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Attachment to place is a positive emotional bond that develops between individuals and their environment (Hunter, 1978; Altman & Low, 1992). It is a state of psychological well-being experienced as a result of the accessibility of place, or conversely a state of distress set up by the remoteness of place (Giuliani, 1991). This attachment is important because it generates identification with place and fosters social and political involvement in the preservation of the physical and social features that characterize a neighborhood. In fact, a number of studies have shown that the stronger the neighborhood attachment, the more likely individuals are to develop a set of norms and to exert effective formal and informal social control that reduces crime (Sampson & Groves, 1989) and to fend off attempts to change the social and physical nature of the area (Mesch, 1996).

Purpose – The chapter aims to understand what kind of policy approach has been more successful in facilitating the involvement of patients and the public in the design and provision of health-care services at the local level and the explanatory factors justifying the implementation outcome.Methodology – By applying Richard Matland's ambiguity/conflict policy implementation model, the chapter analyses the impact of a number of policies introduced after 1997 in the English National Health Service that targeted final users and the local population in decision-making processes.Findings – The evidence shows that policies emphasising the importance of context-specific contingencies can be more effectively implemented when room for interpretation and discretion in selecting the appropriate means for involvement is given. In this way, the overall aims/purposes of health policies can be locally reshaped by allowing the adoption of flexible strategies within the implementation process.Practical implications – A strong leadership at the top of public sector organisations and, in particular, from the board of directors is needed to steer and facilitate a consensus oriented outcome in organisational decision-making processes that aim to incorporate the views and opinions of patients and the public.Social implications – Local initiatives in increasing participation, for specific purposes, are bound to be more successful than a general initiative, expecting comparatively uniform implementation.

Historically business education has put greater emphasis on rational analysis and the acquisition of instrumental and technical knowledge, while paying relatively scant attention to developing business students’ soft skills such as self- and social awareness and emotional intelligence through contemplative learning. In light of the growing need for more open and diverse ways of knowing that are more holistic, emotional, and aesthetic in management education, the authors present a 2 × 2 framework of arts-based pedagogy which helps organize various arts-based practices currently used in management education. The authors also share their personal reflections on using artful practices, specifically focussing on two individual-level experiential learning activities (i.e. museum visits and e-portfolio projects) and one group-based participatory art project. The authors further discuss why creative thinking and innovative arts-based practices can open up a new possibility for filling the gaps in current management education, especially in regard to developing students’ self- and social awareness and environmental consciousness in a more creative manner.

In the late autumn of 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in Foshan city in the People's Republic of China, and over the next few months it rapidly spread to every continent and 29 countries. Although plagues may be global events, they are ultimately fought at the local level. In discussing the SARS epidemic, I present two theses. (1) In the wake of a plague, politics tends to shape a community's response in protecting the system, evaluating performances and allocating blame, punishments, and rewards, and restructuring organizations. (2) Because of their potential for demographic and institutional destruction, systemic responses to plague tend to become entwined in politics at all levels – the local, national, and international.

In a process termed “organizational centrifugalism,” this chapter describes how avant-garde artists sought new, alternative organizational spaces for innovations in the visual arts from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century and how new alternative marketspaces co-evolved with these new organizational spaces. Organizational centrifugalism begins with the denouement of the state-run Salon and Academy in the mid-nineteenth century; the rise of the dealer-critic system and other, non-salon alternative exhibition spaces of French Impressionism in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and through many new organizational spaces associated with Modernism such as formal artists groups, museums, great exhibitions, schools of art, and Modernist art itself. The ultimate effect of organizational centrifugalism is drawing avant-garde art closer to the public and eventually the masses. Excessive organizational centrifugalism, however, can be dangerous to the avant-garde art.

This paper examines the determinants of neighborhood readiness to engage in collective action for substance abuse prevention. Factors investigated include community composition (characteristics such as SES, presence of children, racial composition), community context (drug problems and police resources), and community organization (formal neighborhood association functioning, informal neighboring, collective activities). Data were obtained from 188 community leaders who reported about their neighborhood, and census data were aggregated to the neighborhood level. Community composition and context factors had opposite effects on formal and informal neighborhood organization: SES was positively associated with informal neighboring and negatively associated with formal organization, while drug problem severity was negatively associated with informal neighboring and positively associated with formal organization. Yet, formal and informal organization were positively associated with one another, and both were positively associated with perceived readiness of the neighborhood to engage in additional drug prevention activities in the future.