Management consultants as policy actors

Author(s):  
Julie Gervais ◽  
Frédéric Pierru

Contributions to the topic of consultants and public policy in France are often unbalanced and consultants are typically analysed as a secondary subject of wider studies. Drawing on the sociology of elites, this chapter argues that their circulation between the private and the public spheres invites us to reconsider the so-called French resistance to private consultants, allegedly led by senior civil service, which artificially opposes two groups that are, in fact, in a sociological position of homology. It helps understanding how an hybrid elite of general government works hand in hand in the development and diffusion of NPM ideas within the French state. The chapter summarizes the main steps which contributed to consultants’ increasing deployment in French public policies and seeks to describe the type of services they aim to deliver, as well as what decision makers may consider as their “added-value”. It argues that a critical part of their growth relies on their legitimizing effects over change. By doing so, it highlights public policies’ specific temporality and logic, as well as the national variations at stake in terms of private consultants’ involvement and the extent to which they impact French public sector.

2022 ◽  
pp. 239-264
Author(s):  
Esli Spahiu ◽  
Paolo Spagnoletti ◽  
Tommaso Federici

As a decentralised digital ledger, blockchain has become a buzzword in the recent years, due to its advantageous characteristics. The application of blockchain has been associated with different implications, ranging from trust generator to increased efficiency. Recently, blockchain application has gained momentum by being implemented by different governments and public bodies, as a solution for tackling different issues, with the intent of providing more efficient public policies. Different blockchain-based systems and platforms have been increasingly introduced as a more secure and orderly alternative of delivering various public functions and services. Given the expansion of use cases in different countries and the scattered information in this regard, this chapter develops a taxonomy of blockchain outcomes in the public domain by identifying the emerging patterns and subcategories. The proposed taxonomy can support decision makers and researchers to better identify the various blockchain applications, alongside their benefits, implications, and possible associated risks.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Maria J. Sousa ◽  
Carla Ferreira ◽  
Dulce Vaz ◽  
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◽  
...  

Innovation public policy has an essential role in influencing the competitive capacity of companies and is strongly associated with their ability to innovate and the way they are organized. As important as the technological organization of work is the social dimension, namely, involvement, participation, and commitment of the workforce, as these are, par excellence, factors that contribute to creating added value and differentiation for companies. In this sense, the concept of innovation depends on an integrated vision between the human dimension and the other multiple dimensions that innovation can assume. Public policies, besides the goal of creating a more modern and competitive business and industrial context, also are focused on the development of the workforce, not only in digital competences but also in soft skills. This type of skill contributes to creating a more innovative context and a culture of innovation. This article's goal is to make a global overview of innovation and the public policies to promote the modernization of companies and influence the way they contribute to economic growth.


Author(s):  
Brenner Lopes ◽  
Luander Falcão

In order to subsidize the public policy planners, identifying innovative sectorial nuclei that support the design of public policies to support innovation in companies, the chapter proposes and constructs an indicator of innovation potential with characteristics that fill an important gap, where it is possible to reach the groups of innovative companies in each sector (and their territories in which they are inserted), with a process of data collection focused on secondary sources and yet of high effectiveness and assertiveness. In this way, it is possible to make a detailed analysis of what is most directly relevant to decision makers, with the need for a low investment and the possibility of constant updating of the information. Therefore, this chapter will discuss the construction and demonstration of practical examples of the innovation potential indicator and their respective subindexes.


Author(s):  
Peter Knoepfel

No actor from a specific policy community is capable of controlling the relatively volatile but nonetheless necessary resource Political Support enjoyed by substantive policies. Hence, this chapter is structured differently from the other nine chapters dealing with the public action resources. Political Support consists of the primary legitimation (as opposed to the secondary legitimation delivered by the resource Consensus) by parliamentary bodies whose agendas cover hundreds of public policies which may be opposed. Thus, all three policy actor groups have a common interest in fighting this risk by means of common ‘external’ policy. This chapter illustrates the role of the resource Political Support and the modalities of its maintenance and use with examples from agricultural policy, energy policy and anti-money-laundering policy. It stresses the crucial role of third party winners and losers (actors positioned between the core policy actors and their environment), political parties and changes in the composition of the basic triangular structure of public policies. It demonstrates strategies deployed by each one of the three policy actor groups for recovering Political support.


