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Public sector management has never been overwhelmingly applauded for efficiency in operations; but in the last few decades accusations of mismanagement in the American federal government have been common, particularly in the wake of the Grace Commission report and the Gramm‐Rudman Deficit Reduction Plan. The pressure is on government to streamline operations and become more “efficient”.

Most existing literature on K9 units has focused on the relationship between police handler and canine, or questions about use of force. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between private donations to public police departments, an increasingly accepted institutional practice in the policing world, and K9 units. Specifically, the authors examine rationales for sponsoring and financially supporting K9 units in Canada and the USA.

The authors focus on four main themes that emerged in analysis of media articles, interview transcripts, and the results of freedom of information requests.

These four rationales or repertoires of discourse are: police dogs as heroes; dogs as crime fighters; cute K9s; and police dogs as uncontroversial donation recipients.

After drawing attention to the expanding role of police foundations in these funding endeavors, the authors reflect on what these findings mean for understanding private sponsorship of public police as well as K9 units in North America and elsewhere. The authors draw attention to the possibility of perceived and actual corruption when private, corporate monies become the main channel through which K9 and other police units are funded.

This chapter presents an investigation of the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church through the lens of stigmatization for the purpose of elaborating the theory, making it more widely applicable across multiples levels of analysis. Much like individuals, organizations must engage in information management in order to conceal discrediting information that would blemish their reputation. Given the number of people who comprise an organization, such secrecy relies on teamwork in order to contain damaging information. Based on an analysis of investigative journalist accounts of the scandal between 1985 and 2014, I present a typology representing the system of organizational secrecy developed by the Catholic Church. While organizations like the church have more structural resources at their disposal to ensure information control is maintained, their size and the varying levels of commitment to secrecy on the part of individual members of the team ultimately work against them.

Orbotech SA, Brussels, has announced the appointment of Kevin Smith as Sales Executive for its UK office. Mr Smith joints Orbotech with several years' experience in the disciplines of CAD systems and networks and photoplotting. He will be based in the company's Rochdale office and will work with Rob Sawyer, UK Regional Manager, in selling Orbotech's AOI, CAM and Plotter products throughout the United Kingdom.

During the past 15 years, a body of research has explored the implementation of the marketing concept in terms of the integration of marketing functions under the control of a Chief Marketing Executive (CME), and the position of the CME within the organisation. Relatively little attention has been focused on the organisation of the marketing function within professional services industries. We report a cross‐sectional study examining the characteristics of the marketing function and responsibilities of the CME in a major New Zealand professional services sector, financial services. Our findings suggest a high level of formal organisation structure for marketing within the New Zealand financial services industry. However, while the CME continues to be central to the organisation of the marketing function, there remains considerable variation in the corporate positioning of the marketing function and responsibilities of the CME within this professional services industry.

This short chapter is an introduction to my 2018 book: The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction (Macnish, 2018). It is provided at the start of this PRO-RES collection of essays because it anticipates and supplements the range of issues covered in this collection and lays out some of the fundamental considerations necessary to ensure if surveillance must be conducted, it will be done as ethically as possible.

When is surveillance justified? We can largely agree that there are cases in which surveillance seems, at least prima facie, to be morally correct: police tracking a suspected mass murderer, domestic state security tracking a spy network, or a spouse uncovering partner’s infidelity. At the same time, there are other cases in which surveillance seems clearly not to be justified: the mass surveillance practices of the East German Stasi, an employer watching over an employee to ensure that they do not spend too long in the toilet, or a voyeur watching the subject of his lust undress night after night.

As an introductory text, my book does not seek to provide a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for ethical surveillance. What it does provide is an overview of the current thinking in surveillance ethics, looking at a range of proposed arguments about these questions, and how those arguments might play out in a variety of applied settings. It hence provides a useful and accessible volume for policymakers wishing to rapidly get up to speed on developments in surveillance and the accompanying ethical discussions.

The aim of this paper is to examine the provision of education and training programmes for young people in Scotland for work and lifelong learning within the context of the skills ecosystem approach adopted by the Scottish Government.

The research drew upon findings from a large EU-funded multi-country project which ran from 2016 to 2019 that comprised experiences and perspectives with young people who were affected by these programmes as well as the managers and practitioners tasked with delivering them. The work was conducted in Aberdeenshire and Glasgow and included in-depth interviews with young people and programme managers and practitioners.

The research showed that there is a gap between the rhetoric of the intentions of the policies and how those involved at ground level experience the programmes enacted under policies which draw on a skill ecosystem approach. Whilst there was public funding for training, it was not clear from the enactment of the relevant policies where employers' responsibilities lie. Locating the findings in the skills ecosystem model highlights the weak engagement of employers in their pivotal role in the education and training system and the resulting increased precarity of the young people's futures.

The paper sheds light on the shape of education and training provision in Scotland, the range of participants engaged in the provision and the commitment of providers in comparison to policy language and intentions.

Through the skill ecosystem approach, this paper draws together policy narratives and the experiences of young people.

THE popular image of Ireland is of a land where one can enjoy the perfect holiday. If you are a golfer, fisherman, rambler or if you just enjoy good food and of course the black nectar for which it is famous, then Ireland is the place to go, take the word of TV Chef, Keith Floyd. Ireland however, unlike many small countries, is not content to base its economy on tourism.