Foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa

The authors of this paper examine trends in private foreign direct investment in sub - Saharan Africa, assess how this has affected the host economies, and discuss the prospects for increased investment in the 1990s. They examine new or nontraditional forms of investment as well as more traditional stock and flow trends. They also focus on the relationship between structural adjustment programs and foreign private investment. Foreign investment in the 1990s (as in the 1980s) is likely to flow to a few key sectors: energy, selected export manufacturing sectors, and possibly the tourist industry. The least attractive area for the foreign investor is exclusively import-substituting industrialization. Interested investors are more likely to commit technology and management than equity capital. As a result, development finance institutions are likely to play an increasingly important role in meeting the need for capital. Thus, activity in sub - Saharan Africa may be more effective at raising the total volume of investment than any change in the climate of fiscal and other incentives. There is no prospect whatsoever for foreign investment to meet sub - Saharan Africa's rising foreign exchange and savings gaps. For one thing, prospects in other parts of the rapidly changing world look brighter and less risky and are closer to home. For another (Catch 22), sub - Saharan Africa is unlikely to attract capital until the prospects for growth improve.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Trade and Regional Integration,ICT Policy and Strategies,Environmental Economics&Policies

Golden Ages, Red Herrings and Post-Keynesian Policing: Understanding the Role of Police Culture in the Police Professionalism Debate

This paper seeks to further our understanding of the role played by police culture in debates surrounding police professionalization. It begins with a brief overview of the ‘Golden Age’ of policing which has become the benchmark for public satisfaction against which subsequent eras of British policing are now judged. This is followed by an introduction to the concepts of police professionalism and police culture and an overview of some existing literature that highlights the cultural challenges of police ‘professionalization’. The paper then seeks to position police professionalization agendas as a direct result of social change and the emergence of post-Keynesian policing. This leads into an exploration on how professionalization agendas (in their broadest sense) can be viewed as an attempt to impose, rather than remove, control from practitioners. Finally, the paper shall develop two related themes. First, that the discretion which is synonymous with the police role makes the imposition of greater occupational control problematic and, second, that being seen to control occupational culture is increasingly viewed as a measure of effective police leadership

Police and Higher Education

Interest in the relationship between police and higher education is not a new phenomenon. However, in the UK, co-operation between police and the academy has been slow to develop, particularly when compared to the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, a number of police-university partnerships and a variety of courses from Foundation to Masters level aimed at current and aspiring police officers has mushroomed over the last decade, illustrating a recent formalisation of the police-academia relationship in the UK. Overall, the relationship between police and academia has become more routine, taking place at organisational (as opposed to interpersonal) level. The recent introduction of the Certificate of Knowledge in Policing, overseen by the newly established College of Policing, is likely to further expand and deepen the relationship between police and higher education institutions. The impact of academic police education on the professional identities of the students and the broader organisational culture of the police is a topic that has so far garnered relatively little research (e.g. Punch, 2007, Heslop, 2011). Yet, professional communities, such as higher education and policing, strongly influence identity construction through the process of socialisation. Institutions define and confirm identities via expert knowledge systems that provide ways to interpret the social world and the individual’s place in it. Indeed, an individual’s entrance to the cultural landscapes of higher education or policing can be viewed as a transformational experience, requiring a renegotiation of one’s self-identity. The perceived and actual cultural and paradigmatic differences between the police and academia implies separate social (and mental) spaces which suggest conceptual tension, uneasy compromise, and a certain degree of dissonance are a possibility for the students wishing to occupy both worlds of higher educatio

