Exiting Prostitution


Book Description

How people move from deviant to conventional lifestyles is an issue that has attracted considerable interest over the past few years. However, much of this work has focused on men desisting from crime. This book provides one of the first examinations of desistance which is centred on women and, more specifically, how they exit prostitution.




Performance Comparison and Organizational Service Provision


Book Description

Exploring the mechanisms underlying performance comparisons, Performance Comparison and Organizational Service Provision investigates how such assessments shape hospitals’ service provision and medical professionals’ work. With a focus on U.S. health care, this study outlines how medical quality was defined and compared in the hospital sector from the late 19th century to the present. Developing a novel theoretical framework to investigate performance comparisons, several different forms of internal and external performance assessments are contrasted throughout this period. The transformative effects of these comparisons on hospitals’ relationships to patients, insurers, regulators, and staff are analyzed and their ramifications for current hospital care are explored. Drawing on this analysis, the book examines the controversial nature of these measures and the struggles among hospital managers, patients, physicians, and policy makers to determine hospital quality. Affording a deeper understanding of how performance comparisons influence organizational service provision, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields including organization studies, accountability and evaluation, health care, and policy research as well as practitioners in hospital care and management.




Service Provision


Book Description

This book provides the first overview of the service technologies available to telecoms operators working in a post-convergence world. Previous books have focused either on computer networks or on telecoms networks. This is the first to bring the two together and provide a single reference source for information that is currently only to be found in disparate journals, tool specifications and standards documents. In order to provide such broad coverage of the topic in a structured and logical fashion, the book is divided into 3 parts. The first part looks at the underlying network support for services and aims to explain the technology that makes the user-visible services possible. This section covers multimedia networking, both traditional (legacy) and future (softswitch) call processing, intelligent networks, the Internet, and Wireless networks. Part 2 deals with how these services may be analysed and managed. Chapters cover topics such as commercial issues, service management, quality of service, security, standards and APIs. Part 3 concludes the book by looking ahead at evolving technologies and more speculative possibilities, discussing the kinds of services that may be possible in the future and the technologies that will support them. * Focuses is on how the technology supports the services, rather than on technology for its own sake * Contributors drawn from both academia and industry (companies such as Marconi, BT, Telcordia, Cisco, Analysys) to give both theoretical and real-world perspectives * Unique singe-reference source for a wide range of material currently found only in disparate papers, specs and documentation * Covers brand new technologies such as JAIN, JTAPI, Parlay, IP, multimedia networking, active networks, WAP, wireless LANs, agent-based services, etc.




Service Provision and Migration


Book Description

This book investigates how liberalization of service provision related to movement of natural persons takes shape within EU and WTO law. It provides an overview and analysis of the implementation of the identified obligations derived from EU law and the GATS in the Dutch legal order and that of the United Kingdom. A thorough investigation of the chosen strategies in each legal order is provided, including a comparison of the differences and similarities between these strategies. The resulting overview leads to insight into the tension that exists between the international obligations related to service mobility of the two investigated states on the one hand, and their migration law and access to the labour market legislation on the other.




Service Provision and Rural Sustainability


Book Description

Access to quality services and community infrastructure are vital parts of supporting sustainable and resilient rural and small town places. Renewing outdated infrastructure and supporting the delivery of services in rural communities present significant challenges from the constrained fiscal and policy realities of the 21st century. Drawing upon contributors from five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, this book describes innovative service delivery and community infrastructure models that are appropriate to the contemporary rural and resource-dependent regions of developed economies. The examples show that an entrepreneurial approach to service delivery and infrastructure provision by local organizations and governments is needed. Critical economic and community development supports are crucial to assist creative and innovative sets of solutions that work for small communities. Chapters in this book argue that community development foundations for resilient rural and small town communities and regions must be co-constructed and co-delivered in partnership by both local and senior government actors, in terms of both policy and committed resources. This volume will be extremely valuable for students, scholars, and community development practitioners exploring policy-making, government initiatives, and community service provision in rural and small town places.




