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The Senior Civil Service in Belgium

Marleen Brans and Annie Hondeghem

in Bureaucratic Elites in Western European States: A Comparative Analysis of Top Officials

The Belgian senior civil service is in transition, with external pressures clearly pushing the government firmly towards a reform agenda and improving public confidence in the administrative system, ... More

The Belgian senior civil service is in transition, with external pressures clearly pushing the government firmly towards a reform agenda and improving public confidence in the administrative system, in terms of democracy and accountability and of economy and efficiency. In addition, budgetary pressures have combined with political will to ensure that the operation of the administration complies with the new managerialist paradigm. This chapter gives an overview of the position of senior civil servants in the Belgian federal ministries (the federal civil service). It consists of three main sections: the first describes the coexistence of two opposing civil service models, a formal bureaucratic one and an informal politicized one, and assesses the implications of the clash between these models for the position (job definition, classification, and security; the career ladder; salaries; political appointments; and ministerial cabinets) and role conceptions of top civil servants; the second addresses the issue of representativeness of the senior civil service in terms of education, language, and gender; the third deals with the two major challenges to the Belgian senior civil service (external pressure and internal constraints) and the resulting structural reform agenda.Less

Retaining Customers: Customer Value, Satisfaction, and Service Quality

Grahame R. Dowling

in The Art and Science of Marketing: Marketing for Marketing Managers

This chapter focuses on programmes to increase the likelihood that a customer will continue to buy the organization's products and services, to develop customer loyalty, or reduce customer churn. The ... More

This chapter focuses on programmes to increase the likelihood that a customer will continue to buy the organization's products and services, to develop customer loyalty, or reduce customer churn. The motivations for developing loyalty/ reducing churn are threefold. One is the notion of amortizing the costs of acquiring customers. A second motivation is to reduce the volatility of cash flows. A third motivation is to provide a solid foundation for growth. Part A of the chapter looks at which types of customers to retain. The key issue here is that some customers are likely to be unprofitable. For non-profitable customers to be retained, they must make a contribution to the organization's business performance in another way. Part B then examines how to retain the chosen customers. It outlines three strategies: customer value, customer satisfaction, and service quality.Less

Creating Wild Capital from the Ecosystem Services Model

Barbara K. Jones

in Wild Capital: Nature's Economic and Ecological Wealth

By failing to assign nature value in our current Anthropocene, the opportunity costs of diminishing biodiversity are not recognized in the marketplace, leading to significant negative consequences ... More

By failing to assign nature value in our current Anthropocene, the opportunity costs of diminishing biodiversity are not recognized in the marketplace, leading to significant negative consequences for both nature and humanity. Polluting water, destroying habitats, or exterminating species should each lessen nature’s value, but if nature has never been assigned a value, that loss is not recognized and development becomes the default. The words “wild capital” remind us that nature should be viewed as an asset like any other, and that in doing so we are better equipped to appreciate its long-term worth. Since the ecosystem services model (ES) ties together the ecological, social, and economic needs of human well-being, it is well situated to assign nature value and from that make a case for nature as natural capital. To assist in policy decisions, ES has offered a path based on the language of economics, making it appealing to economists, while to conservationists, it has turned an argument about the negative effects of development on wildlife into a more fruitful dialogue about how beneficial conservation is for human well-being. ES is also compatible with efforts at sustainability and the goals of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.Less

The Ecotourist Question

Barbara K. Jones

in Wild Capital: Nature's Economic and Ecological Wealth

The ecosystem services model as a valuation tool for cultural capital relies on human well-being as the metric for assigning nature a value that makes sense in a world full of competing choices. If ... More

The ecosystem services model as a valuation tool for cultural capital relies on human well-being as the metric for assigning nature a value that makes sense in a world full of competing choices. If the entire added value of a forest that includes wildlife habitat, recreation, and carbon sequestration is calculated, its continued existence as an intact forest ecosystem can more effectively compete against alternative uses that could either destroy the forest or diminish its services to us. Without a measurable value determined through marginal cost-benefit analysis and the consumer’s willingness to pay, however, the forest ecosystem would be assigned a dollar value of zero, making development the easy default choice. Since outdoor recreation in nature contributes to our well-being, it becomes one of the tools we can use to assign nature value. Responsible travel as ecotourists involves taking visitors into natural areas to educate them about a region’s natural and cultural heritage, as well as to sustain the well-being of local people. Ecotourism can change our relationship with the natural world, as well as teach us how to be better tourists.Less

