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This paper aims to use systems mapping as a tool to develop an organisation-wide approach to public mental health to inform strategic direction within a national public health agency.

Two workshops were facilitated with internal staff from a wide range of public health policy teams working in small groups to produce paper-based maps. These were collated and refined by the project team and digitised.

The approach engaged a range of teams in forming a shared understanding and producing a complex system map of the influences on population mental health and well-being, where current policy initiatives were addressing them and what the gaps and priorities were. Participants valued the approach which led to further study and organisational commitment to the whole system working as part of national public mental health strategy.

The approach was limited to internal stakeholders and wider engagement with other sectors and community members would help further the application of complex system approaches to public mental health.

It was a valuable process for developing a whole-organisation approach and stimulating thinking and practice in complex system approaches. The paper provides a practical example of how to apply systems mapping and its benefits for organising public mental health practice.

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

It has long been recognised that the top-down approach is prevailing over bottom-up approach in landuse planning in African countries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and identify the facilitators and limitations to have effective public participation (PP), and suggest how the practices can be improved in Nigeria.

Using Nigeria as a case study, this paper involves interviews of various stakeholders, including government staff, representatives of interest groups, general public, members of the planning board and planning commission. Information is analysed by narrative techniques of reporting.

There is a general judgment that PP is vital to landuse policy. Early public consultation was preferred, as many respondents pointed out that this would help shape the final policy. Yet, their opinion varied on whether relevant information was provided to the public, as well as their level of satisfaction with the whole process. While the process was fairly seen as giving opportunities for the public to make comments on public policy, the approach appeared not to be fruitful in many cases: (a) when the scope was broad; (b) lack of representativeness and abstruse information; (c) insufficient feedback to the participants; and (d) corruption and shortage of resources to complete the process promptly.

Understanding the facilitators and limitations that impact the success of PP can help provide guidance to improve the decision-making processes of public policies.

This paper fills the knowledge gap by providing the Nigerian experience on stakeholders' perspectives of PP in developing countries.

COVID-19 cases in Indonesia continue to increase and spread. This article aims to analyse the Indonesian government policies as a response in dealing with COVID-19.

This article is a narrative analysis with the approach of a systematic literature review.

This article found that the Indonesian government responded slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of its spread in March 2020. The government then issued some policies such as physical distancing, large-scale social restriction (PSBB - Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar) and social safety net. These policies will only work if the society follows them. The society could be the key to success of those policies, either as the support or the obstacles.

This policy analysis with literature review, conducted from March to July 2020 in Indonesia, provides experiences and knowledge in how to respond to the dynamic problems of public policy in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, especially in the context of a developing country.

The novelty of the article lies in the unique policy response in a diverse society. It suggests that the policymakers should pay more attention to the society’s characteristics as well as the mitigation system as a preventive measure and risk management to make clear policy in the society.

A debate on whether new ventures should be supported with public funding is taking place. Adopting a position on this discussion requires rigorous assessments of implemented programs. However, the few existing efforts have mostly focused on regional cases in developed countries. To fill this gap, this paper aims to measure the effects of a regional acceleration program in a developing country (Medellin, Colombia).

The economic notion of capabilities is used to frame the analysis of firm characteristics and productivity, which are hypothesized to be heterogeneous within the program. To test these relationships, propensity score matching is used in a sample of 60 treatment and 16,994 control firms.

This paper finds that treated firms had higher revenue than propensity score-matched controls on average, confirming a positive impact on growth measures. However, such financial growth is mostly observed in service firms rather than other economic sectors.

Further evaluations, with a longer period and using more outcome variables, are suggested in the context of similar publicly funded programs in developing countries.

These findings tip the balance in favor of the literature suggesting supportive programs for high-growth firms as opposed to everyday entrepreneurship. This is an insight, especially under the context of an emerging economy, which has scarce funding to support entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to describe progress in an across sectorial approach to primary health care at the district health service (DHS) level in Thailand in response to recent innovative national public policy directions which have been enshrined in constitutional doctrine and publicly endorsed by the Prime Minister. This paper describes one response to the Prime Minister’s challenge for Thailand to become the centre of learning in the sub-region in health management.

The authors utilised a descriptive case study approach utilising an analysis of the Naresuan University initiative of establishing the College of Health Systems Management (NUCHSM). Within that case study, there is a focus on challenges relevant to the socio-economic determinants of health (SOED) and an emphasis on utilising Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the DHS structure.

