Browse by: "2003"

Despite variation across national contexts, university-clinical partners in any country have similar aims. These are to deliver world-class research, education and health care services, and there are similar tensions.. Health and higher education partners face two central paradoxes: that they are interdependent (require each other to discharge their mission) and independent (managed according to different priorities). Also, partners struggle to balance the demands of two masters (health and education) whose priorities are difficult to square. Traditional ways of organising partnerships are challenged everywhere by the global change in clinical provision, education and research. Despite pressures on its organisational form, the tripartite mission remains a vital pursuit. The way it is achieved needs to be re-examined.

Introducing evidence-based practice and service innovation, translating research into practice, managing a growing knowledge base, and developing new forms of working each require a tripartite approach. Partnerships are not necessarily focused on synergy between missions, meaning the integration of component parts to produce an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This report draws on discussions with leaders of organisations at the interface of health and university sectors on the current and future direction of relationships between service, research and education. It outlines some challenges for those managing the tripartite mission and suggestions for ways to approach these.

The position of Czech universities at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century is briefly described and specific features are emphasized. The academic staff was faced with new challenges as new developments in Czech society took place. Participation in different international programmes and opportunities to obtain relevant information about trends in higher education in Europe and the world have been of crucial importance. This assistance together with changes in home legislation has accelerated the transformation process in Czech higher education.

The main part of this paper is an attempt to summarize the response of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (UWB) to the outside world as shown in its development plan. Using UWB as an example of a medium-sized university, the paper describes the process of analysing this university’s potential and its external environment, which led to the formulation of the university’s development plan. In implementing this plan the main aim is to change the attitudes of the staff (both academic and non-academic). Positive results and barriers yet to be overcome are presented.

Dans tous les pays, les partenaires de l’université et du milieu clinique ont des objectifs similaires malgré les variations qui existent selon les contextes nationaux. Ils visent à assurer des services de recherche, d’enseignement et de soins de santé de niveau international. Mais ils font aussi face à des tensions similaires. Les partenaires de la santé et de l’enseignement supérieur se trouvent confrontés à deux paradoxes centraux : ils sont interdépendants (ils ont besoin l’un de l’autre pour s’acquitter de leur mission) et indépendants (ils sont gérés en fonction de priorités différentes). Ensuite, ils s’efforcent d’équilibrer les exigences de deux maîtres (la santé et l’enseignement) dont les priorités sont difficiles à concilier. La façon traditionnelle de mettre en place les partenariats se trouve partout confrontée aux répercussions des facteurs mondiaux de changement dans les services cliniques, l’enseignement et la recherche. Malgré les pressions qui s’exercent sur ses formes d’organisation, la mission tripartite demeure une activité vitale. La manière dont elle est accomplie doit être réexaminée.

Introduire des pratiques fondées sur l’expérience et des innovations dans les services, convertir la recherche en pratique, gérer une base de connaissances de plus en plus vaste, mettre au point de nouvelles formes de travail, tout cela exige une approche tripartite. Les partenariats ne se concentrent pas nécessairement sur la synergie entre les missions, autrement dit sur l’intégration des composantes pour produire un effet plus grand que la somme des parties.

Ce rapport s’appuie sur les débats entre dirigeants d’organismes situés à la rencontre des secteurs universitaires et de santé sur l’orientation actuelle et future des relations entre les services, la recherche et l’enseignement. Il décrit quelques défis que doivent relever ceux qui gèrent la mission tripartite et propose des moyens de les surmonter.

En Suisse, comme dans d’autres pays européens, les notions d’accréditation et d’assurance qualité à l’université ont pris une nouvelle dimension sous les effets conjugués de l’autonomie grandissante des universités, de l’apparition de nouveaux types d’établissement d’enseignement offrant des programmes internationaux, et de la mise en œuvre de la Déclaration de Bologne. Au vu de ces développements, le gouvernement fédéral suisse et les cantons universitaires ont convenu d’instituer conjointement un Organe d’accréditation et d’assurance qualité qui serait chargé des questions non seulement d’accréditation, mais aussi d’assurance qualité et de promotion de la qualité dans les universités.

Les discussions entourant la création d’un organe chargé d’examiner de manière critique la qualité de l’enseignent supérieur ont déclenché en Suisse un vif débat. Toutefois, après des mois de débat acharné entre les universités et les autorités politiques (gouvernement et administration), les différents points de vue ont fini par converger vers un modèle qui jouit aujourd’hui du soutien sans réserve de toutes les parties concernées. Ce modèle présente l’avantage de ne pas se limiter aux seules questions d’accréditation (c’est-à-dire de respect de normes minima), mais de comprendre aussi la mise en œuvre des mécanismes d’assurance qualité nécessaires pour garantir un développement durable de la qualité dans les universités. Les propositions d’accréditation formulées dans le cadre de ce modèle concerneront en outre les filières d’études comme les établissements universitaires.

