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AbstractIn September 2009, the British Government launched a new employment assistance model called Flexible New Deal. It was soon replaced by Work Programme in 2011. Both prioritized what is often called a 'black box' approach to public employment assistance, whereby the government purchaser focuses predominantly on outcomes and does not seek to direct agency operations. Using a study of the orientations and strategies of frontline employment services staff in 2008 and 2012, we seek to enhance understanding of the impact of so‐called 'black box' commissioning on key aspects of service delivery. Black box advocates propose that it is a hands‐off approach that allows agencies to be innovative and to improve efficiency. These effects are thought to be due to improved local service quality and greater flexibility to tailor services to individual clients. Critics argue that this increased discretion facilitates under‐servicing of some jobseekers and agency profiteering. These practices are commonly referred to as 'parking' and 'creaming'. In this UK study, we provide evidence of both positive and negative activities associated with black box commissioning. We find some small improvements in flexibility at the frontline, but little to no evidence of increased efficiency as measured by the reported rates of jobseekers moving into work. We also observe an increase in practices associated with creaming and parking. We conclude that improving efficiency and maximizing innovation are not guaranteed by black box commissioning, and that the aim of facilitating increased frontline flexibility, while also minimizing risk, persists as a major policy design tension.

AbstractThis article investigates strategic changes in the governance of not‐for‐profit (NFP) boards in response to Australia's fully contracted employment services system. Of interest are changes in board demography, behaviour, procedures and dynamics, with special attention to the impact of those changes on boards' identity as a representation of community interests. As Australia is in the vanguard of social service contracting, the Australian experience affords insight into the impact of contracting upon the identity of the NFP sector. We find that NFP directors operating in this quasi‐market have come to define board 'professionalism' as the main strategic move to accommodate the increasingly commercial and competitive nature of contracting. Boards have adopted a more business‐like view of how their agency should operate, changed their board's skill set and utilized strategic recruitment processes, including selecting new board members based on perceived skill deficiencies of the current board and paying board members for their service. NFP boards have also introduced more comprehensive induction, training and evaluation systems. These findings provide Australian policymakers with evidence of the cultural impact of service delivery reforms on NFP agencies. They also afford leaders of NFPs an opportunity to reflect on important changes in the governance of their organizations, including the potential for 'mission drift' and loss of local forms of legitimacy.

Pennywort juice is a herbal drink extracted from pennywort leaves and stems. Pennywort residue is a by-product of pennywort juice production. In the present work, this by-product was proved to be a good dietary fibre ingredient in the making of high fibre pasta. Nevertheless, the addition of 10% pennywort residue reduced cooking properties, textural profiles, and overall acceptability of the pasta samples. The effects of transglutaminase treatment of pasta dough on the product quality were then investigated. Increase in transglutaminase dosage from 0.00 to 0.75 U/g protein of the flour blend decreased the cooking loss of pasta by 19% while improving its tensile strength and elongation rate by 15 and 49%, respectively. Further increase in enzyme dosage from 0.75 to 1.00 U/g protein, on the other hand, decreased the tensile strength and elongation rate. When the enzyme treatment lasted for 30 min, the cooking loss was reduced by 10%, while the tensile strength and elongation rate of high fibre pasta were both enhanced by 10%. However, increase in treatment time from 30 to 40 min did not cause any significant differences in textural and cooking properties of the fibre-rich pasta. The appropriate transglutaminase dosage and biocatalytic time were 0.75 U/g protein and 30 min, respectively, under which the overall acceptability of the sample incorporated with 10% pennywort residue powder was similar to that of the semolina pasta.

