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Universities face an uncertain funding environment and turbulent marketplace. Financial scenario modelling offers a potential mechanism to assist in navigating a way forward. Our previous paper on UK universities' practice found some variation in the sophistication of the approaches taken, but the overall impression was of a relatively simple approach, with spreadsheets generally viewed as having sufficient functionality to meet current strategic needs. This subsequent paper offers guidance on the construction of financial scenario models. It addresses the key variables that universities may wish to include, and it offers advice on how models might be formulated and evolve. The characteristics of differing approaches taken by universities in meeting their own scenario modelling requirements are explored by identifying three forms of model: basic, intermediate and advanced. The contribution of this paper is to enable universities, in the UK and beyond, to evaluate and improve their own financial scenario modelling practices.

UK social care policy has "traditionally" sought to minimise organisational and sector boundaries through cooperation and partnership. This discussion paper argues that there is a case for a social care system based openly on separation of powers to address the conflicts of interest that inevitably exist between the actors--notably local authorities and service providers. Such systems, with "guardrails" to separate the actors, and "checks and balances" to keep them stable, have been developed over centuries in other spheres. Furthermore, if disabled people are to be considered as participants with rights, rather than mere recipients, they should be recognised as the third main actor in the system, also with powers that are protected and constrained. This paper takes a 50-year retrospective view of these issues in terms of policy affecting people with learning disabilities, focusing on three policy episodes in the UK. First, the 1970s, with a system unbalanced by powerful medical professions, and an absence of self-advocacy. Second, care management in the 1990s, which ducked the spirit of Sir Roy Griffiths' vision of a lively provider market. Third, the adoption and degradation of Personal Budgets. The learning from UK and international individualised funding programmes is too complex to be certain which ingredients are the keys to success. However, there are strong arguments, and substantial evidence, to suggest that Personal Budgets will not truly succeed until they are built on a structure that determines not only what councils and providers can and should do but also where they must not interfere.

Contemporary North-South research collaborations are fraught with power relations originating in colonialism. Debates about research ethics have tended to turn around the "procedural ethics" formal model and the "everyday ethics" practical model. We build on that to suggest a second debate that scrutinises ethics and power relations not only in the researcher-researched relationship but also in the relationships within research teams and ethics review boards. The research asked: how can we shift power in research to decolonise research and build more equitable partnerships? We explored this with data obtained through collaborative autoethnography in a multi-country development research programme, Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID). This included regular self-reflective meetings, visual methods, a self-evaluation survey, and blogs addressing power issues. Coordinated from London, the research had all the cards to adopt a 'colonial' gaze in which the North would 'research' the South. The case narrates the journey of the research team to decentralise power in the programme, which included sharing control over the selection of research topics, and the research design, budget, and publications. Drawing from the lessons learned from the research approach that was adopted in ECID, this paper offers an 8-step model towards decolonising research ethics.

Despite the increasing demand for non-formal science learning activities, few studies report on practitioners' perspectives and experiences with designing and implementing such activities worldwide. This paper focuses on their challenges by drawing upon twenty-two interviews with practitioners involved in diverse science learning activities in various non-formal settings in seven European countries. By including diverse activities and settings, this study contributes to the existing knowledge base, addresses the aforementioned gap in the literature, and informs future practices. Our findings suggest that despite the existing and celebrated diversity, practitioners face similar challenges related to (a) the activities' organisation and management, (b) the competencies required to run such activities, and (c) the attitudes held by the parties involved in them. Direct interview quotes exemplify each theme, further pinpointing the interconnection of multiple factors that inform the organisation and implementation of non-formal science learning activities. The findings allowed for a deeper understanding of challenges reported in the literature and shed light on the challenges voiced by the practitioners including the multiple competencies required and the workload. We conclude with a discussion foregrounding the need to build a knowledge base of shared practices in the field of non-formal science learning.