Public Service Provision and Urban Development


Book Description

Originally published in 1984. The authors of this study address a number of major themes related to the analysis of public services: the role of public choice theory, the importance of professors and organisations, the value of neo-Marxist theories and the importance of space. These issues are considered in the context of case studies of school closures, the provision of medical care, the relationships between Federal outlays and presidential politics, the provision of nurseries, demand-making in local government and the fiscal crisis facing many American cities. The subject of public service provision is of great interest not only to political scientists but also to geographers and to sociologists. This book presents a great deal of new thinking and new research from both North America and Britain.




OECD Multi-level Governance Studies Enabling Inter-Municipal Shared Service Provision in Lithuania Proposed Legal and Institutional Framework and Piloting Approach in Tauragė+ Functional Zone


Book Description

Lithuania is experiencing rapid demographic change, with the population ageing and significantly shrinking in recent decades. This trend has put pressure on the provision of public services, especially at the municipal level, and is expected to continue in the coming years. Ongoing efforts are made by Lithuania to improve the delivery of municipal services with the aim to mitigate territorial disparities and foster social inclusion. In this perspective, shared public service provision is viewed as a way to enhance the accessibility, affordability and quality of essential public services. This report provides recommendations and an action plan to address challenges inherent to the legal, fiscal and institutional frameworks for shared municipal service provision in Lithuania, while taking stock of these different challenges. The report also provides two roadmaps for piloting primary healthcare and long-term care services in Tauragė+ functional zone (Jurbarkas, Pagėgiai, Šilalė, Tauragė municipalities) through shared municipal service provision. The report draws lessons from peer country experiences, and in particular Finland, where inter-municipal cooperation has been used successfully for decades.




Social Security Administration Electronic Service Provision


Book Description

Social Security Administration Electronic Service Provision examines the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) proposed e-government strategy and provides advice on how the SSA can best deliver services to its constituencies in the future. The assessment by the Committee on the Social Security Administration's E-Government Strategy and Planning for the Future was based on (1) its examination of the SSA's current e-government strategy, including technological assumptions, performance measures and targets, planned operational capabilities, strategic requirements, and future goals; (2) its consideration of strategies, assumptions, and technical and operational requirements in comparable public- and private-sector institutions; and (3) its consideration of the larger organizational, societal, and technological context in which the SSA operates.




Religion, Welfare and Social Service Provision


Book Description

Religion, Welfare, and Social Service Provision: Common Ground delves deeply into the partnerships forged between religious communities, government agencies and nonprofits to deliver social services to the needy. These pages offer a considered examination of how local faith entities have served those in their midst, and how the provision of those services has been impacted by evolving social policies. This foundational volume brings together the work of more than two dozen leading researchers, each providing long overdue scholarly inquiry into religiously affiliated helping and the many possibilities that it holds for effective cooperation.




Improving agricultural productivity for poverty alleviation through integrated service provision with public-private sector partnerships: Examples and issues


Book Description

Enduring low agricultural productivity is one of the major causes of rural poverty in South Asia. Based on a review of recent empirical studies, this paper focuses on three key questions: (1) why is agricultural productivity low in the region?; (2) what are the key constraints and opportunities for enhancing agricultural productivity; and (3) what are the effective mechanisms to improve access to key productivity enhancing technologies, factors and services. Two major points raised in the paper are: (a) improved management of land and water is important for increasing productivity, but equally important is farmer access to non land and water-related inputs and services, which through their complementary relationships with water, increase the productivity and value of water. Even if most of the constraints related to land and water are removed through improved management, the resulting gains in productivity may not be sufficient-in the presence of constraints related to other factors and services-to have any significant impacts on poverty. Therefore, in order to generate any major increases in productivity, improved access for farmers to non land and water-related factors and services is also important; (b) access to these factors and services can be improved by providing them in an integrated manner with public-private sector partnerships. Based on examples of various models, initiatives and practices from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Sub-Saharan Africa and other countries, the study suggests a framework for integrated services provision in the agriculture sector, and raises key research issues and questions to be explored.