agency practices
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Drawing on over 4,000,000 individual and 2,000 agency observations across five countries, this paper examines the relationship between features of an employee’s work environment and intrinsic motivation in public agencies. It finds that practices which foster employees’ sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are associated with substantially higher levels of intrinsic motivation across a broad range of settings. This is true both at the individual and agency level and when examining changes within agency over time. These patterns appear to be at least partially a result of differential selection in and out of the agency, with lower levels of supportive practices associated with greater desire to exit for employees with higher levels of intrinsic motivation. Nonfinancial elements of job design are strongly associated with intrinsic motivation, as are potentially more difficult to alter features of an agency, such as satisfaction with compensation and managerial quality. There is also suggestive evidence that the relationship between agency practices and employee intrinsic motivation is stronger when tasks are more difficult to monitor.

This chapter first discusses the complexities of change in organizations and why so many OCD programs fail and makes the case for change agents to become evidence-based in their change agency practice. The author then offers a definition of evidence-based organizational change and development (EBOCD) and outlines the types of “best evidence” that can be used to inform and shape the formulation and implementation of OCD strategies and to critically evaluate the associated processes and change agency practices. Various distinctive evidence-based initiatives for OCD are discussed and several case examples from the United Kingdom are presented. The chapter closes with a discussion of the specific merits of “design science,” “professional partnership” research, and “replication” research.

Bay al-tawarruq is increasingly adopted by Malaysian Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) in creating both deposit and financing products. The contract involves sequences of trading between three parties namely client, IFIs and brokers. However, in order to simply the operation and to minimize client’s involvement, the actual trading are conducted between IFI and brokers only. IFI will act on behalf of the client and execute all trading transactions. The practice triggers fiqh issue because the IFI (as agent of client) will sell and purchase commodity to himself. The present article discusses the issue by assessing Muslim jurists’ view pertaining to dual agency practices. The article adopts juristic analysis method in which classical and contemporary scholars arguments are analysed before a preferred opinion (tarjih) is concluded. Understanding the issue is vital to avoid misunderstanding about the legality of Islamic financial products particularly products that used the organized bay’ al-tawarruq as the underlying contract.

Can the rise of nationalist-authoritarian populism be explained in terms of neo­liberalism and its effects? The frst half of this paper is about conceptual under­labouring: in spite of signifcant overlap, there are relatively clear demarcation criteria for identifying neoliberalism and nationalist-authoritarian populism as distinct entities. Neoliberalism has succeeded in transforming social contexts through agency, practices and institutions, with far-reaching efects. The prevailing economic and social policies have also had various causal efects such as rising inequalities, progressively more insecure terms of employment, and recurring economic crises. I argue that these have led to discontent with globalization and various political responses, including those of nationalist and authoritarian populisms. Finally, by juxtaposing constitutive and causal explanations, and by stressing the history of national-authoritarian populism, I raise questions about geo-historical specifcity of diferent formations. The standard Karl Polanyian interpretation of Trump, Brexit and such like phenomena is misleading, yet a partial historical analogy especially to the interwar era populism is valid if understood in a subtle, processual, and suffciently contextual way. The Polanyi-inspired historical analogy can be explored further. While the 19th and 20th century working class movement emerged from a variety of socio-economic conditions, socialists who believed in its world-historical role actively made it. Since the 1970s the working class has been largely unmade both as a result of impersonal processes and deliberate attempts to undermine it. Only a learning process towards qualitatively higher levels of refexivity can help develop global transformative agency for the 21st century.

Purpose The challenges of transferring the theoretical requirements of an effective multi-agency partnership into everyday practices are often overlooked, particularly within safeguarding practices. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore practitioner perspectives of working within a multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) and those factors that encourage or hinder a multi-agency approach to safeguarding vulnerable individuals. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews with 23 practitioners from one MASH location in the North of England were conducted, with a thematic analysis being used to analyse findings. Findings The interviews with practitioners illustrated the complexity of establishing a multi-agency approach to safeguarding. It was inferred that whilst information sharing and trust between agencies had improved, the absence of a common governance structure, unified management system, formalisation of practices and procedures and shared pool of resources limited the degree to which MASH could be considered a multi-agency approach to safeguarding. Practical implications Establishing a multi-agency approach to safeguarding is complex and does not occur automatically. Rather, the transition to collaborative practices needs to be planned, with agreed practices and processes implemented from the beginning and reviewed regularly. Originality/value Few studies have investigated the implementation of MASH into safeguarding practices, with this paper providing a unique insight into practitioner opinions regarding the transition to multi-agency practices. Whilst there is a focus on MASH, the challenges to arise from the research may be reflective of other multi-agency partnerships, providing a foundation for best practice to emerge.

This chapter first discusses the complexities of change in organizations and why so many OCD programs fail and makes the case for change agents to become evidence-based in their change agency practice. The author then offers a definition of evidence-based organizational change and development (EBOCD) and outlines the types of “best evidence” that can be used to inform and shape the formulation and implementation of OCD strategies and to critically evaluate the associated processes and change agency practices. Various distinctive evidence-based initiatives for OCD are discussed and several case examples from the United Kingdom are presented. The chapter closes with a discussion of the specific merits of “design science,” “professional partnership” research, and “replication” research.

Abstract Intense tropical cyclones (TCs) generally produce a cloud-free center with calm winds, called the eye. The Automated Rotational Center Hurricane Eye Retrieval (ARCHER) algorithm is used to analyze Hurricane Satellite (HURSAT) B1 infrared satellite imagery data for storms occurring globally from 1982 to 2015. HURSAT B1 data provide 3-hourly observations of TCs. The result is a 34-yr climatology of eye location and size. During that time period, eyes are identified in about 13% of all infrared images and slightly more than half of all storms produced an eye. Those that produce an eye have (on average) 30 h of eye scenes. Hurricane Ioke (1992) had the most eye images (98, which is 12 complete days with an eye). The median wind speed of a system with an eye is 97 kt (50 m s−1) [cf. 35 kt (18 m s−1) for those without an eye]. Eyes are much more frequent in the Northern Hemisphere (particularly in the western Pacific) but eyes are larger in the Southern Hemisphere. The regions where eyes occur are expanding poleward, thus expanding the area at risk of TC-related damage. Also, eye scene occurrence can provide an objective measure of TC activity in place of those based on maximum wind speeds, which can be affected by available observations and forecast agency practices.