ASSESSING THE ASSESSMENTS: BRITISH PLANNING AUTHORITIES AND THE REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENTS

1999 ◽  
Vol 01 (03) ◽  
pp. 369-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIPPA KREUSER ◽  
RICHARD HAMMERSLEY

For environment assessments to provide a positive contribution to official decision making in planning, the resulting environmental statement (ES) needs to exhibit such qualities as veracity, completeness and understandability; therefore the planning authority should "review" the ES to establish whether this is indeed the case and then move on to utilising the information contained therein. This research surveyed a sample of British local planning authorities to discover how they "assess the assessments" and use the information supplied. The literature suggests that planners use the "statutory consultation" system to achieve many aspects of a review, and therefore, a sample of consultees was asked about their treatment of ESs. From the surveys, it is clear that planners do in fact place great reliance on the consultees to review, verify and summarise at least parts of ESs. However there is some mismatch between the expectations of consultee review on the part of planners against the objectives of the consultees themselves. This then throws into question how useful the information is in the actual decision making processes. The paper goes on to examine the alternatives available for reviews and proposes the development of an independent review body which can ensure that ESs are "fit for purpose".

Author(s):  
Mirjam Dibra ◽  
Dea Strica

The public participation (PP) is widely legitimised as a vital prerequisite to achieve sustainable development and as a basic principle of democracy. Under the conditions of the new territorial administrative-territorial division of local government units in the Republic of Albania, the Malesia e Madhe (MM) Municipality is a new one. The purpose of this study was the assessment of attitudes of the local community of areas under the administration of MM Municipality on PP in local planning and decision-making in order to influence future behaviours of the local community to take active part in local decision-making processes. The questionnaire was used as a research instrument for the local community of this Municipality. The research results showed that the local community of this area was generally aware of the need for their involvement in local decision-making, but they considered the municipality as the main responsibility for their involvement in this process. Keywords: Albania, local planning & decision-making, Malesia e Madhe Municipality, public participation.


2009 ◽  
Vol 06 (02) ◽  
pp. 69-74
Author(s):  
I. T. Calliess ◽  
K. Treichel ◽  
J. Nikitopoulos ◽  
A. Malik ◽  
M. Rojnic Kuzman

SummaryAs society’s expectations of mental health professional change radically, educational programs and policies need to keep pace with this change. Trainees and young psychiatrists have established their distinct identity and assured that educational policies are reformed to create competent mental health professionals who are fit for purpose in tomorrow’s world. In order for this to happen, it has taken over a decade of dedication, hard work and motivation from past and present psychiatric trainees and young psychiatrists to travel the journey from having a vision of an international network to develop the existing highly structured network. Networking and empowerment facilitated by national and international young psychiatrists’ organizations has allowed young psychiatrists to participate in decision-making processes and create frameworks for their own professional development. This paper outlines the principles and objectives that underpin the existing networks of national and international young psychiatrists’ organizations. It also describes the various educational and networking activities undertaken by these organizations and uses the case study from Croatia to describe the role of these networks in the formation of national associations of young psychiatrists and trainees.


1974 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Roser

The investigator describes how principals, supervisors, and central office personnel made decisions in public school reading programs. The study compares the actual decision-making processes with a theoretical model of rational decision making. Typical decisions for administering and supervising a school reading program were obtained from job descriptions and from literature in reading education. Test subjects identified their respective decisions. Through interviews, these administrators and supervisors described the processes by which their identified decisions had been made and compared the descriptions with a representative rational model of decision-making in order to determine how real life decision-making processes approximated a theoretical model. Regardless of staff position, there appeared to be no difference in group ability to identify respective administrative decisions. Analysis of the actual decision-making processes employed by administrators indicated an incomplete awareness of a rational decision-making prescription. Past experience and intuition, rather than attempts to identify alternative actions and to weigh these for relative merit, were the basis of the greatest number of decisions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 912-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Andrew Lawrence ◽  
Christina Mary Pollard ◽  
Tarun Stephen Weeramanthri

AbstractObjectiveTo assess current performance and identify opportunities and reforms necessary for positioning a food standards programme to help protect public health against dietary risk factors.DesignA case study design in which a food standards programme’s public health protection performance was analysed against an adapted Donabedian model for assessing health-care quality. The criteria were the food standards programme’s structure (governance arrangements and membership of its decision-making committees), process (decision-making tools, public engagement and transparency) and food standards outcomes, which provided the information base on which performance quality was inferred.SettingThe Australia and New Zealand food standards programme.ParticipantsThe structure, process and outcomes of the Programme.ResultsThe Programme’s structure and processes produce food standards outcomes that perform well in protecting public health from risks associated with nutrient intake excess or inadequacy. The Programme performs less well in protecting public health from the proliferation and marketing of ‘discretionary’ foods that can exacerbate dietary risks. Opportunities to set food standards to help protect public health against dietary risks are identified.ConclusionsThe structures and decision-making processes used in food standards programmes need to be reformed so they are fit for purpose for helping combat dietary risks caused by dietary excess and imbalances. Priorities include reforming the risk analysis framework, including the nutrient profiling scoring criterion, by extending their nutrition science orientation from a nutrient (reductionist) paradigm to be more inclusive of a food/diet (holistic) paradigm.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. King

AbstractThe origins of the term consensus fidelium lie in the rhetorical tropes of pagans who exhorted unity between friends and within cities – tropes supporting the hierarchy of imperial elites. The earliest Christians adapted this language for the same purpose within churches: to speak of unity and lay involvement in support of Church hierarchy. After the Reformation, Church of England writers used this rhetoric to enforce conformity to church polity and morality. The Tractarians and their successors employed a rhetorical ‘voice of the laity’ as a bolster for episcopal power. While the early twentieth century saw some in the Church of England and Anglican Communion use this same rhetoric to bring the laity into actual decision-making processes, the rhetoric of recent statements by the Communion has left power firmly with bishops.