2020 ◽  
pp. 316-328
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Susca

Contemporary communicative platforms welcome and accelerate a socio-anthropological mutation in which public opinion (Habermas, 1995) based on rational individuals and alphabetic culture gives way to a public emotion whose emotion, empathy and sociality are the bases, where it is no longer the reason that directs the senses but the senses that begin to think. The public spheres that are elaborated in this way can only be disjunctive (Appadurai, 2001), since they are motivated by the desire to transgress the identity, political and social boundaries where they have been elevated and restricted. The more the daily life, in its local intension and its global extension, rests on itself and frees itself from projections or infatuations towards transcendent and distant orders, the more the modern territory is shaken by the forces that cross it and pierce it. non-stop. The widespread disobedience characterizing a significant part of the cultural events that take place in cyberspace - dark web, web porn, copyright infringement, trolls, even irreverent ... - reveals the anomic nature of the societal subjectivity that emerges from the point of intersection between technology and naked life. Behind each of these offenses is the affirmation of the obsolescence of the principles on which much of the modern nation-states and their rights have been based. Each situation in which a tribe, cloud, group or network blends in a state of ecstasy or communion around shared communications, symbols and imaginations, all that surrounds it, in material, social or ideological terms, fades away. in the air, being isolated by the power of a bubble that in itself generates culture, rooting, identification: transpolitic to inhabit


Author(s):  
Federico VAZ ◽  
Sharon PRENDEVILLE

Described as units developing public policies in a design-oriented manner, Policy Labs are tasked to innovate to gain in policy effectiveness and efficiency. However, as public policymaking is a context-dependent activity, the way in which these novel organisations operate significantly differs. This study discusses the emergence of design approaches for policy innovation. The purpose is to map how Policy Labs in Europe introduce design approaches at distinct stages of the policymaking cycle. For this study, 30 organisations in Europe operating at various levels of government were surveyed. Based on the public policymaking process model, it investigates which design methods are Policy Labs deploying to innovate public policies. The study exposed a gap in the awareness of the utilised methods' nature. It also showed that the use of design methods is of less importance than the introduction of design mindsets for public policy innovation, namely ‘user-centredness’, ‘co-creation’, and ‘exploration’.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

The Road to Iraq is an empirical investigation that explains the causes of the Iraq War, identifies its main agents, and demonstrates how the war was sold to decision makers and by decision makers to the public. It shows how a small but ideologically coherent and socially cohesive group of determined political agents used the contingency of 9/11 to outflank a sceptical foreign policy establishment, military brass and intelligence apparatus and provoked a war that has had disastrous consequences.


2017 ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Nicolás Gómez Núñez

En tres breves capítulos, el artículo pone a disposición las ideas básicas que cruzan la reflexión sobre las actividades económicas que las personas realizan en condiciones de pobreza, destacándose la preocupación sobre si estos desempeños pueden constituirse en alternativas de crecimiento económico a nivel local o si ellas son actores que inciden en las políticas públicas que organizan los supuestos del desarrollo.Palabras clave Actividades Económicas Autogestionadas / Autonomía / Capacitación / Desarrollo Endógeno.Abstract:In three brief chapters, the article displays the basic ideas that intersect the reflection on the economic activities that people perform in conditions of poverty, standing out the concern whether these performances can constitute in alternatives of economic growth at the local level or whether they are activities that affect the public policies which organize the theories of development.Key words Self-managed economic activities / Autonomy / Training / Endogenous Development


Author(s):  
Muntasir Muntasir ◽  
Pius Weraman

Community Partnership Program in small home industry of making fish floss brand "Savitri" and "Tiaras" inKupang city in the form of application of electric centrifugation filter model has been implemented. One of the problemsin the production of Savitri and Tiaras fish floss is that there is still a lot of oil in the frying product which is only drainedon a simple sieve and then placed for some time on traditional tools of filter and paper that can cause low quality and lowquality, so it is necessary to reduce the oil yield frying fish floss product. In order to increase the added value and sellingvalue of the products, it is necessary synergy between Universities and Partners in the form of application of the results ofscience and technology to the public. The main components of the composer of the versatile filter are the cylindrical plateas the bucket of the filter, the cylinder filter, the electric dynamo as the centrifuge system rotator and the load-bearingconstruction. The method of this program is the provision of materials, design and manufacture of tools, demonstrationtools and the provision of a versatile filter cylinder system centrifuge model by the team, simulation tools, specialcounseling at the location of partners and suggestions as a follow-up in the endurance of production. The output of thisprogram can provide added value in the form of the use of this tool can improve labor efficiency, increase productivitypartners by producing 40 kg to 50 kg raw material, raw fish marlin, fish meat after cleaning, processed, fried, in andpacked into 80-100 packs of fish floss with the price of Rp. 40,000.00 per package weighing 250 grams. With estimatedpartners will earn a profit of Rp 3,200,000 - 4,000,000.00 per production or 12,800,000.00 - 16,000,000.00 per month incash and consumptions, as well as the abundance of non-greasy, clean and hybrid fish products


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