Problems associated with managerialism are well established in Higher Education. Driven by pressures of funding cuts, league tables and the associated competitive environment, Higher Education followed other public sector bodies in adopting Lean Management principles. While there is scepticism about Lean Management because it is seen as an instrument of managerialism, it is a philosophy that can resolve issues created by the managerialism movement. It offers ways of working with reduced resources without increasing pressure on staff. This paper proposes a Lean Management framework for Higher Education that focusses on creating value for stakeholders rather than cost-cutting. This framework was developed through a grounded theory approach, examining key features, successes and lessons learned from established programmes. This study shows that the framework could benefit universities and resolve some of the problems associated with managerialism.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to take the emergence of the knowledge mobilization as an opportunity to develop an understanding of needs for catching up appropriate knowledge application in SMEs in the Republic of Croatia, Poland and the UK. It draws upon the "frame mobilization" literature, which illuminates the role that acts as interpretation play in instigating, promoting and legitimating collective action with aim to provide "quality entrepreneurial education". Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire survey based on a literature review built by Stimulating Learning for Ideas to Market (SLIM) project partner was employed to test the given perspective. A total of 380 businesses completed the survey from 12 to 20, November 2013. Participants have different profiles, act in diverse roles and industrial sectors. Identification of appropriate types of support, education, training and advice was made to recognize what small businesses need and can use to improve their operations. Findings: Empirical research evidence conducted among entrepreneurs, 213 were from Croatia, 100 were from Poland and 67 were from the UK, respectively. Results identified the nature of management education according SMEs' needs to increase innovative activities and intellectual property adapting a more business-like approach, scanning the horizon and identifying new markets and opportunities for growth. It discussed the impacts of formal and informal ways of intellectual property protection in sales and exports market (SLIM) project partner was employed to test the given perspective. Research limitations/implications: Main limitation lay in unequal sample response among countries. However, results proofed very similar response in all questions among three countries even size, entrepreneurial development, GDP or historical background are highly different. Practical implications: Therefore, the original contribution of the paper lies in the authors' empirical investigations into the current thinking and practice of existing entrepreneurs by suggesting some implications of this point, which should be of interest to all stakeholders who design courses in IP and who engage in social mobilization. Social implications: There are important organizational culture barriers with this target group, such as the emphasis on the need to publish and an unstable/unavailable IP budget. The integration of IP tools into curricula is an important step to improving the use of IP tools by future researchers. There is an indisputable case for integrating IP as an R & D output and increasing the valuation of IP for academic promotion. Originality/value: This paper illustrates the current challenges on SMEs' educational needs and intellectual property rights carried out in among 380 entrepreneurs across the Republic of Croatia, the Republic of Poland and the UK. Most intriguing suggestion, perhaps, is that the role knowledge cooperation with universities may play as a breaking point to fully exploit SMEs' innovative potential. Surprisingly, needs for establishing a classification of diverse IP-management and collaboration-management tools useful in university-enterprise collaborations, within a general context of IP and open innovation has not been recognized.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of new managerialism on junior academic-managers (defined as those having informal leadership or management roles below the level of head of department). It aims to discover: whether junior academic-managers experience the same tensions as Heads of Department; whether distributed leadership is possible and/or desirable in Higher Education; and what types of support junior academic-managers might welcome. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws upon previous literature and a small case study of one university department in a mid-ranking UK university. Findings: Junior academic-managers experience similar kinds of tensions to heads of department. Although distributed leadership is considered a necessity in higher education, in practice, devolved leadership is more common than genuinely distributed leadership. Junior academic-managers would benefit from the same types of support as heads of department, but increased administrative assistance would be particularly helpful. Some, though not all, of the tensions felt by both groups could be alleviated if higher education institutions (HEIs) adopted a modified form of workforce remodelling, similar to that being implemented in English and Welsh schools. Research limitation/implications: The empirical data come from within one department of one university. It is debatable how far the findings of this study are generalizable to other contexts. Originality/value: There are relatively few studies looking at academic heads of department, and virtually none looking at junior academic-managers. The argument that school workforce remodelling might be adapted for the HE sector is not made elsewhere.

