Search results

Positive organizational scholarship in healthcare (POSH) suggests that, to promote widespread improvement within health services, focusing on the good, the excellent, and the brilliant is as important as conventional approaches that focus on the negative, the problems, and the failures. POSH offers different opportunities to learn from and build resilient cultures of safety, innovation, and change. It is not separate from tried and tested approaches to health service improvement – but rather, it approaches this improvement differently. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

POSH, appreciative inquiry (AI) and reflective practice were used to inform an exploratory investigation of what is good, excellent, or brilliant health service management.

The researchers identified new characteristics of good healthcare and what it might take to have brilliant health service management, elucidated and refined POSH, and identified research opportunities that hold potential value for consumers, practitioners, and policymakers.

The secondary data used in this study offered limited contextual information.

This approach is a platform from which to: identify, investigate, and learn about brilliant health service management; and inform theory and practice.

POSH can help to reveal what consumers and practitioners value about health services and how they prefer to engage with these services.

Using POSH, this paper examines what consumers and practitioners value about health services; it also illustrates how brilliance can be theorized into health service management research and practice.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Purpose – To examine Gerald Mars’ contribution to scholarly understanding of workplace crime by revisiting his seminal work, Cheats at Work, and to explore developments in the forms, patterns, and implications of cheating at work since its publication.

Methodology/approach – This chapter critically reviews Cheats at Work and explores the changing nature of fiddling over time using the analytical framework and four associated occupational categories of workplace crime identified by Mars. The review is based on three main sources: recent scholarly literature on misbehavior, deviance, and employee misconduct; cases from industrial law reports, newspapers, and social media; and the views of informants conveyed directly to the authors.

Findings – The analytical framework that Mars contributed remains useful even if the boundaries of the occupational categories of workplace crime are now more blurred, with some jobs and fiddles spanning categories. Although, technology has changed the nature of fiddling, new forms have emerged as old ones have disappeared.

Social implications – Three decades after publication of Mars's study, it is evident that fiddling remains a normal, albeit covert, activity in many jobs and occupations. His typology continues to be valuable for explaining patterns, forms, and implications of cheating at work.

Originality/value of chapter – Given the growing interest in the forms and implications of misbehavior and workplace resistance, this chapter provides an opportunity for reflection on the enduring salience of Cheats at Work, thirty years after its publication.

The work of Dr. Hassall on behalf of The Lancet, briefly summarised in a previous essay, received great publicity in the lay Press between 1852 and 1855. The Times and The Quarterly Review gave the subject special prominence. The last named journal, in a review of Dr. Hassall's book in 1855, said: “The precision with which he is enabled to state the result of his labours leaves no appeal… We have now shown enough to convince the public that the grossest fraud reigns throughout the British public commissariat. It remains to be seen whether the Government is able and willing to stay this gigantic evil and national dishonour.” In fact, in the same year, a House of Commons Committee sat to take evidence and reported to the effect that adulteration was widely prevalent, the public health endangered, fraud committed on the whole community, public morality tainted and the high commercial character of the country seriously lowered. Nevertheless, five years were allowed to lapse before the first adulteration Act reached the statute‐book in 1860. This was a weak and inefficient measure and was found to be useless. Very few prosecutions, if any, were instituted. Twelve years later, in 1872, an amending Act was passed. The High Court decided that this Act required sellers of food to know whether what they sold was pure or adulterated. Many traders were convicted, with the result that manufacturers and shopkeepers agitated and obtained the appointment of yet another Parliamentary Committee—on whose advice the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875, was passed. This Act, which had the exceptionally long life of more than fifty years, contained many protective provisions for dealers in food, which, although to some extent no more than fair, did operate in such a way as to limit severely the efforts of local authorities to protect the public. One of the recommendations made in The Lancet has never yet been adopted by Parliament in relation to the sale of adulterated food—namely, that the names and addresses of all vendors of samples found unsatisfactory should be systematically published. Another recommendation was not adopted until the first Labelling of Food Order was made seventy years later, in 1944, requiring the disclosure on many packed foods of their composition.

WE have recently published one or two articles in which a contributor with a considerable knowledge of the Chinese economy has described some of that country's industrial activities. The articles have been scrupulously factual and impartial in revealing the ingenuity which has enabled a people desperately short of the technological resources of the industrialised nations to secure for themselves some of life's essentials.

Of all the different classes of substances that enter into our dietary the proteids are the most important, as they are not only absolutely essential for the support of animal life, but in the absence or deficiency of carbohydrates or of fat they can take the place of those substances.

