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Any organisation, even a newly formed one, will have its own repertoire of practices and routines that reflect the purpose of the organisation and the prior experience of the people in it. This leads to the notion of a “corporate memory”. This paper presents a systems‐engineering style of characterisation comprised eight sub‐processes linked by knowledge and/or data flows that result in day‐to‐day actions within the organisation. The nature of flows between the sub‐processes is examined, considering the types of knowledge involved, and factors that may facilitate or inhibit the flow of knowledge. The model has proven useful in understanding what drives the organisation, and in developing a form of diagnostic tool to study how to better share knowledge within the organisation.

It is observed that concepts of a learning organization and of knowledge management intended to better utilize the intellectual assets of a business enterprise in supporting continuous improvement and innovation are appealing in principle, but difficult to implement in practice. A significant repertoire of competencies and practices must be acquired or refined, which takes investment and time. A need for performance measurement to demonstrate benefits is also noted. Two case studies illustrate some issues and strategies associated with the implementation of knowledge‐oriented improvement processes. Some “maps” to assist in understanding an enterprise's current position and what may be encountered on the journey ahead are presented.

This paper shares experiences from action research carried out by the author in an SME business setting where collaboration is becoming a strategic necessity. Many industry participants are interested in entering a collaboration, but are concerned about issues of trust, particularly where a new collaboration must be rapidly established to pursue a market opportunity and there is little time for the partners to learn about each other. The paper draws on a number of contributions from the literature that trust building can be described as a process; that there are a number of dimensions to inter‐organizational trust; and that there are levels of trust that may be assigned. On the basis that “trust is a risky business” it is suggested that a particular view of risk assessment and risk management can be used as an initiating alternative to a focus on trust. It is observed that there is an interaction between trust and management actions that is related to the level of perceived risk, and a real world example is given. It is suggested that the risk management approach presented can be useful in the joint design of a collaboration by the participants, and that following such a process can, of itself build trust.

This study examines five national public policy areas where states and local governments received grants-in-aid from the federal government; these grants approximate a fifth of their yearly revenue budgets. Knowing the historical trends and concentrations can minimize expectation errors of practitioners and policy makers and facilitate future revenue planning. The grants examined between 1940 and 2010 include income security, health, education and training, economic and regional development, and transportation. The study uses agency theory to rationalize relationships among the governments, and applies statistical modeling, multiple means comparisons and discriminant analyses to test whether there are distinct policy concentrations and differences among policy regimes. Our findings show transfers were continuous, physically important and unaffected significantly by adjustments due to size and prices. The study found concentrations and differences among policy regimes.

This article considers the recent emphasis on the importance and value of citizen participation, involvement, and engagement in local government and how active participation extends to public budgeting. The inclusion of citizen participation in local government budget processes challenges the traditional budget discourse between managers and representatives. Active citizen participation provides valuable comments and insight as well as complexity and challenges to administrative processes. This article discusses the themes, opportunities, techniques and strategies developed in this symposium to expand citizen participation in public budgeting. Continued discussion and innovation in active citizen participation in budgeting is encouraged.

Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) support community living for three million disabled people in the United States. As a state-federal partnership, these programs are highly variable across states. Because eligibility determination and services differ from state to state, this Medicaid structure becomes a barrier for those HCBS users whose desired futures include cross-state moves.

I examine narratives of citizenship and personhood for Medicaid HCBS users circulating within policy arenas and explore tensions between these and the stories Medicaid HCBS users tell of their own lives. Specifically, I explore the degree to which narratives about Medicaid HCBS users include an affirmation of the right to cross-state movement. My analysis includes data from public statements from policy makers, legislative texts, organizational framings of Medicaid policy, and 18 semi-structured interviews with Medicaid PCA users who desired or pursued cross-state moves.

I conclude that institutional narratives of Medicaid HCBS users are an inadequate representation of the stories told by those who rely on this program and, in consequence, programs stemming from policy fail to offer services that would allow service recipients to pursue their objectives.

Medicaid HCBS policy is part of a broader story of disability rights progress over the last four decades, making its role as an obstacle to cross-state movement a bit of a paradox. This paradox points to the value of narrative analysis in calling attention to invisible contradictions and the need for institutional and organizational change.

In Seattle and other cities, recent expansions of trespass law make the regulation of public space easier and more extensive. A range of new tools allow police officials to clear spaces of those deemed undesirable; they define zones of exclusion and increase the police's power to make arrests. The use of these tools extends contemporary practices of using criminal law to address instances of urban “disorder.” We draw on data from Seattle to catalog some of these new tools, the capabilities they create, and the implications they generate. One important such implication is that they work to push undesirables so far to the margins – spatially, socially, politically, legally – as to render them far outside the body politic. The use of these techniques thus raises important questions about the advisability of addressing social problems by increasing the power of the criminal law.