Accreditation and quality assurance at universities have gained new meaning in Switzerland – as in other European nations – through the concurrent increase in autonomy, new educational institutions offering international courses and the implementation of the Bologna Declaration. With respect to these developments the Swiss government together with the university cantons agreed to jointly establish an Accreditation and Quality Assurance Board which would be responsible not only for accreditation questions, but also for quality assurance and quality promotion at the universities.

The discussions surrounding the creation of an institution, which critically examines quality in the area of higher education, provoked a controversial debate in Switzerland. However, after several months of intensive discussions between universities and political bodies (government and administration) the different points of view eventually led to a model that today enjoys the broad support of all of the parties involved. This model has the following advantages: It focuses not only on accreditation i.e. fulfilling of minimum standards, but also on implementation of quality assurance mechanisms to guarantee sustainable quality development at universities and it provides accreditation for institutions as well as programs.

On décrit brièvement la situation des universités tchèques au début de la dernière décennie du XXe siècle en insistant sur certaines de leurs originalités. Le personnel académique a été confronté à des problèmes nouveaux au moment où sont intervenus des changements dans la société tchèque. La participation à plusieurs programmes internationaux et la possibilité de se procurer une information pertinente sur l’évolution de l’enseignement supérieur en Europe et dans le monde ont été d’une importance cruciale. L’assistance et les changements intervenus dans la législation interne ont accéléré le processus de transformation de l’enseignement supérieur tchèque.

La partie centrale de la présente contribution est consacrée à une présentation rapide de la réaction de l’Université de Bohème occidentale de Pilsen (UWB) au monde extérieur telle qu’elle ressort de son plan de développement. Prenant l’UWB comme exemple d’université moyenne, elle décrit le processus d’analyse du potentiel et de l’environnement de l’université qui a débouché sur la formulation de son plan de développement. Dans la mise en œuvre de ce plan, on cherche avant tout à modifier l’attitude du personnel (académique ou non académique). On présente les résultats positifs et les obstacles qui demandent encore à être levés.

The 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina created deep ethnic divisions in alreadyfragmented university structures, where individual faculties possessed considerable academic and financial independence. The faculties, in turn, in the Humboldtian tradition, were composed of semi-autonomous "chairs" and institutes. This level of the organisation had gained added autonomy in the Communist period from the distinctive Yugoslav "self-management" principle, intended to empower operating units. This fragmentation at institutional level is compounded in present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina by the absence of any effective national-level planning and control of higher education.

Post-war reform efforts by international agencies have addressed some of the problems of this fragmented structure. But they have not taken sufficient account of the differences between the academic principles on which the universities of Bosnia-Herzegovina are founded and those of the Anglo-American tradition, from which models of managerial reform are typically taken. Through a better understanding of the universities’ long-established organisational frameworks, it may be possible for aid projects to help achieve enhanced institutional managerial effectiveness and to reverse some of the more damaging effects of multi-level fragmentation.

La guerre qui a eu lieu de 1992 à 1995 en Bosnie-Herzégovine a creusé d’importantes divisions ethniques dans des structures universitaires déjà morcelées où chaque faculté jouissait d’une indépendance académique et financière considérable. A leur tour, les facultés, conformes à la tradition humboldtienne, se composaient de « chaires » et d’instituts semi-autonomes. Ce niveau de l’organisation avait vu son autonomie s’accroître au cours de l’ère communiste, en vertu du principe « d’autodétermination » caractéristique de la Yougoslavie et destiné à renforcer l’autonomie des unités opérationnelles. Cette fragmentation du niveau institutionnel est encore intensifiée dans la Bosnie-Herzégovine actuelle par l’absence, au niveau national, de toute planification ou contrôle efficace de l’enseignement supérieur.

Les efforts de réformes entrepris après la guerre par les organismes internationaux ont abordé quelques-uns des problèmes posés par cette structure fragmentaire. Mais ils n’ont pas suffisamment tenu compte des différences entre les principes théoriques sur lesquels se fondent les universités de Bosnie-Herzégovine et ceux de la tradition anglo-américaine qui inspirent le plus souvent les modèles de réforme de la gestion. En essayant de mieux comprendre les schémas traditionnels de l’organisation universitaire, on pourra sans doute amener les projets d’aide à rendre plus efficace la gestion institutionnelle et à inverser quelques-uns des effets les plus nocifs d’une fragmentation qui agit à plusieurs niveaux.

