Cultural Competency for Public Administrators

Cultural Competency for Public Administrators
Author: Kristen A. Norman-Major
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317473531

With a focus on a broad spectrum of topics--race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and sexual orientation at the federal, tribal, state, and local levels--this book equips readers to better understand the complex, real-world challenges public administrators confront in serving an increasingly diverse society. The book's main themes include: What is cultural competency and why is it important? Building culturally competent public agencies; Culturally competent public policy; Building culturally competent public servants; How do agencies assess their cultural competency and what is enough? PA scholars will appreciate the attention given to the role of cultural competency in program accreditation, and to educational approaches to deliver essential instruction on this important topic. Practitioners will value the array of examples that reflect many of the common trade offs public administrators face when trying to deliver comprehensive programs and services within a context of fiscal realities.

Education, Dominance and Identity

Education, Dominance and Identity
Author: Diane B. Napier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2013-02-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9462091250

This volume is a collection of research cases illustrating the interrelationships among education, dominance and identity in historical- and contemporary contexts. The cases reflect particular ways in which local-, group, and indigenous identities have been affected by a dominant discourse, how education can support or undermine identity, and how languages (including dominant and sub-dominant languages) and the language of instruction in schools are at the centre of challenges to hegemony and domination in many situations. Examining the issues in their research, the contributors reveal how members of minority-, disadvantaged-, or dominated groups (and the teachers and parents of children in their schools) struggle for recognition, for education in their own language, for acceptance within larger society, or for recognition of the validity of their responses to reform initiatives and policies that address a wider agenda but that fail to take into account key factors such as perceptions and subaltern status. Collectively, the chapters document research employing a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives, illustrating an array of universal and global issues in the field of comparative and international education. However, each of the cases its own unique character, as research findings and as personal reflections based on the authors’ experiential knowledge in particular social, cultural and political contexts. The contexts and regional settings include Chile, Canada, the United States, Hungary and elsewhere in East-Central Europe, France, Germany, Spain, Malaysia, Tanzania, South Africa, Cyprus, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer

The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer
Author: Koch, Susanne
Publisher: African Minds
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2016-12-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1928331394

With the rise of the ‘knowledge for development’ paradigm, expert advice has become a prime instrument of foreign aid. At the same time, it has been object of repeated criticism: the chronic failure of ‘technical assistance’ – a notion under which advice is commonly subsumed – has been documented in a host of studies. Nonetheless, international organisations continue to send advisors, promising to increase the ‘effectiveness’ of expert support if their technocratic recommendations are taken up. This book reveals fundamental problems of expert advice in the context of aid that concern issues of power and legitimacy rather than merely flaws of implementation. Based on empirical evidence from South Africa and Tanzania, the authors show that aid-related advisory processes are inevitably obstructed by colliding interests, political pressures and hierarchical relations that impede knowledge transfer and mutual learning. As a result, recipient governments find themselves caught in a perpetual cycle of dependency, continuously advised by experts who convey the shifting paradigms and agendas of their respective donor governments. For young democracies, the persistent presence of external actors is hazardous: ultimately, it poses a threat to the legitimacy of their governments if their policy-making becomes more responsive to foreign demands than to the preferences and needs of their citizens.

Food for All

Food for All
Author: Uma Lele
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1063
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0198755171

This book is a historical review of international food and agriculture since the founding of the international organizations following the Second World War, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and into the 1970s, when CGIAR was established and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was created to recycle petrodollars. Despite numerous international consultations and an increased number of actors, there has been no real growth in international assistance, except for the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The book concurrently focuses on the structural transformation of developing countries in Asia and Africa, with some making great strides in small farmer development and in achieving structural transformation of their economies. Some have also achieved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG2, but most have not. Not only are some countries, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, lagging behind, but they face new challenges of climate change, competition from emerging countries, population pressure, urbanization, environmental decay, and dietary transition. Lagging developing countries need huge investments in human capital, and physical and institutional infrastructure, to take advantage of rapid change in technologies, but the role of international assistance in financial transfers has diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only set many poorer countries back but starkly revealed the weaknesses of past strategies. Transformative changes are needed in developing countries with international cooperation to achieve better outcomes. Will change in the United States bring new opportunities for multilateral cooperation?"--

Sustainable Water Management

Sustainable Water Management
Author: Daniel H. Chen
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1482215195

While the world’s population continues to grow, the availability of water remains constant. Facing the looming water crisis, society needs to tackle strategic management issues as an integrated part of the solution toward water sustainability. The first volume in the two-volume set Sustainable Water Management and Technologies offers readers a practical and comprehensive look at such key water management topics as water resource planning and governance, water infrastructure planning and adaption, proper regulations, and water scarcity and inequality. It discusses best management practices for water resource allocation, ground water protection, and water quality assurance, especially for rural, arid, and underdeveloped regions of the world. Timely topics such as drought, ecosystem sustainability, climate change, and water management for shale oil and gas development are presented. Discusses best practices for water resource allocation, ground water protection, and water quality assurance. Offers chapters on urban, rural, arid, and underdeveloped regions of the world. Describes timely topics such as drought, ecosystem sustainability, climate change, and water management for shale oil and gas development. Covers water resource planning and governance, water infrastructure planning and adaptation, proper regulations, and water scarcity and inequality Discusses water resource monitoring, efficiency, and quality management.

Pharmacy Management, Leadership, Marketing, and Finance (Book Only)

Pharmacy Management, Leadership, Marketing, and Finance (Book Only)
Author: Marie A. Chisholm-Burns
Publisher: Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2012-10-04
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1449657265

The Second Edition of the award-winning Pharmacy Management, Leadership, Marketing, and Finance has been updated to make this quality textbook an even more integral resource for your Pharmacy Management course. All previous chapters have been updated and multiple new chapters have been added including “Quality Improvement,” “The Basics of Managing Risk,” “Insurance Fundamentals,” “Integrating Pharmacoeconomic Principles and Pharmacy Management,” and “Developing and Evaluating Clinical Pharmacy Services.” Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

Peace as Government

Peace as Government
Author: Ramon Blanco
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2020-02-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498581781

Peace as Government: The Will to Normalize Timor-Leste brings a problematization of post-conflict reconstruction processes by bridging two theoretical approaches that are often placed in diametrical opposite epistemic poles – the analytical tools developed by Michel Foucault and the English School. The author argues that peace operations have a very precise function in the international scenario – the fostering and the maintenance of a (neo)liberal order in the international society. He evinces that this particular function of peace operations is developed through the will to normalize post-conflict states and their populations. In order to advance his argument, the author analyses the United Nations’ (UN) engagement with Timor-Leste, since no other country had the large number of peace operations, the wide range of spheres of engagement or the depth of involvement that the UN had in Timor-Leste. The author evinces that this will to normalize Timor-Leste is rendered operational though the mechanism of government, the conduct of conducts in a Foucauldian sense, functioning in two levels. At the international level, the government operates through discipline, rewarding and punishing the Timorese state seeking to shape its behaviors as an individual in the international society. At the national level, the government operates through biopolitics, which functions through the attempt of shaping the life-supporting processes of the Timorese population.