Suchergebnisse

AbstractIntegrity is an ongoing concern in the public sector. Contemporary examples include fraud incidents, ethical violations, theft, and a disregard of legal advice resulting in significant harms to the public. Public service integrity management systems are interconnected frameworks of legislation and institutions intended to reduce such incidents, including Codes of Conduct (CoCs). A CoC is typically defined as a written set of norms that outline virtuous or desired behaviours, often creating or linking to sanctions for violations. Despite matters of integrity and corruption being a high concern for citizens, no method exists to compare monitoring, reporting, and review of CoCs across jurisdictions. We developed and applied a method to assess CoC implementation using specific assessment criteria developed by reviewing available content across jurisdictions and the current literature on CoCs and integrity management. Our results reveal substantial inconsistency between jurisdictions and a lack of available or accessible data for many CoC elements. Our method serves both as a tool for analysis of the effectiveness of CoCs over time and as an assessment of how jurisdictions are currently reporting on their compliance with their own CoCs.Points for practitioners
A lack of evidence exists in terms of how CoCs are monitored, reported on, and reviewed.
As a first stage of a research program, we develop and apply a method to all Australian states, territories, and the Australian Public Service to compare the monitoring, reporting, and review activities undertaken by these jurisdictions.
Application of the method reveals opportunities for jurisdictions to improve the availability and accessibility of CoC data collection, reporting, and review.
Auditors General and Public Accounts Committees should consider this method as part of their works programs and potentially use it to inform their scrutiny programs and requirements for performance and annual reporting.
Public Service Commissions could find the data useful in adapting and improving their CoC monitoring, reporting, and review systems.

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic created a working from home experiment for the public sector. This paper examines what might happen next as countries move towards a COVID‐normal environment. Since the academic literature on public sector agencies and working from home since the onset of the pandemic is scant, we focus on the non‐peer‐reviewed literature as our evidence base. This paper identifies the main issues public sector agencies need to consider as new ways of working emerge. The key facets are emerging preferences for hybrid working, productivity and remote working, and impacts of working from home on employees, especially gender equality. We highlight a range of emerging challenges, including how to maintain productivity, the need to redevelop employee value propositions to attract and retain employees in this changing landscape, and the risks of proximity bias. We conclude by identifying questions to be addressed in subsequent research.

Loyalty between soldiers is idealized as an emotion that promotes cohesion and combat effectiveness. However, little empirical work has examined how military personnel understand, feel, and enact loyalty. We use a symbolic interactionalist informed frame to explore the lived experience of 24 retired Australian Defence Force members via in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our analysis revealed three core themes: (1) Loyalty as reciprocity, where there was an expectation that loyalty would be returned no matter what. (2) The importance of emotional connection for cohesion. (3) Loyalty as a prioritizing process, where a soldier's loyalties gave them a way of choosing between competing demands. Loyalty is a moral emotion that enabled sensemaking. Close interpersonal loyalties tended to trump wider/diffused loyalties. Respondents understood their loyalties to fellow soldiers within wider social constructs of mateship and professionalism. The findings show the risks that come from a reliance on loyalty for combat cohesion.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is the third most prevalent neurodegenerative disease affecting upper and lower motor neurons. An important pathway that may lead to motor neuron degeneration is neuroinflammation. Cerebrospinal Fluids of ALS patients have increased levels of the inflammatory cytokine IL-18. Because IL-18 is produced by dendritic cells stimulated by the platelet-activating factor (PAF), a major neuroinflammatory mediator, it is expected that PAF is involved in ALS. Here we show pilot experimental data on amplification of PAF receptor (PAFR) mRNA by RT-PCR. PAFR is overexpressed, as compared to age matched controls, in the spinal cords of transgenic ALS SOD1-G93A mice, suggesting PAF mediation. Although anti-inflammatory drugs have been tested for ALS before, no clinical trial has been conducted using PAFR specific inhibitors. Therefore, we hypothesize that administration of PAFR inhibitors, such as Ginkgolide B, PCA 4248 and WEB 2086, have potential to function as a novel therapy for ALS, particularly in SOD1 familial ALS forms. Because currently there are only two approved drugs with modest effectiveness for ALS therapy, a search for novel drugs and targets is essential. ; Brazilian government agencies FAPESP ; CNPq ; Pennsylvania Department of Health using Tobacco CURE funds ; Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Hlth Informat, Escola Paulista Med, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil ; Penn State Coll Med, Inst Personalized Med, Dept Biochem, Hershey, PA 17033 USA ; Penn State Coll Med, Dept Neurosurg, Hershey, PA USA ; Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Neurol & Neurosurg, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil ; Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Dept Hlth Informat, Escola Paulista Med, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil ; Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Escola Paulista Med, Dept Neurol & Neurosurg, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil ; FAPESP: 2013/07838-0, 2014/25602-6 ; CNPq: 303905/2013-1 ; Web of Science