The current financial context constitutes a challenge to European Higher Education Institutions in the sense that they must look to increasing their budgets with new activities. This context has led governments and European universities to promote not only the traditional private funding sources (such as transfer of knowledge or tuition fees), but also new means of raising supplementary philanthropic (private) funds for educational and research purposes. Therefore, the actual European context may also represents an opportunity for the development of their fundraising strategy, since a determined fundraising program will bring supplementary private funds to the institutions reducing the frequent internal resistance and increasing the willingness to overcome the lack of experience in this field in Europe. This paper highlights the change and opportunity that raising independent income from donations implies, in order to achieve excellence and add value to core funding. Here we review UK and Spain cases with special attention in two case studies: Cambridge University, as an example of a well-known prestigious European university with extensive experience in fundraising; and the University of Navarra, as a case of a relevant experience in fundraising policy in a private southern European university.

The UK government's austerity cuts have negatively impacted many voluntary-sector interventions that provided support to refugees. One such intervention, the Refugee Integration and Employment Service (RIES), is discussed in this paper. The RIES was a UK Border Agency-funded integration programme for recognised refugees and operated through voluntary-sector organisations nationwide. Findings of this small, qualitative study tentatively suggest that without bespoke support such as RIES, refugees will struggle to make informed "and" strategic decisions about their future education choices, restricting their ability to exercise autonomous agency. Current UK policy of counting refugees alongside other types of migrants will not cater for the specificity and multiplicity of issues faced by refugee young people. This will inhibit their opportunities and increase vulnerabilities, compounding their precarious position in UK society.

Teachers in academia are usually not required to have teacher training but must often be evaluated by their students who expect them to have much better teaching qualifications than their high school teachers. However, teachers in elementary and high schools are required to go through several years of teacher training, resulting in a teaching certificate, which is usually mandatory in the secondary school system. This anomaly causes great tension in colleges and universities and often results in pressure to "improve" teaching evaluation in regard to academic level. In many countries, a doctorate degree in any field automatically allows its holder to teach in academic institutions because the students are expected to learn on their own while the professor is the expert responsible for helping with complicated questions. These discrepancies often hamper the advances of higher education. This paper presents the situation of teaching in higher education in selected countries, while presenting various paradigms for improving the state of teaching in higher education. The aim is to study the methodologies used to assess the quality of teaching in higher education systems, in general, and in Israel, specifically.

The imperative of transforming education continues to permeate the discourse of UK education reform. Although the Coalition government's publications herald a "new school system", they reveal the same neo-liberal thinking as their New Labour predecessors. The context of the national budget deficit is now being brought to bear to promote greater effectiveness of the education system. Inherent in the Coalition strategy is a diminution of the vital role of teachers in bringing about profound change. This paper examines the notion of transformative change through the lens of George Herbert Mead's philosophy of evolution. Within this framework, transformation is a complex, emergent and unpredictable process that resists centralised control. Consequently, profound social change needs to be predicated on trust, conceptualised as a reciprocal relationship rooted in the acceptance of phenomena beyond our control.

The spending review brought a promise to protect adult and community learning as well as swingeing cuts to further and higher education and local government. In this article, some of the key players--Lynne Sedgmore, Christopher Brooks, Graham Hoyle, Maggie Galliers, Louise Hazel, Richard Bolsin, Maggi Dawson, Ruth Bond, Stuart Etherington, Brendan Barber, Tim Ward, Chris Banks, Paul Mackney, John Field, and Peter Davies--respond.

