Commitment Of Agencies Research Articles

NOAA issues scientific integrity policy

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the agency's first‐ever scientific integrity policy at a 7 December news briefing at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Calif. The policy follows a December 2010 White House memorandum that issued guidance to federal agencies implementing scientific integrity policies (see “White House issues scientific integrity policies,” Eos Trans. AGU, 91(51), 503, doi:10.1029/2010EO510003, 2010). The purpose of the NOAA policy is “to promote a continuing culture of scientific excellence and integrity, and to establish a policy on the integrity of scientific activities that the agency conducts and uses to inform management and policy decisions,” the agency's administrative order states. “In addition, the intent of the policy is to strengthen widespread confidence—from scientists, to decisionmakers, to the general public—in the quality, validity, and reliability of NOAA science and to denote the agency's commitment to a culture of support for excellence of NOAA's principal science asset, its employees.”

Home healthcare nurse retention and patient outcome model: discussion and model development

This paper discusses additions to an empirically tested model of home healthcare nurse retention. An argument is made that the variables of shared decision-making and organizational commitment be added to the model based on the authors' previous research and additional evidence from the literature. Previous research testing the home healthcare nurse retention model established empirical relationships between nurse, agency, and area characteristics to nurse job satisfaction, intent to stay, and retention. Unexplained model variance prompted a new literature search to augment understanding of nurse retention and patient and agency outcomes. Data come from the authors' previous research, and a literature search from 1990 to 2011 on the topics organizational commitment, shared decision-making, nurse retention, patient outcomes and agency performance. The literature provides a rationale for the additional variables of shared decision-making and affective and continuous organizational commitment, linking these variables to nurse job satisfaction, nurse intent to stay, nurse retention and patient outcomes and agency performance. Implications for nursing. The new variables in the model suggest that all agencies, even those not struggling to retain nurses, should develop interventions to enhance nurse job satisfaction to assure quality patient outcomes. The new nurse retention and patient outcome model increases our understanding of nurse retention. An understanding of the relationship among these variables will guide future research and the development of interventions to create and maintain nursing work environments that contribute to nurse affective agency commitment, nurse retention and quality of patient outcomes.

How Movement Strength Matters: Social Movement Strength and the Implementation of Ethnodevelopment Policy in Ecuador and Peru

Why has Ecuador been much more successful at implementing participatory policy than Peru despite the similarity between the two countries’ policies and despite their similarly low state capacity? To answer this question, this article draws on insights from implementation literature that point to factors such as incentives written into policy, the commitment of administrations and bureaucratic agencies, and few veto points in the chain of implementation. While this article does not challenge such findings, it suggests that we must look further back in the causal chain to understand what brings such facilitating conditions about. Through an examination of ethnodevelopment policy in Ecuador and Peru, I find that the strength of social movements is most responsible for creating the conditions that foster implementation. Neither civil society nor the state alone can bring about successful participatory policy implementation. Rather, strong social movements can make the state comply with its own laws.

Subaltern Agency and Nationalist Commitment: The Dialectic of Social and National Emancipation in Colonial Eritrea

Some sixty-five years ago, in the immediate postwar period, Eritrea was one of the first colonies in Africa to grapple with the issue of decolonization. A self-conscious national movement first emerged in the towns from among the middle strata of teachers, clerks, translators, artisans, and merchants, who were situated in an ambivalent relationship to the colonial state. Its articulation coincided with the development of a subaltern movement of plebeian agropastoralists who had risen against their tributary overlords, and the contingent connection between them created propitious conditions for the elaboration of an anticolonial movement with deep social roots and popular vitality. This study examines the mutually constitutive dialectic between social mobilization and nationalist commitment and the reconstitution of collective subjectivities their conjunctural intersection made possible.

Systemic Light-Chain Amyloidosis: Advances in Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Therapy

Systemic light-chain amyloidosis (AL) is caused by misfolded immunoglobulin light-chain proteins that aggregate and deposit as unique fibrils, ultimately leading to organ failure and death. Recent developments that have significantly aided the management of patients with AL include diagnostic techniques for definitive typing of amyloid deposits by use of laser microdissection with mass spectrometry and customized protein bioinformatics, and validated staging and response-scoring systems that improve clinical trial design. The widespread use of cardiac biomarker staging and serum-free light-chain levels to evaluate response to therapy has also improved care. Standard therapies such as oral melphalan and dexamethasone or autologous stem cell transplant continue to be important options, while thalidomide and its analogs, lenalidomide and pomalidomide, and the proteasome-inhibitor bortezomib have activity in AL and have expanded our armamentarium. Continued improvement in outcomes, however, will require the commitment and cooperation of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies, academic investigators, and cooperative groups/consortia. This effort will involve the conduct of well-designed clinical trials of new agents and combinations within a modern framework that categorizes the study populations of patients with AL, defines the end points appropriate to those populations and to the different phases of clinical trials, employs the newly available staging and response criteria, and standardizes adverse event reporting.