The findings describe the establishment of the NUCHSM. A Master of Science (Health Systems Management) by research and a PhD degree have been created and supported by an international faculty. The Thailand International Cooperation Agency recognised NUCHSM by providing scholarships. International students are from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Kenya, Malawi and Timor Leste. Research consultancy projects include two in Lao People’s Democratic Republic; plus, a prototype DHS management system responsive to SDG attainment; and a project to establish a sustainable Ageing Society philosophy for a Thai municipality.

The case study on NUCHSM and its antecedents in its development have demonstrated originality in a long-standing international collaboration, and it has been recognised by the national government to provide scholarships to citizens of the countries in the sub-region to undertake postgraduate studies in health management. The concept of learning from each other and together, simultaneously as a group, through action research projects funded to enhance the evolution of DHSs is innovative.

At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the absence of pharmaceutical agents meant that policy institutions had to intervene by providing nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). To satisfy this need, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued policy guidelines, such as NPIs, and the government of Pakistan released its own policy document that included social distancing (SD) as a containment measure. This study explores the policy actors and their role in implementing SD as an NPI in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study adopted the constructs of Normalization Process Theory (NPT) to explore the implementation of SD as a complex and novel healthcare intervention under a qualitative study design. Data were collected through document analysis and interviews, and analysed under framework analysis protocols.

The intervention actors (IAs), including healthcare providers, district management agents, and staff from other departments, were active in implementation in the local context. It was observed that healthcare providers integrated SD into their professional lives through a higher level of collective action and reflexive monitoring. However, the results suggest that more coherence and cognitive participation are required for integration.

This novel research offers original and exclusive scenario narratives that satisfy the recent calls of the neo-implementation paradigm, and provides suggestions for managing the implementation impediments during the pandemic. The paper fills the implementation literature gap by exploring the normalisation process and designing a contextual framework for developing countries to implement guidelines for pandemics and healthcare crises.

The purpose of this paper is to explore two financial inclusion measures adopted within the local welfare context of the city of Milan, Italy, examining their functioning and underpinning representations. The aim is also to understand how such representations take concrete shape in the practices of local actors, and their implications for the opportunities and constraints regarding individuals' effective inclusion. To this end, this paper takes a wide-ranging look at the interplay between the rise of financial inclusion and the individualisation and responsibilisation models informing welfare policies, within the broader context of financialisation processes overall.

This paper draws on the sociology of public action approach and provides a qualitative analysis of two case studies, a social microcredit service and a financial education programme, based on direct observation and semi-structured interviews conducted with key policy actors.

This paper sheds light on the rationale behind two financial inclusion services and illustrates how the instruments involved incorporate and tend to reproduce, individualising logics that reduce the problem of financial exclusion, and the social and economic vulnerability which underlies it, to a matter of personal responsibility, thus fuelling depoliticising tendencies in public action. It also discusses the contradictions underlying financial inclusion instruments, showing how local actors negotiate views and strategies on the problems to be addressed.

The paper makes an original contribution to the field of sociology and social policy by focusing on two under-researched instruments of financial inclusion and improving understanding of the finance-welfare state nexus and of the contradictions underpinning attempts at financial inclusion of the most vulnerable.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the opportunity for the energy policy in Brazil to tackle the very high cost-effectiveness potencial of solar energy to the power system. Three mechanisms to achieve ambitious reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by 2030 and 2040 are assessed wherein treated as solar targets under ambitious reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. Then, three mechanisms to achieve these selected solar targets are suggested.

This paper reviews current and future incentive mechanisms to promote solar energy. An integrated energy system optimization model shows the most cost-efficient deployment level. Incentive mechanisms can promote renewable sources, aiming to tackle climate change and ensuring energy security, while taking advantage of endogenous energy resources potential. Based on a literature review, as well as on the specific characteristics of the Brazilian power system, under restrictions for the expansion of hydroelectricity and ambitious limitation in the emissions of greenhouse gases from the power sector.

The potential unexploited of solar energy is huge but it needs the appropriate incentive mechanism to be deployed. These mechanisms would be more effective if they have a specific technological and temporal focus. The solar energy deployment in large scale is important to the mitigation of climate change.

The value of the research is twofold: estimations of the cost-effective potential of solar technologies, generated from an integrated optimization energy model, fully calibrated for the Brazilian power system, while tacking the increasing electricity demand, the expected reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the need to increase the access to clean and affordable energy, up to 2040; proposals of three mechanisms to deploy centralized PV, distributed PV and solar thermal power, taking the best experiences in several countries and the recent Brazilian cases.