In humanitarian crises, the sources that journalists employ have always helped determine which stories achieve a high media profile, as well as play a part in framing the story. In particular, aid agencies acted as powerful gatekeepers to disaster zones, providing flights, transport, fixers and translators to journalists - and more recently, text, images and resources for the social web. Questions have been raised around transparency and objectivity in such reporting as a result. This paper draws on 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with UK national journalists (broadcast, print and online) and aid agencies belonging to the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee. As a result, this paper builds on journalism studies looking at boundary (re)negotiations in journalism and the source-media relationship to show the current patterns in what has been described as a “mutually exploitative” relationship. It compares and contrasts what assistance journalists say they accept from aid agencies and what aid agencies report. It examines how both sides are often unwilling to acknowledge the close association. It will also look at how the increasing professionalisation of NGO operations including the employment of former journalists and producing their own content may be affecting the power dynamics. Finally, it asks whether the slow emergence of scandals means this relationship has not only affected stories that are covered but those that are not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the development of tax policy in the UK over the last decade or so and assesses policy change against a low bar-consistency and coherence. While this government has followed some consistent policies-notably, in some aspects of corporation tax and in increasing the income tax personal allowance-there are few signs of a wider coherent strategy. The same has been true of other recent governments. Many aspects of the system have become more complex. There have been numerous policy reversals. And few of those aspects of the system in most need of reform have been tackled. The need for reform, and a clear strategy for reform, remain as pressing as ever. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demand for neonatal care in the United Kingdom (UK) has increased in recent years. This care is provided by neonatal services, which are chronically saturated due to years of budget austerity in the UK. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possible impact of increasing resources to these services to improve their operational performance and alleviate the pressure they are facing. To achieve this aim, a system dynamics (SD) simulation model was built and validated in a UK neonatal unit. The SD model was used initially to evaluate the impact of increasing resources on the unit performance and the results showed that this policy will have a limited effect on performance. The model was then extended to predict the effect of reducing the length of stay (LoS) in conjunction with increasing resources. These joint interventions will have a positive impact on the unit performance if LoS is reduced for all care categories and resources are slightly increased. Results' implications and SD's modelling usefulness to guide decision making in complex health settings are discussed., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Recent policy developments and journal articles have emphasized a divergence: when interventions are found to be cost-effective but unaffordable. This apparent paradox reflects a conventional practice of cost-effectiveness analysis that does not properly evaluate the opportunity costs of an intervention that imposes non-marginal costs on the healthcare system., Objective: Taking the perspective of an exogenously resource constrained decision maker, this paper presents a framework by which concerns for affordability can be appropriately incorporated within cost-effectiveness analysis., Methods: A net benefit framework is proposed where health opportunity costs are estimated for each simulation iteration within each time period. The framework is applied to a hypothetical case study based on the recent experience of the English NHS with new hepatitis C drugs., Results: Under the proposed framework, but not under conventional cost-effectiveness analysis, estimates of health opportunity costs differ between scenarios involving different profiles of budget impact even when their net present value, or expected value, are the same., Conclusions: The framework presented here reflects the importance of the scale of budget impacts along with their uncertainty distribution and time profile. In doing so it resolves issues with the conduct of conventional cost-effectiveness analysis where affordability concerns are not explicitly incorporated., (Copyright © 2019 ISPOR–The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Department of Health's response to the national budget deficit is to ensure that the provision of NHS services is guided by four fundamental 'QIPP' principles: Quality, Innovation, Prevention, and Productivity. This agenda will govern all aspects of the National Health Service's (NHS') health care provision for the foreseeable future. NHS dental services will, like all other NHS services, need to make a contribution to the QIPP agenda. The purpose of this paper is to outline the implications for NHS dentistry.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of accounting on clinical practices., Design/methodology/approach: This paper reviews existing studies of clinical budgeting, analyses publicly available data on cost-effectiveness recommendations for the NHS; analyses publicly available data on the influence of accounting in medical dilemmas., Findings: The paper finds that there is limited evidence of clinical budgeting dominating clinical decisions, but there is some evidence of central agency directions on appropriateness of treatments, but this is on a cost-effectiveness basis. Numerous examples of adverse medical outcomes are cited in this paper--but with limited influence of accounting in these decisions., Originality/value: The paper shows that the combination of accounting and medical data in a topical matter makes this an original and distinctive study.