2020 ◽  
pp. 42-76
Author(s):  
James Westphal ◽  
Sun Hyun Park

In this chapter we examine the symbolic management of social processes in firm leadership and governance. We explain how firm leaders engage in verbal impression management about their strategic advice network, and how such communication is decoupled from their actual advice-seeking behavior. We go on to describe how firms gain legitimacy by adopting participative strategic decision-making programs that ostensibly use cutting-edge information technology to solicit input, despite decoupling the programs from actual strategic decision making. We then consider how and when firms manage impressions about the diversity and inclusiveness of firm leadership, and how such rhetoric may also be decoupled from actual decision-making processes. We conclude that the symbolic management of social and organizational processes in firm leadership is among the most efficient and effective means of increasing the legitimacy of firm governance and strategy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Trainor

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at safeguarding documentation in relation to 50 adult safeguarding files for the period April 2010 to March 2011. This was followed up with semi-structured interviews with a small number of Designated Officers whose role it is to screen referrals and coordinate investigations. Findings from the research were used to redesign regional adult safeguarding documentation to ensure Designated Officers have access to the information necessary to assist them in reaching decisions. Designated and Investigating Officer training was also updated to reflect learning from the research thereby reducing the potential for variation in practice. Design/methodology/approach – A file tool was developed which examined the recorded information in safeguarding documentation contained within 50 service user files. The review tool looked at the personal characteristics of the vulnerable adult, the nature of the alleged abuse and the decisions/outcomes reached by staff acting as safeguarding Designated Officers. A semi-structured interview schedule asked Designated Offices to comment on the training and understanding of the process as well as the factors they believed were central to the decision making process. Their responses were compared to data obtained from the file review. Findings – A key finding in the research was that while factors such as type of abuse, the vulnerable adults’ consent to cooperate with proceedings, identity of the referrer, etc. did influence decisions taken there was a lack of clarity on the part of Designated Officers in relation to their roles and responsibilities and of the process to be followed. Research limitations/implications – The research was limited to one Health & Social Care Trust area and had a small sample size (n=50). Practical implications – The findings of the research led to a revamping of existing safeguarding documentation which had failed to keep pace with developments and was no longer fit for purpose. Adult safeguarding training courses within the Trust were redesigned to bring greater focus to the role and responsibilities of designated and Investigating Officers and the stages in the safeguarding process. Adult Safeguarding leads were established within programmes of care and professional support mechanisms put in place for staff engaged in this area of work. Social implications – Better trained and supported staff alongside more efficient safeguarding systems should lead to better outcomes in the protection of vulnerable people from abuse and harm. Originality/value – The research built on existing albeit limited research into what potentially influences staff involved in critical decision-making processes within adult safeguarding.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pietro D. Tomaselli ◽  
Martin Dixen ◽  
Rodolfo Bolaños Sanchez ◽  
Jacob Tornfeldt Sørensen

Safe and cost-efficient planning Operation&Maintenance (O&M) activities for the turbines of Offshore Wind Farms is crucial for the offshore wind industry. The execution of the planned tasks depends on the workability at sea. Workability assessments aim to find time periods, called weather windows, during which the personnel can execute the job at hand safely. Traditionally, weather windows analyses are based on thresholds applied on relevant metocean conditions in the area of interest, commonly wave height, wave period and wind speed. In this way, tasks are planned in windows during which the forecast metocean conditions do not exceed the defined thresholds. This paper presents a numerical tool that provides weather windows based on more direct measures of workability, that is seasickness on board during the trip to the turbines and bow motions, which endanger crew transfers from vessel to turbine. When assessing weather windows, such parameters better describe the actual decision drivers in a real operational setting than mere metocean thresholds, which are, in practical cases, discretionally judged by the O&M operator upon experience. Therefore, the reliability of workability predictions can increase, leading to financial gains for the wind industry and safer environment for O&M operators. The paper shows an application of the tool, where a full O&M scenario is simulated. The scenario comprises the transit from the port to the offshore site, the work carried out on the turbine and the transit back to the port. In particular, the application highlights the key capability of the tool of calculating vessel motions, which are elaborated to produce weather windows. With its low computational time-demand, the tool aims to support the decision-making processes that produce short- and long-term O&M plans.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
M Stubbe ◽  
L Signal ◽  
J Stairmand ◽  
E Dennett ◽  
...  

© The Author(s) 2014. Little research has been undertaken on the actual decision-making processes in cancer care multidisciplinary meetings (MDMs). This article was based on a qualitative observational study of two regional cancer treatment centers in New Zealand. We audiorecorded 10 meetings in which 106 patient cases were discussed. Members of the meetings categorized cases in varying ways, drew on a range of sources of authority, expressed different value positions, and utilized a variety of strategies to justify their actions. An important dimension of authority was encountered authority - the authority a clinician has because of meeting the patient. The MDM chairperson can play an important role in making explicit the sources of authority being drawn on and the value positions of members to provide more clarity to the decision-making process. Attending to issues of process, authority, and values in MDMs has the potential to improve cancer care decision making and ultimately, health outcomes.


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