEA) models – radial and non‐radial – are proposed to construct the macroeconomic policy performance of 22 Indian State economies in the post‐economic reforms era covering the period: 1994‐1995 to 2001‐2002, using three macroeconomic indicators: growth in gross state domestic product, price stability, and fiscal deficit.

The authors' three broad empirical findings are: first, the radial and non‐radial DEA models yield significantly different rankings of State economies in terms of their MEP index scores; second, as against the use of only growth in gross state domestic product and price stability for MEP measure, the inclusion of fiscal deficit as an additional indicator yields a noticeable improvement not only in the State MEP index scores, but also in their rankings, thus providing the evidence of relatively successful attempt by the Indian States in reducing fiscal deficit, in general, and legislating FRBM bill, in particular; and third, a positive significant correlation between foreign direct investment (FDI) and MEP indicates that a State's overall macroeconomic policy performance does matter to attract FDI.

Since the DEA models employed in this study ignore the possibility of asymmetric shocks, the MEP results might be questioned in this deterministic setting. However, the study period has been smooth and has not been subject to any major changes in the State economic policies. Therefore, the MEP results might not be susceptible such changes. However, further research is desired on examining the macroeconomic policy performance behavior of Indian States using bootstrapping DEA.

None of the past Indian studies were able to give a comprehensive picture concerning the MEP behavior of Indian State economies, since the methodologies adopted in those studies were not suitable to take into consideration all the macro indicators at a time. Therefore, this present study is considered the first of its kind in assessing the MEP index of the Indian State economies by simultaneously considering all the macro indicators.

From one angle, abortion law appears to confirm the regime politics account of the Supreme Court; after all, the Reagan/Bush coalition succeeded in significantly curtailing the constitutional protection of abortion rights. From another angle, however, it is puzzling that the Reagan/Bush Court repeatedly refused to overturn Roe v. Wade. We argue that time and again electoral considerations led Republican elites to back away from a forceful assertion of their agenda for constitutional change. As a result, the justices generally acted within the range of possibilities acceptable to the governing regime but still typically had multiple doctrinal options from which to choose.

This study challenges contentions that rights are limiting through an analysis of grassroots rights talk in the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer) community in the 1980s. I argue that rights talk can be an important source of constructing community within local, nonmainstream, noninstitutional spaces through a discourse analysis of a forum for LGBTQ community-building in the past: the letters to the editor columns in Gay Community News. This study enhances law and social movement scholarship on the role of rights in social movements by exploring how rights discourse is employed by everyday people in a noninstitutional community-building venue rarely addressed in contemporary research.

The action taken by the Council of the British Medical Association in promoting a Bill to reconstitute the Local Government Board will, it is to be hoped, receive the strong support of public authorities and of all who are in any way interested in the efficient administration of the laws which, directly or indirectly, have a bearing on the health and general well‐being of the people. In the memorandum which precedes the draft of the Bill in question it is pointed out that the present “Board” is not, and probably never was, intended to be a working body for the despatch of business, that it is believed never to have met that the work of this department of State is growing in variety and importance, and that such work can only be satisfactorily transacted with the aid of persons possessing high professional qualifications, who, instead of being, as at present, merely the servants of the “Board” tendering advice only on invitation, would be able to initiate action in any direction deemed desirable. The British Medical Association have approached the matter from a medical point of view—as might naturally have been expected—and this course of action makes a somewhat weak plank in the platform of the reformers. The fourth clause of the draft of the Bill proposes that there should be four “additional” members of the Board, and that, of such additional members, one should be a barrister or solicitor, one a qualified medical officer of health, one a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and one a person experienced in the administration of the Poor‐law Acts. The work of the Local Government Board, however, is not confined to dealing with medical, engineering, and Poor‐law questions, and the presence of one or more fully‐qualified scientific experts would be absolutely necessary to secure the efficient administration of the food laws and the proper and adequate consideration of matters relating to water supply and sewage disposal. The popular notion still exists that the “doctor” is a universal scientific genius, and that, as the possessor of scientific knowledge and acumen, the next best article is the proprietor of the shop in the window of which are exhibited some three or four bottles of brilliantly‐coloured liquids inscribed with mysterious symbols. The influence of these popular ideas is to be seen in the tendency often exhibited by public authorities and even occasionally by the legislature and by Government departments to expect and call upon medical men to perform duties which neither by training nor by experience they are qualified to undertake. Medical Officers of Health of standing, and medical men of intelligence and repute are the last persons to wish to arrogate to themselves the possession of universal knowledge and capacity, and it is unfair and ridiculous to thrust work upon them which can only be properly carried out by specialists. If the Local Government Board is to be reconstituted and made a thing of life—and in the public interest it is urgently necessary that this should be done—the new department should comprise experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.

The great attractions of the Internet are its flexibility and its international reach and, some might say, its anarchic nature. However, a company planning advertising or trading on the Internet must not assume that it is not regulated. This is simply not true. This paper focuses primarily on the regulation affecting advertising and the financial services sector (which is already a heavily regulated area in its own right). Financial services companies should be aware, however, that there is a raft of other relevant legislation, such as data protection (including the trail‐blazing data protection bill published on 14th January 1998) which is required to implement a 1995 EU Data Protection Directive in the United Kingdom.

IN the last article it was pointed out that any form of starch as a substitute for milk sugar, the natural carbohydrate of human milk, was highly undesirable in an infant's food unless such food was to be administered under the supervision and control of a medical man. The same remark would also apply more or less to invalids' foods, and especially to brands containing raw, or only very slightly altered starch. Having regard to the object for which such preparations are intended ease of digestion is of the utmost importance, and it cannot bo contended that any starches in their natural condition can lay claim to this property. It is, however, possible so to prepare them that a very largo proportion of their weight is soluble in cold water, and where so prepared the objection is very largely removed.