Purpose — The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into budgetary practice in UK-based hotel organizations and an update on previous survey work in this area. The research aims to cover a broad range of budgeting issues, including: the process used in setting budgets, monitoring and review of the budgetary processes, and the human aspects of the budgeting process. Design/methodology/approach — This research used a census-based questionnaire of hotel organizations' finance directors. The questionnaire consisted of mainly closed questions, with opportunities for further explanation to be given. Statistical analysis tools included Chi-square tests, Spearman's Rank Coefficient, and ANOVA. Findings — The paper finds that the key reason organizations produce budgets are to aid control, evaluate performance and aid planning. Neither the top-down, bottom-up or combination approaches to budgeting dominated in the UK. The results showed a higher rate of the top-down approach in the UK, compared to previous surveys in other countries. Budgets were generally viewed as the main performance indicator in hotel organizations. There is little use of flexible budgeting, budget committees or budget manuals in the hotel industry. The "human aspects" of budgeting identified some interesting contradictions such as the belief that participation is key in budgeting working, yet there is a lack of participation in practice, most significantly amongst hotel department managers. Originality/value — Limited information as to budgetary practice in hotels has previously been published, particularly related to the UK. This survey and further findings from the broader research project it is part of identify hotel industry budgetary practice. This aids identifying change over time and provides an invaluable insight into how budgets are used in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent reorganization of community care in the UK removed many of the perverse incentives identified in the previous system. However, the organization of care for many people is still divided across several agencies in the public and independent sectors. As purchasing and providing agencies in both the National Health Service and local authority personal social services attempt to coordinate policy objectives and the means to achieve them, the total resources available and their allocation across different care groups and among people in the same care groups from a consistent focus of attention. The principles and practice of programme budgeting provide important lessons for planning and monitoring expenditure. This paper rehearses such principles in the specialized area of policies for people with learning disabilities and draws on the experience of mapping expenditure on relevant services in a survey over 10 local authorities in England.