Public policy in intellectual and developmental disability

To summarize research into public policy affecting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, published in 2009 and early 2010. There is a growing body of international policy relating to intellectual disability, usually expressed as general moral objectives. However, these may neglect the importance of protecting people with intellectual disabilities from exploitation and violence. The importance in recent years of neoliberal conceptions of the state have led to proxy purchasing of services by public agencies, which may steer people with intellectual disabilities into a limited array of services negotiated between public authorities, family carers, and people with intellectual disabilities themselves. Some of these services may treat their clients in a childlike way, and fail to promote choice. These problems arise from several organizational factors including the difficulty experienced by staff in reconciling agency commitments to empowerment with the reality of their clients' limited capacity for making informed and rational choices. Public policy affecting the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disability is an underdeveloped area of scholarship. There is a need for more critical analysis, drawing on a broader range of academic disciplines.

Public-Academic Partnerships: Tools for Mental Health Agencies to Evaluate Research Protocols

Research involving community mental health center clients, resources, or both can affect clinical care, administrative processes, and costs. To help agencies identify and quantify these effects, a stakeholder group examined and discussed a range of protocols and then developed questionnaires and rating scales for agency use. The purpose of these materials is to make explicit the risks, costs, and benefits of a research protocol so an agency can make informed decisions about protocol approval and implementation. The goal of this work was to promote the conduct of appropriate research in community mental health settings while reducing risks to the agency and its clientele.

Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater (review)

Reviewed by: Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater Emily Klein Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater. By Lynne Conner. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007; pp. 304. $32.00 cloth. How does a city become a theatre destination? What particular regional constellations of history, geography, funding, and demographics are necessary for a thriving theatre community to flourish? Many theatre critics have held up Seattle and Minneapolis as successful civic models to be studied and emulated. Through innovative government partnerships, local play-development programs, and architectural restoration projects, these cities have nurtured and sustained their resident theatre artists and organizations. But in her new theatre history, Lynne Conner asks readers, “What about Pittsburgh?” Pittsburgh in Stages: Two Hundred Years of Theater traces two centuries of largely forgotten performance activity in a city that is usually only associated with steel mills and sports teams. Even Pittsburgh residents (like myself) who can attest to the current vibrancy of the local theatre scene will be surprised to learn how much drama was being staged here long before Andy Warhol and August Wilson put Steel City on the national cultural map. [End Page 128] Conner’s detailed history is organized into ten chronological chapters that emphasize the changing role the theatre has played within the larger context of Pittsburgh’s cultural and economic development. Starting in 1790, this study positions theatre as the cultural lens through which the author investigates trends in local immigration, labor, industry, and social and religious practice. In order to demonstrate the ebb and flow of the financial commitment of patrons, philanthropists, and city agencies, the book draws mainly on period newspapers and economic histories. Although initially inspired by her research as the resident playwright at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, Conner’s work also relies on playbills and business records from a number of archives, such as the impressive Curtis Theatre Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. As a whole, this study does not just tell the story of Pittsburgh’s evolving theater community, it also reveals how the city’s persistent struggle for self-definition has played out on its stages over the last 200 years. “Indeed, the story of Pittsburgh’s theater industry is really the story of the city itself—a tale of community activity, investment, and identity that closely reflects the evolution of a frontier village into one of the United States’ major metropolitan areas” (xi). Since Pittsburgh’s earliest theatre ventures, this paradoxical city has struggled to define itself both in contrast to and in imitation of that famous behemoth of theatrical talent and productivity that is New York City. In her first two chapters on “Theater as Community Life” and “Theater as Community Investment,” Conner illustrates the changes that led Pittsburgh to shift “from an outpost for soldiers and traders to a destination for immigrants, land settlers, and entrepreneurs” (20). She notes that one early sign of local interest in professional theatre was the construction of its first permanent, free-standing playhouse in 1813—a full three years before the act of incorporation that chartered Pittsburgh as an official city in 1816. Pittsburgh quickly became a training ground for young theatre professionals, as well as a testing site for traveling companies bound for Broadway. In 1822, a young Edwin Forrest wrote home about his company’s travels in western Pennsylvania: “I am much pleased with this place and its inhabitants, [it] is a sort of London in miniature, very black and smoky. . . . The theater is very old” (15). But despite the city’s ability to attract notable touring acts, Conner points out that Pittsburghers themselves could not agree on whether a thriving theatre industry was an indicator of high culture and refinement or a bastion of moral depravity. This tension was just one of the many socioeconomic factors that contributed to the theatre’s unstable position in the region’s cultural landscape. As Conner’s study moves from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth, readers get a richer sense of Pittsburgh’s diverse theatre audiences. With increasing class stratification and racial and ethnic communities becoming more clearly defined, playhouse managers developed new strategies to increase attendance...

