Search results

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for the study of public procurement policy. It reviews policy-related writings by public procurement scholars and assesses these works from the perspective of their contributions to generalized understandings of public procurement policy. Selected tools and concepts from the policy sciences are applied to propose a model to illuminate unique aspects of public procurement policy in ways that will facilitate its study. The paper concludes by discussing some recent actions, trends, and issues from the U.S defense procurement sector in terms of the framework. Models such as the one proposed in this paper will contribute to enhanced approaches to procurement policy analysis by scholars, as well as to informed and sophisticated policy implementation by practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between firms’ experience of small- and medium-size enterprise (SME)-friendly policy and their participation and success in public procurement.

Hypothesised relationships between SME-friendly policy and three outcome variables – frequency of tendering, success rate in public contract competitions, and commercial orientation towards the public sector – are tested using survey data from 2,755 SME respondents.

SME-friendly policy is found to be significant in explaining success rates and commercial orientation towards the public sector marketplace. It is not significant in explaining frequency of tendering.

The context for the study is Ireland. However, given institutional similarities in national public procurement regimes, particularly among EU Member States, the findings have relevance beyond the Irish context. The research design is cross-sectional and so does not allow for any causal claims to be made.

This study puts forward and tests an original model of SME-friendly procurement policy and its associated outcomes for firms. It develops a comprehensive 16-item instrument to measure SME-friendly procurement policy. It uses SMEs as research informants instead of public buyers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, through the use of a multidisciplinary lens, the policy context and the scope for improvements in university‐based public programmes focused on improving innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The authors use the street‐level bureaucracy (SLB), combined with the systems of innovation approach (SIA) and diagnostic analysis (DA) to understand the context components that impact on public programme services. The study is part of a research programme oriented to the diffusion of information systems in SMEs and which used original interview‐based programme support case studies, interviews with regional policy managers, and documentation relating to the policy system and different public programmes. Although the empirical work was UK and European Union centric the results of the research have wide applicability.

The paper establishes the importance of programme contexts for diagnosing and providing a basis for public programme improvements. It further demonstrates the robustness of the context analysis framework to provide insights into proposed policy changes. The responsibility of improving programme contexts relies on actors that operate outside programme organisations, for instance EU funding bodies, government departments in charge of SME policies, public‐private partnerships, and private evaluators. Given this complexity it is suggested that SME associations have a potentially important role in increasing participation by SMEs in the public programme for innovation and knowledge support policy. Despite possible policy changes the requirement for public programme support for innovation and hence the role of universities as programme providers is confirmed and expanded.

The results demonstrate the value of a multidisciplinary framework to analyse programme interventions at both macro and micro levels and provide a basis for programme policy and policy implementation improvements.

This research is a novel attempt to use the SLB, SIA and DA to public programme university‐based interventions in SMEs and SME policies in general. It complements extant research on open innovation and knowledge exchange by extending the concept of public programme contexts. Beneficiaries of the findings include policy makers, programme organisations, universities, SME associations, and researchers.

Cyberstalking is a growing threat to society, and policymakers should address it utilizing the input of constituents. For this, two key components are required: actionable objectives informed by the values of society and the means of implementation to maximize their potential benefits. The process should be guided by the constituent's values, requiring the elicitation of intrinsic values as individual preferences that are extrapolated to society at large.

The authors utilize Keeney's (1990) public value forum and Sen's (1999) social choice theory (Sen, 1999) to elicit and convert these intrinsic values to serve as the basis for developing public policy to prevent cyberstalking.

The results demonstrate a strong desire by participants to have clear regulations, policies and procedures developed in concert with industry and enforced by the government that elucidate required protections against cyberstalking in combination with strong technical controls. These policies should guide technical control development and implementation, but leave ultimate control in the hands of technology users to decide what controls they want to utilize.

