Broader System Changes Research Articles

“Just” ecopreneurs: re-conceptualising green transitions and entrepreneurship

ABSTRACTEconomic, environmental, and social limits of the current capitalist mode of production have led to a rethinking and reconceptualisation of economic processes and models including the role of businesses in sustainable development. While green economies and more specifically green entrepreneurs have been identified as agents of change that can challenge the mainstream and seek to induce environmental, social, and ethical transformation of society, much research has stayed within existing models of thinking predominantly rooted in technocratic approaches (e.g. ecological modernisation and more recently transition studies). This paper seeks to offer an alternative understanding of green entrepreneurship that breaks open these discussions using an environmental justice frame that focuses on the role of extra-economic discourses in shaping the social relations of economic systems. By drawing on an exemplary case study of “just” entrepreneurship from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, the paper seeks to start a conversation around the ideas of green entrepreneurship and environmental justice as vehicles to deliver potentially broader system changes and explores both conceptual and practical aspects of green development. As such, it offers (1) evidence of a just green economy that can be realised within existing capitalist structures as well as (2) a different conceptual entry point to understanding green entrepreneurship.

Beekeepers’ knowledges and participation in pollinator conservation policy

This paper considers the potential for beekeepers' knowledges to be incorporated into participatory policy processes addressing current challenges to pollinator health. Pollinator decline is a serious issue for future food security and wider environmental resilience, with important implications for rural land use governance. The precipitous decline in global pollinator populations over recent years has resulted in a range of government initiatives to tackle the causes identified. In the UK this includes a National Pollinator Strategy in England and Pollinator Action Plan in Wales. These plans are notable for their introduction of a more participatory approach, incorporating ‘lay-knowledge’ and citizen science from beekeeping practitioners alongside scientific data. This paper presents evidence from interviews and participant observation with key stakeholders within the beekeeping community in the UK, alongside archival material from the Bee Farmers' Association, to assess the knowledge controversies arising from this strategy. Specifically, the paper considers the distinction of beekeepers' knowledges from typically acknowledged expert sources, whilst also reflecting upon aspects of plurality and tension within the beekeeping community. The paper concludes by outlining some areas of contestation between beekeepers and the wider policy and scientific community, which could impact on the future success of more participatory forums. This includes, firstly, evidence of hierarchies and exclusions in the forms of knowledge considered, when insights from professional scientists are privileged above those from beekeepers and when some beekeepers knowledges are given more credit than others. Secondly, we consider limitations resulting from policy makers' evidence requirements for peer-reviewed science, which can further exacerbate the exclusion of beekeepers' insights and lead to scenarios whereby policy only engages with a narrow set of criteria that may not be beneficial when advanced in isolation from the broader system changes. Finally, aspects of policy clash are outlined between pollinator conservation and wider agricultural strategies that seek to maintain a productivist agenda.

Integrity management and the public service ethos in the UK: patchwork quilt or threadbare blanket?

This article focuses on integrity management in contemporary UK public life. Despite traditionally high standards of integrity in the public service, it has recently been argued that the UK’s approach resembles a patchwork quilt of poorly defined institutional roles, questionable independence, and contested notions of how best to disseminate and uphold ethical practice. The article traces how the British public service ethos (PSE), which places emphasis on informal codes of conduct and moral integrity, has evolved within broader systemic changes to the style of public service delivery. It is argued that pressures to decentralize public service delivery sit in tension with, and feed into, piecemeal attempts to centralize and codify integrity management. This dynamic is presented in terms of the tension between compliance-based and values-based approaches to integrity management. The article is structured in three parts. The first traces the evolution of the British public service ethos in order to situate integrity management in both its institutional and structural context. The second addresses recent academic debates and recommendations from key bodies such as the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) and the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC). It is shown how recommendations to create independent statutory bodies of ethical oversight have not been fully implemented. The third part seeks to place the UK experience within a broader context. In doing so, the article reflects on ways in which we can understand the concept and application of integrity management within and beyond the UK experience. Point for practitioners The article discusses the tensions between values-based and compliance-based approaches to integrity management in the United Kingdom. It seeks to explore how the former is closely linked to the existence and reproduction of what has been termed a ‘public service ethos'. As that ethos has been challenged by reforms associated with New Public Management, a series of scandals in the public sector has given rise to the adoption of more compliance-based responses. The key challenge for those designing approaches to integrity management is to reconcile the core values which underpin the public service ethos with accountability mechanisms that can be assessed on the basis of measurable performance indicators.

A Mental Health Needs Assessment of Urban American Indian Youth and Families

American Indian (AI) youth experience significant mental health disparities. The majority of AI youth live in urban areas, yet urban AI youth are underserved and unstudied. This manuscript describes a qualitative study of community mental health needs in an urban population of AI youth, conducted as part of the planning process for a system of care (SOC). Participants included 107 urban AI youth and families that participated in one of 16 focus groups assessing mental health needs and services. Forty-one percent of participants were youth or young adults. Data were coded and analyzed using qualitative software and then further analyzed and interpreted in partnership with a community research workgroup. Results indicated various community characteristics, mental health and wellness needs, and service system needs relevant to developing a system of care in this community. Key community, cultural, and social processes also emerged, reinforcing the importance of broader system changes to promote a sustainable SOC. These systems/policy changes are reviewed in the context of previous literature proposing necessary systems change to support behavioral health care in AI communities as well as to ensure that SOC implementation is consistent with core values and philosophy across all communities.

Life Imitates Art

Enron is more than tragedy; it is epic theatre. Epic theatre is not one narrator on one stage; it is a multitude of simultaneous theatric performances, collectively negotiated by inquiry participants (reporters, regulators, analysts), narrating while wandering in an unstable labyrinth of networked stages. Narrators of the Enron epic (in contrast to tragic) grasp together a wider cast of characters, interlace more historical incidents, and suggest broader systemic changes to capitalism and democracy. The stages of dramatic action (rising, crisis, falling, and denouement), which we are taught to expect in narration, do not settle into one emplotment in epic as they do in tragedy. The authors contend that the tragic narrative form constrains meltdown inquiry, whereas epic expands it. The tragic version of this corporate meltdown absolves us of culpability and responsibility, as the tragic hero becomes our scapegoat.

Water management networks in Hungary: Network development in a period of transition

In the countries of Central Europe the dynamics of network change are more marked than in most countries of Western Europe. The discontinuities between traditional patterns of water management and the new political and economic conditions that are presently emerging are quite dramatic. An examination of the way in which post‐communist developments are modifying the traditional system of Hungarian water management illustrates nicely the processes of institutional development and network change which are likely to be important in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well. Although things are in a state of flux ‐ and even though we have relatively little empirical information on actual operations — a brief description of the current arrangements for water management in Hungary provides a useful baseline from which to describe the institutional and societal context as well as the task environment out of which new patterns of water policy networks will develop. Such an analysis can suggest ways in which network relations and formal institutions interact and mutually shape one another in the daily practices through which ‘real’ policy is developed and applied. The Hungarian case makes clear how broader system changes modify the context of sectoral networks and how these become embedded in larger political and social structures. It is this set of more extensive changes that has created the need for new network relations and has, simultaneously, changed the rules and the conditions under which these will emerge. At the same time, a focus on the need actively to design and create such networks suggests the value in looking more closely at the nuts and bolts questions of how such cooperation can be brought about.