An analysis of e-business adoption and its impact on relational quality in travel agency–supplier relationships

This study analyzes how managers of retail travel agencies perceive the antecedents and consequences of adopting e-business in their supplier relationships. A comprehensive model integrating its antecedents and relational effects is developed and empirically tested using SEM. The study surveyed 101 travel agents in Spain. Research findings indicate that customer pressure has a strong influence on e-communication practices. E-communication with the travel agency's supplier and the pressure exerted by the sector are the main antecedents for e-procurement. Effects of e-business on relational quality are contradictory. E-procurement influences negatively on trust. Conversely, e-communication has a positive impact on trust, thus having a favorable impact on perceived reciprocity and travel agent's commitment to its supplier. Main findings indicate that the use of the Internet is largely driven by normative pressures, and this coercive power has a detrimental impact on trust. To avoid such negative consequences, perceived reciprocity is a prerequisite for committed supplier relationships.

X-A Defence of Categorical Reasons

In this paper I offer two arguments designed to defend the existence of categorical reasons, which I define as those justifying considerations that obtain independently of their relation to an agent's commitments. The first argument is based on certain paradigm cases meant to reveal difficulties for practical instrumentalism—the view, as I define it here, that categorical reasons do not exist, because all reasons must serve the commitments of the agents to whom they apply. The second argument relies on considerations of responsibility and blame to establish the existence of categorical reasons.

Speaking the Same Language within the International Organizations: A Proposal for an Enhanced Evaluation Approach to Measure and Compare Success of International Organizations

It is currently difficult for Member States to assess and compare the success or performance of UN organizations despite recent movements towards results-based approaches. Efforts in the implementation of logical frameworks have been too independent and uncoordinated and left at the discretion of agencies. This has led to different and deficient implementations of the same theoretical approach making it almost impossible to draw any conclusions. The lack of a common approach is perceptible across agencies in the diversity of evaluation standards and terminology used to describe the same concepts, the unevenness and diversity of staff training as well as in the way intentions and results are presented. The myriad of organizations with some different sort of evaluation role may be seen as an additional symptom of the lack of coordination within the UN system. The establishment of a useful and reliable evaluation process in the UN system requires three main elements: 1- a common and enhanced evaluation framework, 2- the human and organizational capacity to ensure the accurate implementation of the framework, and 3- the commitment of Member States and agencies to implement the approach. This report mainly discusses the common evaluation framework and methodological issues, although it also provides significant insight regarding how to build the human and organizational capacity of the UN to carry out this approach. Assessing the success of an organization entails the determination of three elements: mandate or mission relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency. The report provides insight into these three components of success but its primary focus is on effectiveness. Measuring effectiveness entails establishing precise targets to be reached by agencies and collecting actual results in order to assess if intended targets are being met. Indeed, assessing effectiveness encompasses comparing intentions (provided by targets) to actual achievements (collected through monitoring). The UN Secretariat itself does not provide targets to be met by the organization. Additionally, it over-emphasizes outputs (output implementation rates) and disregards the “big picture” provided by outcomes. Under the proposed approach, subprograms meeting most of their targets are the most effective. Programs (agencies) with a large share of effective subprograms (programs) may be considered effective themselves. As a way to simplify and give an intuitive sense of effectiveness, subprograms could be attributed a category or color following a “traffic light” methodology (green for satisfactory, amber for average, red for below expectations) according to the share of targets satisfactorily met. The same could be done for programs according to their share of satisfactory subprograms. Program and subprogram performance data of every agency could be centralized (by a coordinating body) in a comprehensive webpage that would facilitate comparison between similar functions or themes across the UN system [Please refer to pg. 27 for an elaborate illustration]. The report also suggests the possibility of complementing this objective approach with a perception survey. Despite significant limitations of this type of subjective approach, it is still widely used and gives an idea of which organizations are best regarded by their peers. Contrasting actual performance data and perception indicators could be revealing, and could shed light in areas where the objective methodology may fall short. One of the most important recommendations concerns the organizational capacity ensuring the accurate implementation of the evaluation approach. This capacity should be embodied by a centralizing coordinating body (perhaps under the CEB) that would 1-ensure a common evaluation training and support of UN staff and uniformity of standards (terminology, methods, etc.), 2- centralize performance data gathered from agencies in a common database and present results in a user-friendly manner where programs and agencies could be compared and 3- verify the validity of the data submitted by the agencies (performance auditing).

