Search results

The continued expansion of the intermediate care initiative has resulted in the use of alternative care settings, such as nursing and care homes, for the delivery of rehabilitative interventions for older people. In this paper, we report on the findings from the second stage of a national survey of rehabilitation schemes that use care home settings. The survey reveals a wide range of approaches and standards, leading us to ask whether there is a gap between policy goals, good practice and actual service provision. The care home rehabilitation schemes were selected on the basis that they offered, as a minimum, rehabilitation to improve an older person's physical status.

The emergence of the intermediate care agenda has added momentum to the debate on the use of alternative care settings for the delivery of rehabilitative interventions for older persons. This paper reports on the findings of the first stage of a research programme to investigate the extent of the use of care home environments for the rehabilitation of older people in England. Stage two of the project will explore in more depth the characteristics of the rehabilitation provision identified in stage one.

This paper addresses some key management issues relating to developing mobile support for community healthcare (CHC) provision, such as support structures, service management and organization.

The paper presents three generic examples that draw out the heterogeneous nature of CHC support and the issues and challenges involved. The research is mostly qualitative, based on interviews with key health and social care professionals in the south of England, supported by desk‐based activity. The initial phase of the pilot involved six healthcare professionals, who were interviewed for approximately an hour and a half each using a semi‐structured questionnaire.

It is clear that many CHC professionals, for the generic case examples, cannot do their community activity without some mobile technology support, such as a mobile telephone. More sophisticated support offers much potential to improve patient/client care in the community as well as efficiency benefits.

The investigation is ongoing with the next stage involving other regions and a wider set of interviews and focus groups.

Practical considerations, such as availability and appropriateness of equipment, security, confidentiality and accountability issues access procedures and usage protocols need to be addressed before the full benefits can be achieved.

Identification of ten main issues and challenges facing mobile service provision and management.

TWENTY‐ONE years devoted to the development of ejection seats, 24,000 seats built for more than forty nations and now one thousand lives saved—that is the proud record of the Martin‐Baker Aircraft Company. To coincide with these achievements, the following article describes the technical development of the range of seats—from the first swinging arm concept through the early manually‐operated seat to the rocket‐assisted completely automatic zero/zero ejection seats of today. From whatever standpoint Martin‐Baker's record is examined, the result is impressive. In terms of mechanical engineering, a series of ingenious features allied to robust design have resulted in ejection seats of unparalleled performance yet renowned for their simplicity and reliability. In terms of sales, this comparatively small firm has, in effect, conquered the world and won substantial export contracts—not least those for over 7,000 seats for the United States armed forces. In human terms, the company has won the grateful thanks of all those aircrew members—a long roll of highly‐skilled and dedicated young men whom some might call the cream of manhood—who but for Martin‐Baker ejection seats would have perished. Small wonder that the name Martin‐Baker has become synonymous with successful ejection.

Canada's institutions, by comparison with America's, have created a unique normative regime. When it comes to conflict of interest, the main problem in Canada has not been that private interests encumber governmental judgment, but that government itself, and in particular the publicly sourced emoluments controlled by the prime minister, can encumber the judgment of ministers and legislators. When it comes to campaign finance law, the problem is that parties are treated as if they are self-interested entities, while interest groups have often been treated as if they are parties. I explore the institutional causes and regulatory consequences of Canada's unique normative approach.

From earliest times the land and all it produced to feed and sustain those who dwelt on it was mankind's greatest asset. From the Biblical “land of milk and honey”, down through history to the “country of farmers” visualised by the American colonists when they severed the links with the mother country, those who had all their needs met by the land were blessed — they still are! The inevitable change brought about by the fast‐growing populations caused them to turn to industry; Britain introduced the “machine age” to the world; the USA the concept of mass production — and the troubles and problems of man increased to the present chaos of to‐day. There remained areas which depended on an agri‐economy — the granary countries, as the vast open spaces of pre‐War Russia; now the great plains of North America, to supply grain for the bread of the peoples of the dense industrial conurbations, which no longer produced anything like enough to feed themselves.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the accumulated research on a strategically important intangible asset – organizational reputation – and articulate promising research pathways forward. To do so, I first provide definitional clarity by comparing reputation to the related constructs of status, celebrity, legitimacy, and social approval and highlight the codifiable, cumulative, and beneficial nature of reputation. I then discuss three developments in reputation literature: (1) conceptualizing reputation as a multidimensional, rather than generalized, construct; (2) theorizing about reputational malleability rather than its path dependence; and (3) focusing on the costs of a high reputation in addition to its benefits. Based on these developments and the increasing role of social media in affecting and reflecting stakeholder perceptions, I discuss three pathways for future reputation research. Specifically, I focus on the decrease in credibility of powerful intermediaries and increase in stakeholder empowerment, conceptualization of reputation as a flow rather than a stock, and the role of strategic reticence. My hope is that this chapter will stimulate conceptual and empirical work on the role of reputation in the complex and dynamic era of social media.

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).