The Impact of Dispersal Powers on Congregating Youth

Purpose: To present research which evaluated the impact of Dispersal Orders in an English town. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study used a mixed method design to, qualitatively, explore the impact of the intervention on young people and, quantitatively, the impact on recorded crime/anti-social behaviour. Findings: The use of Dispersal Orders in the town being studied highlighted a number of issues detrimental to young people. Powers appeared to be used to control the congregating rather than anti-social behaviour of young people and their use could increase young peoples’ feelings of vulnerability. Practical Implications: The findings suggest that Dispersal Orders (and the newer Public Spaces Protection Orders) may be ineffective if they are used without the focus of a specific anti-social behaviour issue. Social Implications: The findings suggest that the use of Dispersal Orders to deal with non anti-social behaviour issues are likely to alienate young people and have the potential to inadvertently place them at further risk. They also suggest that the Public Spaces Protection Order could very well exacerbate the substantial issues which have been identified in the present research. Originality/Value: This research is original and suggests that the negative findings of earlier pieces of research into Dispersal Orders can be replicated in very different geographical environments and in areas with low levels of general deprivation where no substantial anti-social behaviour issues were identified. Furthermore, it uses original data to contextualise contemporary developments in anti-social behaviour, namely the introduction of Public Spaces Protection Order

On the Relevance of Police Organisational Culture Approaches to the Prison Context

Research into the occupational culture of prison officers has provided some important and enriching accounts of prisons, of the lives of those who live and work in them and the kinds of work that take place within them. Such accounts tend to use police occupational culture as a reference point, if not as a template for such observations. In many respects, this is understandable and a perhaps obvious choice given that prison officers and police officers both work within the criminal justice system. Similarly, the wealth of literature focussing on police occupational culture provides a foundation for understanding and exploring different occupational groups which function within the criminal justice arena. This paper, however, will explore some of the broader differences between the two occupations. The purpose of this is to assess the limits to the usefulness of police occupational culture as a means of understanding the cultural world of prison officers. This is not to understate the similarities between the two occupations and the ways in which these might contribute to similar or shared culturally driven experiences, perceptions and behaviours. What this paper will do, however, is to provide a brief overview of some of the areas of difference which might lead to different cultural reference points

The use of social network analysis to explore relationships between the medical informatics and information systems literature

Health informatics (HI) research has evolved over several decades from its roots in computer science (CS) and artificial intelligence in medicine (AIM). Information Systems (IS) evolved independently, but recently IS within health environments are being embraced as a new test bed for Information Systems theories. The purpose of this paper is to present an objective view of the level of cross reference between the IS and MI bodies of literature, and to either provide evidence of uptake of IS theories in HI or of outlets that would provide appropriate targets for such work due to their antecedents and influence. The extent of the cross fertilization between the two disciplines is still thought to be low. Using social network analysis (SNA) we present an exploratory study which identifies the bridges and cutpoints within a basket of 44 key journals and identify the impact of Information Systems research on the Health Informatics discipline. This work is informed by a number of recent studies using this approach

Ontological clarity and comprehension in health data models

Conceptual modeling forms an important part of systems analysis. If this is done incorrectly or incompletely, there can be serious implications for the resultant system, specifically in terms of rework and useability. One approach to improving the conceptual modelling process is to evaluate how well the model represents reality. Emergence of the Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) ontological model introduced a platform to classify and compare the grammar of conceptual modelling languages. This work applies the BWW theory to a real world example in the health arena. The general practice computing group data model was developed using the Barker Entity Relationship Modelling technique. We describe an experiment, grounded in ontological theory, which evaluates how well the GPCG data model is understood by domain experts. The results show that with the exception of the use of entities to represent events, the raw model is better understood by domain expert

ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE (ESL) STUDENTS AS NEW MEMBERS OF A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE: SOME THOUGHTS FOR LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT

This article reports on English second language (ESL) students’ experiences of academic writing in a university setting. It draws on the notion of community of practice to explain that it is not sufficient for academic literacy courses to concern themselves only with the questions relating to the development of student academic literacy. Rather they should also be concerned with how students learn in social contexts and what knowledge is included and what knowledge is excluded. Such an orientation is vital because academic writing in the context of the university is more than just the ability to read and write, it is often the basis for the evaluation of students and, as such, becomes a powerful gatekeeper