Implementing the Illness Management and Recovery Program in Community Mental Health Settings: Facilitators and Barriers

Implementing the Illness Management and Recovery Program in Community Mental Health Settings: Facilitators and Barriers

Mapping knowledge investments in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: a new approach for assessing regulatory agency responses to environmental disaster

Abstract In the aftermath of large-scale disasters, the public's dependency on federal and state agencies for information about public safety and environmental risk is acute. While formal rules and procedures are in place to guide policy decisions in environmental risk assessment of spatially concentrated hazards such as regulated waste sites or vacant city lots, standard procedures for risk assessment seem potentially less well-suited for urban-scale disaster zones where environmental hazards may be widely dispersed and widely varying. In this paper we offer a new approach for the social assessment of regulatory science in response to large-scale disaster, illustrating our methodology through a socio-spatial analysis of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) hazard assessment in New Orleans, Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We find that the agency's commitment of epistemic resources or “knowledge investments” varied considerably across the flood-impacted portion of the city, concentrating in poorer and disproportionately African American neighborhoods previously known to be heavily contaminated. We address some of the study's social and policy implications, noting the multidimensionality and interactive nature of knowledge investments and the prospects for deepening and extending this approach through comparative research.

Editorial

In the more than 25 years since the advent of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic the commitment of international agencies national governments the private sector people living with HIV/AIDS and donors have contributed to dramatic changes in the global response. Trends in HIV prevalence have stabilized in some developing countries greater coverage of key prevention interventions such as the prevention of mother-to-child transmission have at times been achieved and access to treatment has increased fivefold between 2003 and 2006. In addition to increased prevention and treatment provision successful strides have also occurred in the mobilization of global financial resources for HIV/AIDS. According to estimates of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) global HIV/ AIDS spending rose from approximately US $300 million in 1996 to approximately US$10 billion in 2007 a more than 30-fold increase. The impact of HIV/AIDS has however increased as the epidemic matures and with new infections estimated at 2.5 million per year expanded prevention efforts are still sorely needed. Even with the unprecedented level of funding now available an additional US$8.1 billion is still required if universal access to prevention treatment and care is to be provided to all those infected with HIV. Questions have thus shifted towards how to combine or maximize outcomes from HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention strategies efficiently. To this end the papers in this supplement explore the question: how do we best utilize the increased funding available? (excerpt)

Intergovernmental Cooperation in Benchmarking a Local Government Continuity-of-Operations Exercise

This paper describes intergovernmental cooperation in the conduct of a local government continuity-of-operations exercise by the Public Works Division, Bernalillo County, New Mexico. The commitment of Bernalillo County to cooperation included the implementation of national standards and recommended practice. The commitment was based on principle and not on funding. The planning, training, and exercise cycle is considered part of the ongoing responsibility of the agency and is funded within the Public Works Division's operating budget. All levels of government participated in the exercise. The commitment of other agencies to the local government exercise included external evaluation, review of the After-Action Report and Improvement Plan, the support of continuity of operations, and ongoing cooperation in critical infrastructure protection. The state involvement in the exercise was through the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management as well as the Department of Health. Federal agencies supporting the exercise were the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Office of the U.S. Attorney; the 377th Wing Command, Kirtland Air Force Base; Sandia National Laboratories; and the National Nuclear Security Administration. The exercise was successful. The conduct of the exercise demonstrated that the division was well prepared. Essential functions were relocated and were operational in a period shorter than that identified by federal standard and local target timelines. Local governments such as Bernalillo County are capable as well as committed to intergovernmental cooperation. As a result of commitment and cooperation, a benchmark is offered for continuity-of-operations resilience.

Specialists in Welfare Offices

ABSTRACT In many welfare offices, a key component of the Family Violence Option (FVO) of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was the establishment of experts trained in domestic violence and the new policy. This study analyzes the effect an FVO expert has on three outcomes: domestic violence disclosures; administrative documentation of disclosures; and FVO waiver use. Findings show that the presence of an expert is not related to disclosures or documentation, but does have a statistically significant, negative effect on the likelihood of waiver use. These mixed results indicate that the presence or absence of an expert is not necessarily indicative of an agency's commitment to the FVO.

Views of family carers to the future accommodation and support needs of their relatives with intellectual disabilities.