This working paper has been presented and discussed at the October 2002 OECD National Accounts Experts Meeting. The objective of the paper is two fold: (1) present comparable results for household financial and non financial assets and liabilities for Europe, the USA and Japan, (2) analyse the change in the composition of household gross and net wealth of these countries and zones between 1995 and 2000. Data is based on official financial accounts sources. However the paper proposes (and estimate the corresponding data) an original classification, better adapted to analysis: pension funds assets are broken down between defined-benefit and defined contribution, life insurance between unit-linked and guaranteed-rate, mutual-funds between equity, bond and mixed. The paper discusses the reliability of the data, including non listed shares and non financial assets. The paper then discusses global and detailed compared trends of household wealth between countries ...

This statistical working paper is the exact copy of the report of the joint OECD/Eurostat task force that was presented at the October 2002 OECD National Accounts Expert Meeting. The report confirms that current estimates of software investment differ significantly between countries for pure statistical reasons, thus affecting the comparability of GDP. The objective of this report is to propose concrete recommendations for a harmonised re-estimation of software investment in the national accounts. Recommendations cover definitional and conceptual issues (what is software?, what is software investment?), measurement issues in international trade and price, as well as general methods of estimation (sources and commodity-flow methods). The principle of the recommendations has been adopted by a large majority of OECD member countries during the October 2002 meeting. However, new estimates based on these recommendations should only be available in the forthcoming years, depending on the ...

An early criticism of the Stability and Growth Pact has pointed to its asymmetric nature and the weak mechanisms to prevent politically-motivated fiscal policies: its constraints would bite in downswings but not in upswings, especially if in the latter the electoral cycle increases the temptation to run expansionary policies. We find that the experience of the initial years of EMU lends support to this criticism. Overall, unlike the experience in the run-up to EMU, fiscal policies had an expansionary bias, and a “genuine” discretionary boost took place in correspondence to political elections. Both sign and composition of such discretionary changes are in line with the predictions of the recent literature on electoral budget cycles. Closer fiscal surveillance may help detect early such behaviour, but it is unlikely to curb the incentives to run politically-motivated fiscal policies when elections approach ...

China’s climate policy over the coming decades will be crucial to efforts to slow global warming. While CO2 emissions growth slowed in the 1990s, it is too early to know if this represents the beginning of a long-term downward trend in the carbon intensity of China’s economy.

Climate policymaking needs to consider the full range of economic costs and benefits of slowing greenhouse gas emissions growth. Like other developing countries, China’s medium-term preoccupation is with ensuring poverty-reducing economic growth, so climate policy must be both effective and consistent with this developmental goal.

This study of health and agricultural productivity effects of a carbon tax shows that there is considerable scope for slowing emissions growth without diminishing economic welfare. The health benefits of reduced local pollution are significant, and the welfare gains from improved agricultural productivity are almost as large. When both health and agricultural benefits of a carbon tax ...

What contribution can information technology (IT) make to India’s overall economic development? This paper provides an analytical framework centred around the concepts of comparative advantage, complementarities, and innovation. There is strong evidence that India has a strong and sustainable comparative advantage in software development and IT-enabled services. Complementarities — in particular some form of domestic hardware industry as well as growing demand for software within the domestic market — are also important to sustain the growth of the IT sector, as well as to broaden its developmental impact. The paper also reviews innovative experiments of IT use to improve interactions between citizens and governments, farmers and corporations, and students and teachers in rural areas. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of opportunities for future growth in IT-enabled services, constraints to such dynamics, and possible policy responses. India faces existing and potential ...

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the public procurement system in three East African countries: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. In response to both domestic and international pressures, these countries have recently undertaken important initiatives to make their public procurement systems more efficient and transparent in line with international procurement guidelines. The experience of the three countries with the reforms has been quite varied. While Tanzania has moved fast with the reforms and has already put in place a legislative framework for public procurement, Kenya and Uganda have yet to enact procurement legislation. In Kenya, a number of significant changes have already been effected through a ministerial gazette notice pending the coming into force of a Procurement Act. There is also an urgent need for strengthening institutions involved in public procurement, as these institutions tend to lack technical and human resource capabilities.

Although the current East ...

The general benefits of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), and the potential of FDI as a tool for regional economic development in particular, are commonly recognised by policy makers and analysts. A recent study prepared under the auspices of the OECD Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises concluded that FDI generally supports growth in developing, emerging and transition economies, irrespective of their initial state of development ...

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The public sector plays a not-insignificant role, providing coverage for the elderly, disabled and poor, and spending as much on health as a share of GDP as is spent in total by many OECD countries. The system is considered highly flexible, capable of evolving quickly to address the changing preferences of consumers and the incentives put in place by the requirements of payers and government regulation. It is also characterised by excellent access by the insured population to the latest advances in medical technology. However, 14 per cent of Americans lack insurance coverage, and the decentralised, multi-payer approach to financing and regulation provides relatively few levers to control ...