We have observed in the reports of those engaged in the administration of the Acts several references to the practice of milking so that a portion of the milk is left in the udder of the cow, this portion being removed subsequently and not included in the milk sent out to customers. The inspector for the southern division of the county of Northampton reports that on a sample of milk being found deficient in fat to the extent of 17 per cent., a further sample was taken at the time of milking when a milkman was found to be not properly “stripping” the cows. He was warned. The analyst for the county of Notts writes: “The first strippings obtained before the milk glands have been normally excited by the milking are very low in fat yet are “genuine” milk in the sense that nothing has been added to or taken from it. It is nonsense to talk of genuine milk in the sense that everything that comes from the udder of the cow is to be taken as genuine milk fit for sale.” In a case tried before the Recorder of Middlesbrough, one witness said that among some farmers it was a common practice not to “strip” cows until after the milk was sent away.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the hidden social worlds of competent clandestine users of drugs controlled within the confines of the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which now includes NPS substances. The authors explore how and in what way socially competent drug users differ from others who are visible to the authorities as criminals by criminal justice bureaucracies and known to treatment agencies as defined problem drug users.

This qualitative research utilises a bricoleur ethnographic methodology considered as a critical, multi-perspectival, multi-theoretical and multi-methodological approach to inquiry.

This paper challenges addiction discourses and, drawing upon empirical evidence, argues the user of controlled drugs should not be homogenised. Using several key strategies of identity management, drug takers employ a range of risk awareness and risk neutralisation techniques to protect self-esteem, avoid social affronts and in maintaining untainted identities. The authors present illicit drug use as one activity amongst other social activities that (some) people, conventionally, pursue. The findings from this study suggest that punitive drug policy, which links drug use with addiction, crime and antisocial behaviour, is inconsistent with the experience of the participants.

Due to the small sample size (n=24) employed, the possibility that findings can be generalised is rendered difficult. However, generalisation was never an objective of the research; the experiences of this hidden population are deeply subjective and generalising findings and applying them to other populations would be an unproductive endeavour. While the research attempted to recruit an equal number of males and females to this research, gendered analysis was not a primary objective of this research. However, it is acknowledged that future research would greatly benefit from such a gendered focus.

The insights from the study may be useful in helping to inform future policy discourse on issues of drug use. In particular, the insights suggest that a more nuanced perspective should be adopted. This perspective should recognise the non-deviant identities of many drug users in the contemporary era, and challenge the use of a universally stigmatising discourse and dominance of prohibition narratives.

It is envisaged that this paper will contribute to knowledge on how socially competent users of controlled drugs identify and manage the risks of moral, medical and legal censure.

The evidence in this paper indicates that drug use is an activity often associated with non-deviant, productive members of the population. However, the continuing dominance of stigmatising policy discourses often leads to drug users engaging in identity concealment within the context of a deeply capitalist Western landscape.