The demand for places in supported accommodation is likely to rise due to the increasing longevity of people with intellectual disabilities and as their parents become unavailable or unable to care for them. However few attempts have been made to ascertain carer's views on alternative accommodation. Four studies were undertaken in Northern Ireland to ascertain carer's views using three different methods. In all, 387 carers participated with the response being greatest for individual interviews conducted in the family home and least for self-completed questionnaires and attendance at group meetings. The majority of carers envisaged the person continuing to be cared for within the family. The most commonly chosen out-of-home provision was in residential or nursing homes, living with support in a house of their own and in homes for small groups of people. Few carers chose living with another family. However only small numbers of carers envisaged alternative provision being needed in the next two years and few had made any plans for alternative living arrangements. The implications for service planning are noted, primarily the need for individual reviews of future needs through person-centred planning; improved information to carers about various residential options and their differential benefits, along with more services aimed at improving the quality of life of people living with family carers. These need to be underpinned by a commitment of statutory agencies to partnership working with family carers. The implications for mental health services are noted.

Commitment to Public Leisure Service Providers: A Conceptual and Psychometric Analysis

In this investigation, we proposed and tested a scale designed to measure recreationists' commitment to public leisure Service providers. We suggested that the identity of public leisure Service providers is embedded in the facilities and settings they manage. Consequently, we feel that it is important to consider recreationists' commitment to public leisure Service providers by examining the meanings they associate with the settings and facilities managed by the agency in addition to their trust in the agency's ability to manage these settings in a manner consistent with these meanings. To operationalize this conceptualization, we drew upon the place bonding literature to construct a measure of agency commitment that consisted of five dimensions; affective attachment, place dependence, place identity, social bonding, and value congruence. Data were collected from two public leisure Service contexts: the Chattahoochee National Forest and Cleveland Metroparks. Our analyses offered strongest support for a correlated factor model consisting of the five proposed dimensions. In addition to offering a valid and reliable measure of public agency commitment, this paper also provides an example of the utility of structural equation modeling for the systematic testing of attitudinal scales.

False, cheap and degraded: when history, economy and environment collided at Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created in 1934 after decades of popular activism. The National Park Service initially planned to restore wildness to all formerly settled lands through the process of secondary succession, but did not in a valley in the northwest corner of the park, Cades Cove. Transforming the 1200-ha agricultural setting into forest would have eliminated the visual charm highly prized by the tourists who had long come there. Additionally, experts promoted the preservation of Cades Cove's historic–cultural landscape because they falsely perceived the local culture to be a relic of the past. The Park Service acceded, but its commitment to historic preservation was tempered by a concern to minimize its expenses. Consequently, an agricultural permit system was adopted in 1945, which allowed modern farmers to operate on the historic landscape, keeping it open. This cheap method kept open the beautiful vistas of Cades Cove. Unfortunately, the agency's commitment to beauty and economy led to decades of ecological degradation, including water pollution and species extirpation. Only in the last two decades, has park management moved away from its focus on a low-cost, attractive landscape to embrace one that is also ecologically healthy, and thus more sustainable.

Health information systems in humanitarian emergencies.

Health information systems (HIS) in emergencies face a double dilemma: the information necessary to understand and respond to humanitarian crises must be timely and detailed, whereas the circumstances of these crises makes it challenging to collect it. Building on the technical work of the Health Metrics Network on HIS and starting with a systemic definition of HIS in emergencies, this paper reviews the various data-collection platforms in these contexts, looking at their respective contributions to providing what humanitarian actors need to know to target their intervention to where the needs really are. Although reporting or sampling errors are unavoidable, it is important to identify them and acknowledge the limitations inherent in generalizing data that were collected in highly heterogeneous environments. To perform well in emergencies, HIS require integration and participation. In spite of notable efforts to coordinate data collection and dissemination practices among humanitarian agencies, it is noted that coordination on the ground depends on the strengths and presence of a lead agency, often WHO, and on the commitment of humanitarian agencies to investing resources in data production. Poorly integrated HIS generate fragmented, incomplete and often contradictory statistics, a situation that leads to a misuse of numbers with negative consequences on humanitarian interventions. As a means to avoid confusion regarding humanitarian health statistics, this paper stresses the importance of submitting statistics to a rigorous and coordinated auditing process prior to their publication. The audit trail should describe the various steps of the data production chains both technically and operationally, and indicate the limits and assumptions under which each number can be used. Finally emphasis is placed on the ethical obligation for humanitarian agencies to ensure that the necessary safeguards on data are in place to protect the confidentiality of victims and minority groups in politically sensitive contexts.