This study is the first to utilize Keeney's (1988) public value forum in the context of cyberstalking to develop quantitative measures regarding technology users' desired cybersecurity protections against cyberstalking. The authors provide a decision-making framework for policymakers to develop a new policy based on the input of their constituents in a manner that maximizes their potential utility and ultimate benefit.

It was not until the late 1960s that housing attracted much attention from academic social scientists. Since that time the literature has expanded widely and diversified, establishing housing with a specialised status in economics, sociology, politics, and in related subjects. As we would expect, the new literature covers a technical, statistical, theoretical, ideological, and historical range. Housing studies have not been conceived and interpreted in a monolithic way, with generally accepted concepts and principles, or with uniformly fixed and precise methodological approaches. Instead, some studies have been derived selectively from diverse bases in conventional theories in economics or sociology, or politics. Others have their origins in less conventional social theory, including neo‐Marxist theory which has had a wider intellectual following in the modern democracies since the mid‐1970s. With all this diversity, and in a context where ideological positions compete, housing studies have consequently left in their wake some significant controversies and some gaps in evaluative perspective. In short, the new housing intellectuals have written from personal commitments to particular cognitive, theoretical, ideological, and national positions and experiences. This present piece of writing takes up the two main themes which have emerged in the recent literature. These themes are first, questions relating to building and developing housing theory, and, second, the issue of how we are to conceptualise housing and relate it to policy studies. We shall be arguing that the two themes are closely related: in order to create a useful housing theory we must have awareness and understanding of housing practice and the nature of housing.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the policy tools to complement public involvement and public‐private collaboration in the deployment of next generation electronic communications infrastructures.

The special issue, of which this paper is a part, examines a number of policy tools that support public involvement and enhance public‐private partnering in next generation infrastructures, tools that are generally overlooked. The papers explore the main domains where these complementary actions might take place. They encompass policies directed to the demand and supply sides of the market, information society and industrial innovation policies, additional measures that can be taken by local and regional public administrations and new policy tools to foster user empowerment.

From the authors' perspective, public involvement and public‐private partnering for the deployment of next generation infrastructures in telecommunications will require an integrated policy approach. The appropriate policy mix includes instruments of innovation, information society development and new user empowerment.

This paper introduces a timely contribution to the debate on public support of next generation infrastructures in electronic communications.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the language of “weeding” (library deselection) within public library collection development policies in order to examine whether such policies and practices can be usefully connected to library and information science (LIS) theory, specifically to “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as suggested by Buschman (2017) in the pages of this journal.

This is a policy analysis of collection deselection policies from the 50 public libraries serving US state capitals, using Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique.

“Weeding” as described by these public library collection deselection policies is clearly pragmatic and oriented to increasing circulation to patrons, but the “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as reflected by many of those reviewed might better be defined as the pragmatism of Melvil Dewey rather than that of John Dewey.

Although this work reviewed policies from a very small sample of US public libraries, collection, selection and deselection language as shown in the policies studied appear to be consistent with neoliberal priorities and values in terms of prioritizing “circulation” and “customers,” which may have additional implications for the current transition from print to electronic materials in public libraries

John Dewey’s political philosophy and Carol Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique have not been widely used in policy analysis by LIS researchers, and this paper offers a number of suggestions for similar public library policy investigations.

Public dislike of taxes led to tax revolt and tax reform. Despite the connection between tax attitudes and tax policy, relatively little is known about public attitudes toward taxes over time, and how public opinion either shapes or is shaped by changes in tax policy. We examine the link between opinion and changes in tax policy in Florida, where the public’s view of sales and property taxes was surveyed consistently from 1979-1997, a time when both taxes changed significantly. This combination of tax reform and survey data allows us to observe the pattern of public opinion before, during, and after changes in tax policy, and to draw inferences about whether public opinion leads or lags state action, while examining common explanations for individual differences in opinion. Among other things, our results indicate that the portrait of an anti-tax populace is overdrawn and that the pattern of opinion differs for each tax.