Pharmacists play a variety of roles in supporting the health care system. The COVID-19 epidemic originated in China and has spread to many countries around the world. In the context of the current COVID-19, additional support from pharmacists' human resources will be needed in the future. This research survey explores the knowledge, attitude, and prevention strategies in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research aims to collect data from Vietnamese students in Ho Chi Minh City's pharmacy sector. The following objectives are to study the awareness of the COVID-19 virus, acts of prevention, risk awareness, and compliance measures to prevent further outbreaks of COVID -19 in Ho Chi Minh City. This cross-sectional survey used anonymous questionnaires that investigated the knowledge, attitudes, and prevention of Vietnamese students' COVID-19 epidemic. The unit of analysis consists of undergraduate pharmacy students from the first year to the last year. Data were collected during April and May 2020. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS. Pharmacy students in this study were 80% female. The main source of information for pharmacy students to access information about COVID-19 epidemics from websites of the health authorities (31.7%) and news from television and newspapers (40.2 %). The Cronbach alpha coefficients of the three main factors in this study were knowledge (0.74), attitude (0.85), and prevention of COVID-19 (0.89), which show acceptable internal consistency. This research has shown no statistically significant difference between pharmacy students' demographics in three KAP variables, and there is a strong positive correlation between the three factors. It shows the unity and social solidarity of the study participants towards COVID-19. This study shows that pharmacy students have an epidemic concern about COVID-19 today. Pharmacy student's attention knowledge, attitude and preventive COVID-19. Sources of information from television and newspapers are important and updated regularly and accurately about COVID-19 to achieve effectiveness, helping pharmacy students to be aware of COVID- 19 pandemic in the country and the world.

The plight of Vietnamese migrants in the UK has featured prominently in recent media and public policy debates on modern slavery, illegal border crossings, and labour exploitation. Yet little attention has been paid to their subjective experiences of border crossings, nor the wide range of categories they pass between. Vietnamese migrants coming to the UK in search of work face a complex array of decisions surrounding the respective costs and risks related to a chosen migration route which must be weighed against personal and collective expectations. These complex decisions are compounded by a shifting and highly stratified immigration and borders regime which renders migrants more vulnerable through restricting rights and increasing surveillance. This chapter explores the experiences and imaginaries of the UK border among migrants who have crossed the UK border, as well as those who intend to make the journey. We explore the contrast between the expectations and realities of UK borders through in-depth interviews with Vietnamese migrants. We argue, notwithstanding knowledge of the risks involved in border crossings and the hostile border enforcement regime, imaginations of opportunities for transforming local livelihoods remain powerful and deep-seated political and cultural narratives for Vietnamese migrants.

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the link between policy tools and governance modes – the characteristic ways frontline staff are meta-governed. It asks: Are substantive policy tools coupled to procedural tools (governance modes) that can guide local service delivery agencies and the work of individuals delivering welfare services? The substantive policy tools in this case are those typically utilised to reform welfare-to-work services: contracting-out of services and competitive tendering, and the regulation of quasi-markets. These are hypothesised to flow through to procedural policy tools in the form of corporate and market incentives and regulatory (bureaucratic) methods that shape how work is done (governance modes), privileging certain practice orientations at the frontline. Policy makers seek to shape these meta-level governance modes because they should result in systemic change, based on a reconfiguration of policy actors and their interrelationships, for both service delivery agencies and the individuals working in them. We identified four ideal-type governance modes (bureaucratic, corporate, market and network) and tracked which of these were dominant in-practice at the frontline in Australia and the UK at two levels: office and personal, at four points in time (1998, 2008, 2012 and 2016). We found that the dominant mode of organisation at the office level was corporate, followed by bureaucratic in both nations. But the bureaucratic mode had grown in strength over time, particularly in Australia, and as a personal priority for staff, as re-regulation occurred. The results indicate a coupling between substantive policy tools and governance modes at the frontline of welfare-to-work.

AbstractThe introduction of New Public Management (NPM)‐inspired reforms in the public sector in the 1990s saw a big leap in public–private outsourcing partnerships in public service delivery; however, many of these have failed, resulting in backsourcing. Although effective governance of the ongoing relationship between outsourcing partners is arguably key to a successful partnership, the findings as to the optimal type of relationship between two main governance mechanisms – contractual and relational – remain inconclusive. Adopting Huber et al.'s dynamic perspective of governance mechanism interplay as a research framework, this paper empirically investigates the interplay in two problematic outsourcing public–private partnerships, that is the delivery of services has been backsourced or considered to be backsourced. Our data confirm the existence of a dynamic interplay between contractual and relational governance. The findings, however, do not represent a perfect fit with Huber et al.'s conceptualizations, signalling the significance of our research as to a more diverse and complicated group of interactions. Our analysis also reveals the potential interference of additional contextual factors in the interplay. Further research that explores and tests these contextual factors is warranted.