Private Selves In Public Organizations

This book explores organizations as not simply rational, technological structures and networks for organizing people around tasks and services; it defines organizations as relational, experiential, and perceptual systems.

This book explores organizations as not simply rational, technological structures and networks for organizing people around tasks and services; it defines organizations as relational, experiential, and perceptual systems.

How private groups increasingly set public policy and regulate lives—with little public knowledge or attention. From accrediting doctors and lawyers to setting industry and professional standards, private groups establish many of the public policies in today’s advanced societies. Yet this important role of nongovernmental groups is largely ignored by those who study, teach, or report on public policy issues. Public Policymaking by Private Organizations sheds light on policymaking by private groups, which are not accountable to the general public or, often, even to governments. This book brings to life the hidden world of policymaking by providing an overview of this phenomenon and in-depth case studies in the areas of finance, food safety, and certain professions. Far from being merely self regulation or self-governance, policymaking by private groups, for good or ill, can have a substantial impact on the broader public—from ensuring the safety of our home electrical appliances to vetting the credit-worthiness of complex financial instruments in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. From nonprofit associations to multinational corporations, private policymaking groups are everywhere. They certify professionals as competent, establish industry regulations, and set technical and professional standards. But because their operations lack the transparency and accountability required of governmental bodies, these organizations comprise a policymaking territory that is largely unseen, unreported, uncharted, and not easily reconciled with democratic principles. Anyone concerned about how policies are made—and who makes them—should read this book.

Bult-Spiering & Dewulf: Strategic Issues in PPP: Back CoverText - draft This book provides a theoretical basis for examining public-privatepartnerships (PPP) so as to give researchers a better understandingof PPP and to develop a more strategic approach to thesubject. It analyses the various characteristics and approaches of PPP,drawing on a number of international studies, particularly fromEurope and the USA, and it provides a thorough review of theliterature. It looks, in particular, at two main PPP procurementsystems: concessions and joint ventures. The Authors Mirjam Bult-Spiering is assistant professor Public-PrivateGovernance of the Department Construction Management &Engineering at the University of Twente, The Netherlands. Geert Dewulf is professor of Planning & Development of theDepartment Construction Management & Engineering at theUniversity of Twente, The Netherlands. Also of Interest Public-Private Partnerships - Managing Risks and Opportunities Edited by Akintola Akintoye Matthias Beck & Cliff Hardcastle 0-632-06465-X Value and Risk Management - A Guide to Best Practice Michael F. Dallas Published on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Building 1-4051-2069-X Cover illustrations courtesy of George Jautze, ING Real EstateGeneral Management (Nijmegen-Marienburg) and Erik Hermsen, StruktonIntegrale Projecten (Montaigne) Cover design by Simon Witter

Psychology has worked hard to explore the inner self. Modem psychology was born in Wundt's laboratory and Freud's consulting room, where the inner self was pressed to reveal some of its secrets. Freud, in particular, devoted most of his life to explor ing the hidden recesses inside the self-hidden even from the conscious mind, he said. From Freud's work right down to the latest journal article on self-schemata or self-esteem, psychologists have continued to tell us about the inner self. More recently, psychology has turned some of its attention to the outer self, that is, the self that is seen and known by other people. Various psychologists have studied how the outer self is formed (impression formation), how people control their outer selves (impression management), and so forth. But how is the outer self related to the inner self? There is an easy answer, but it is wrong. The easy answer is that the outer self is mostly the same as the inner self. Put another way, it is that people reveal their true selves to others in a honest and straightforward fashion, and that others accurately perceive the individual as he or she really is. Sometimes it works out that way, but often it does not. The issue is far too complex for the easy answer.

Presents a theory of publicness that is based on the degree to which an organization is influenced by government and market factors.

In an age when "we are all multiculturalists now," as Nathan Glazer has said, the politics of identity has come to pose new challenges to our liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Just what identity means, and what its role in the public sphere is, are questions that are being hotly debated. In this book Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions--about the constitution of the self that defines personal identity, about the way liberalism conceals the importance of identity under the veil of the "abstract citizen," and about the difference and interrelationship between personal and public identity. Hekman's use of object relations theory allows her to argue, against the postmodernist resort to a "fictive" subject, for a core self that is socially constructed in the early years of childhood but nevertheless provides a secure base for the adult subject. Such a self is social, particular, embedded, and connected--a stark contrast to the neutral and disembodied subject posited in liberal theory. This way of construing the self also opens up the possibility for distinguishing how personal identity functions in relation to public identity. Against those advocates of identity politics who seek reform through the institutionalization of group participation, Hekman espouses a vision of the politics of difference that eschews assigning individuals to fixed groups and emphasizes instead the fluidity of choice arising from the complex interaction between the individual's private identity and the multiple opportunities for associating with different groups and the public identities they define. Inspired by Foucault's argument that "power is everywhere," Hekman maps out a dual strategy of both political and social/cultural resistance for this new politics of identity, which recognizes that with significant advances already won in the political/legal arena, attitudinal change in civil society presents the greatest challenge for achieving more progress today in the struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression.

World Bank Discussion Paper 236. Agricultural support services play an important role in increasing agricultural productivity. Given the importance of agriculture to developing countries, governments have taken the lead in providing such services.