Summary proceedings in the magistrates' courts have always been a quicker and cheaper way to process minor criminal cases, compared to trial by jury at the Crown Court. Research studies have shown how defence lawyers have made those cases routine so that they could be processed rapidly and cost-effectively through the system. However, there has been little research on how the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) deals with magistrates' court cases. Basing its analysis upon direct observations and interviews with CPS staff, this paper examines the impact of efficiency concerns and recent budget cuts on the way cases are prosecuted by the CPS at the magistrates' court. It shows how, taking advantage of routinised defence practices, most of the CPS magistrates' court advocacy has been delegated to Associate Prosecutors (APs). This delegation to less-qualified personnel reinforces the bureaucratisation of summary justice as it is based on decisions being made in the prosecutor's office, instead of open court. In practice, oversight by Crown Prosecutors is limited as the constraints of court advocacy run against the rules governing APs powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the extent to which the United Kingdom (UK) 2010 social security system meets the costs of a child in a low-income household. The costs of a child are derived from a loneparent and two-parent family budget standard (minimum income standard). The items in the child's basket of goods and services include food, clothing, household goods and services, personal care, transport and cultural and social participation necessities. The costs vary by age and according to whether childcare costs are included. Excluding childcare costs, the cost of a child increases with age, varying between £77 per week for 0- to one-year-olds to £116 per week for a secondary school child. There are some economies of scale for families with more than one child. These estimates are used to assess the modified Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) equivalence scale and the adequacy of the contribution of the state in child benefits and child tax credits. The state contributes only part of the total costs of a child in low-income families, which means that these costs may have to be met out of the adult benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of providing personally tailored budgetary information on public attitudes to tax and spending? We address this question with a survey experiment based on the annual tax summaries introduced by the UK tax authorities in 2014. By subtly manipulating the categories of state spending – in particular, the controversial category of ‘welfare’ – to invoke a sense of unfairness, we show how budget information in general and the United Kingdom’s annual tax summaries in particular impact support for state spending. Though the stated aim of providing personalised tax receipts to income taxpayers is to enhance fiscal transparency, doing so may also damage support for state spending if the information provides a sense that existing redistribution is unfair. The article contributes to political science debates about public attitudes to tax and spending, the character and trade-offs of fiscal transparency, and the framing effects of welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates changes within national budget by examining actors’ behavioral predilections and the institutional constraints under which they operate. The article presents three theoretical propositions about the influence of attention and institutions on all magnitudes of programmatic budget changes ranging from large cuts to massive expansions. Using quantile regression, the author is able to uncover which distinct processes bear on cuts, stasis, and expansion across spending categories within a budget. An examination of budgetary data from Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States from 1964 to 1999 leads to the conclusion that attention shifts lead to contractions and expansions of budgetary items, whereas preference-based explanations have marginal support. In addition, institutional costs involved in budgetary politics amplify budgetary shifts. The author closes the article by discussing the implications of the findings for partisan theories of government and institutional theories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global economy has experienced a steep downturn that is affecting all sectors of society. The United Kingdom officially entered a recession in January 2009 that made public spending cuts inevitable. Academic libraries are particularly vulnerable to changes in the world economy because of their reliance on highly-priced globally-sourced information products and dependence on expenditure allocations from parent institutions that are heavily dependent on public funding. An investigation of initial and anticipated effects of the downturn on libraries in UK higher education was conducted in summer 2009 to assess its impact on human resources and working practices, information resources and collection management, service portfolios, projects, and developments. A pragmatic mixed methodology was employed combining a mainly quantitative sector-wide questionnaire survey (n = 36) with in-depth semi-structured interviews of 12 senior managers at five universities. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Interview data were coded and analyzed thematically using cross-sectional indexing to facilitate inter-institutional comparisons. Results showed staffing and journal subscriptions were most affected, with services and projects largely protected. Findings confirm prior assumptions about human and information resources as targets for cuts, demonstrate strong commitment to service provision, reveal complex effects on development projects and highlight critical dimensions of managerial behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study aims to look at the conventional wisdom with regards to budgeting methods, processes, and sophistication in light of recent macro work relating budgetary approaches to risk-taking. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a survey of UK advertisers and personal interviews, current advertising and promotions budgeting methods and processes are summarized. A series of hypotheses relating risk, process and experience to advertising and promotions budgeting sophistication were tested. Findings - UK advertisers were found to use a variety of budgeting methods (two methods on average per company). Judgmental methods dominate, especially the "what is affordable" method, but at the same time more sophisticated methods like objective and task and measurement techniques (in particular return on investment) were solidly represented. The relationship between budgeting sophistication and risk was investigated, the premise being that risk and budgeting sophistication are inversely related, as well as budgetary processes and marketing experience. Research limitations/implications - Considerable insight is provided into the methods and processes being used. It is concluded that the explanation as to why firms use sophisticated or unsophisticated methods for setting their advertising and promotion budgets is largely related to organizational culture. Originality/value -Just over 1.5 percent of the UK's gross domestic product is spent on advertising and promotions (£19 billion). The study suggested that the primary reason for the lack of consensus on budgetary sophistication is that stakeholders involved with budgeting are far less concerned with specific methods than dealing with cultural norms, personalities, access to supporting data and policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a range of public health issues, interventions and ethical questions. Topics include the global level, inequality has risen sharply of the articles in issue illustrate and provide evidence of the effect of inequality on health; and ‘responsibility, prudence and health promotion', Brown et al discuss how ‘policy based on accountability has not philosophically inconsistent.