“The year covered by the report starts in July, 1945, and ends in September, 1946. During this time the Council has had many complicated administrative tasks to perform because the period is the first almost complete year covering the change‐over from war to peace. In July of last year the ice cream trade was in the middle of one of the most phenomenal sets of conditions in the whole of its varied existence. It will be remembered that 60 per cent. of the pre‐war usage of sugar and an allocation of shimmed milk powder was still available to the trade, but the quantities were relatively small compared with the enormous public demand for our product, and the ice cream trade had begun to attract the attention of unscrupulous speculators. Every effort was made by the Ministry of Food, who alone had the power to exert any regulation whatever, to prevent unauthorised persons from entering the trade. These efforts were not always successful, but the Association took whatever steps lay in its power to assist the Ministry to prevent firms who had never been in the trade before starling the manufacture and the sale of ice cream, to the detriment of the established trader who had been doing his very best against almost overwhelming obstacles. The loose interpretation of the right of a caterer to make and sell ice cream was for a long time a most difficult problem, but during the year the Ministry of Food Executive Officers have managed to curtail a great many of the unauthorised sales of ice cream which were taking place at points far distant from the caterer's premises when the product had been made with materials obtained under a catering licence. In many of the large cities this type of trade brought the whole industry into disrepute because various forms of ice cream were being sold to the public at fantastically high prices. The whole problem of the manufacture of ice cream has been the subject of discussions by the members of the Technical Advisory Committee, mainly on the subject of proposed standards of quality and bacteriological purity. The Executive Council is indebted to the painstaking efforts of the members of this Committee for their careful researches and many long discussions. The work undertaken by the Ministry of Food and the knowledge it has gained in dietetic values during the years of war‐time feeding of the British population has been considered very carefully and the point of view of what constitutes the maximum nutrition in ice cream has altered from the pre‐war knowledge of rating the value of ice cream in accordance with the highest possible milk fats content. Professor Sir Jack Drummond, when he was the Nutritional Officer to the Ministry of Food, emphasised the need in the everyday diet of both children and adults, of the maximum amount of milk minerals and milk solids not fat. In normal times when ingredients are in free supply there is no difficulty with either children or grown‐ups in obtaining plentiful supplies of fat, but almost all of the value of the milk solids not fat has been forgotten or else brought into disrepute following the laws which were passed many years ago compelling tins of condensed skimmed milk to be marked ‘Unfit for Babies.’ The Technical Committee, taking all of these facts into consideration, has evolved a standard which has been agreed by the Executive Council and submitted to the Ministry of Food, designed to give the best type of ice cream, planned in such a way that the maximum amount of milk‐solids‐not‐fat can be included. This skimmed milk powder can be incorporated into the mix and still keep a reasonable quantity of fat, which in the Committee's opinion should consist only of milk fat. After the most careful research and discussions, having in mind the interest of the small trader who cannot install very elaborate machinery, it was agreed by the Committee that, when fresh dairy cream becomes available again, a minimum standard of milk fat in ice cream should be arranged to include the use of both fresh dairy milk and cream as well as enough skimmed milk powder to bring the total to a correct balance of ingredients which would freeze in the average type of freezer without becoming sandy or crystallised. There was a good deal of experience on which the Committee could base its findings, obtained from the use of the standards put into force by the Government of Northern Ireland before the war; these were not fully balanced and required some adjustment. Negotiations on the question of the standard between Ice Cream Alliance and the Wholesale Ice Cream Manufacturers' Federation were conducted at great length and the different points of view were examined with the utmost care. It has been found, however, that the proposals by the different Associations cannot be reconciled to form one standard common to the best interest of the members of both Associations. The Ice Cream Alliance has been safeguarding the welfare of the general public and thereby the future trade of its members, and it has insisted that the minimum standards which its Technical Committee has recommended should not be varied in principle to comply with the somewhat wider interpretation of the Wholesale Federation. One point upon which the Technical Committee lays great stress is that the tests for the standard should always be conducted by sampling the finished ice cream as delivered to the consumer, and not the ice cream mix as made in the factory. This would place definite limitations on the amount of over‐run which could be permitted and would prevent any ice cream manufacturer, regardless of his type of machinery, from giving a smaller quantity of fat or milk solids to the consumer, than his competitor who might have less elaborate and expensive machinery. It has, of course, been made clear that all questions relating to a standard for ice cream refer not to the present period of emergency, with its substitute ingredients, but to the time when all ingredients can be purchased free of any restriction by every ice cream manufacturer. There is no doubt that if it were possible to evolve a standard of substitute ingredients it would be of the greatest advantage to the trade, but this cannot be done until the right ingredients, namely skimmed milk powder, fat and sugar are made available to every member of the trade in equal proportions. Your Executive Council has approached the Minister of Food on various occasions seeking an interview to put these points before him and to emphasise the need for better and more consistent supplies of the right types of materials so that ice cream can be made worthy of its name by all manufacturers. It is also anxious to remove the difference in the allocations as between the larger manufacturer who receives 70 per cent. of his datum usage of fat and the ice cream trader who made his product in pre‐war days only from fresh milk, and who is now prohibited from making an ice cream for consumption with more than about 2¼ per cent. fat. The serious world position and shortage of food materials has, of course, worked against this project, and until there is some easing of the supply of raw materials for better distribution within the world as a whole, the British Government has found it is unable to provide supplies of the right ingredients. Your Chairman and Executive Council are, however, using every effort to bring about the desirable situation as quickly as possible. In recent months there had been major disasters to the trade which had been caused by the outbreak of typhoid fever conveyed through carriers of this disease to members of the general public through the medium of ice cream. These outbreaks have led to a tremendous amount of wrongful reporting in the daily Press and the many quite unjustified allegations against both the ice cream traders and the Local Government officials, particularly the Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers of Health, who are responsible for the interpretation of the 1938 Food and Drugs Act controlling the registration of ice cream manufacturing premises, and who have worked very hard to help both the trade and the public. It must be agreed that many ice cream manufacturers have been working without very much knowledge of the responsibilities of their trade and under enormous handicaps, due to the dilapidations caused by six years of war and their inability to have building work and decorations carried out to make their small factories suitable for the manufacture of ice cream. These years of war have also led to a much greater wear and tear on ice cream plant than would normally have been the case, because the trade has had to put up with flour instead of skimmed milk powder even before it was shut down in 1942. Deterioration and rust during the shut down period from September, 1942, until December, 1944, was even greater than if the plant had been in constant use even with substitute materials. The result has been that many ice cream traders have been faced with enormous difficulties of plant renewals at a time when machinery is unobtainable, with the result that unhygienic vessels and utensils have had to be kept in service, which in the ordinary way would have been scrapped many years ago. The Alliance is taking every step possible with the other Associations that manufacture plant equipment and utensils, to improve supplies to those who need the articles, but here again supplies of raw materials to the machinery equipment manufacturers are growing worse and worse. It is because of this situation that in the negotiations with the Ministry of Health regarding the compulsory heat treatment programme the greatest latitude is being requested so that no regulations would be brought into force until the trade is in a position to comply with them without undue hardship. We would like to record our appreciation to the other Associations who have expressed their willingness to collaborate with us for the good of the trade as a whole.”