Conclusion: Economics as the Answer to a Sustainable Future

Barbara K. Jones

in Wild Capital: Nature's Economic and Ecological Wealth

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of ... More

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of competing choices when making decisions. Through that process, if we value the functions and products of ecosystems that benefit humans or yield welfare to society, we become better stewards of the natural world. For this book’s purposes, ecotourism as a cultural service clearly demonstrates how consumers of outdoor recreation see value in activities like wildlife viewing or hiking in nature. For wild nature to persist, however, it must be part of a larger system that is bound not only by biological ties, but by economic and cultural incentives as well. Since the boundaries that determine human and wild nature’s space are rather fluid and rarely entirely isolated from the other, using ecotourism to help assign nature value is logical. By offering individuals the opportunity to see nature through a variety of lenses, nature can be protected and preserved in different degrees. If nature and wildlife remain outside our human experience, however, inspiring the love and concern necessary for its survival becomes more and more difficult.Less

Price and Value Models

Nayan B. Ruparelia

in Cloud Computing

Just as every undertaking has a cost and a benefit associated with it, so does a cloud service. The cost of a cloud service and the price you pay for it are assessed using various pricing schemes, ... More

Just as every undertaking has a cost and a benefit associated with it, so does a cloud service. The cost of a cloud service and the price you pay for it are assessed using various pricing schemes, known as price models. Price models categorized as utility, service, performance and marketing oriented models are discussed.To offset the price you pay for the cloud service, you need to realize a commensurate benefit. That benefit is assessed by considering value models related to cloud computing. Seven value models are considered: (1) operating expense, (2) user demand flexibility, (3) price flexibility, (4) agility for time to market, (5) location flexibility, (6) asset optimization, and (7) profit margin.A more objective approach to assessing the value of cloud computing using financial metrics is considered. Four common financial metrics for evaluating investment in a cloud service are assessed: payback method, net present value (NPV), return on investment (ROI), and time to market (TTM).Less

Introduction

Nayan B. Ruparelia

in Cloud Computing

What is the optimum investment required to provide computational resources? Since demand for computing varies, businesses face a dilemma: if they under-invest, then business suffers; if they ... More

What is the optimum investment required to provide computational resources? Since demand for computing varies, businesses face a dilemma: if they under-invest, then business suffers; if they over-invest, then they are utilizing their money inefficiently. Cloud computing resolves this dilemma by allowing businesses to invest in computing resources on an as needed basis. Thus, capital expenditure for computing is minimized since cloud computing provides a route to utilizing computational resources as operational expenditures.The NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) defines clould computing as a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or interaction. This model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.The definition is extended by including Business-Process-as-a-Service (BpaaS) and Information-as-a-Service (INaaS) as cloud service models in addition to the Infrastructure-, Platform-and Software-as-a-Service models of NIST. In addition, the four deployment models of cloud computing (public, private, community and hybrid) are discussed in terms of their scope and capabilities.Finally, the roles and responsibilities of cloud computing actors are outlined as creators, producers, brokers and consumers.Less

Did it work?

Naomi Eisenstadt

in Providing a Sure Start: How government discovered early childhood

This chapter implies that by 2005, there were significant changes to the original concept of Sure Start, so the question of whether it had worked or not was confounded by the question of what it now ... More

This chapter implies that by 2005, there were significant changes to the original concept of Sure Start, so the question of whether it had worked or not was confounded by the question of what it now was. From an area-based initiative of 250 local programmes, they were now tasked with delivering the commitments in Choice for Parents, the Best Start for Children: a Ten Year Strategy for Childcare. No longer an area-based policy for poor children, there would now be a Sure Start Children's Centre in every community, 3,500 in all. While the funding was to be more flexible, the service model requirements were significantly tightened up. Many of the changes to the service model were a response to the evaluation results produced by the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) team. Ministers took some disappointing results very seriously and used them to reshape the programme.Less

Building strengths in asylum-seeker communities in Australia

Lis de Vries, Mohita Roman, and Linda Briskman

in Community Organising Against Racism: Race', Ethnicity and Community Development

For many years, the Australian Red Cross (Red Cross) has delivered high-quality, strengths-based individualised casework services. In the last few years, on-going consultation with asylum seekers and ... More

For many years, the Australian Red Cross (Red Cross) has delivered high-quality, strengths-based individualised casework services. In the last few years, on-going consultation with asylum seekers and a rapidly growing number of clients drove Red Cross to consider a broader, more adaptive, and more inclusive community development model. Such a model would encourage resilience and self-reliance; would recognise the role of the community in supporting dignity, health, well-being, and social inclusion; and would bring clients in as their own experts. However, in determining this change, Red Cross was faced with the challenge of implementing a community development model in a large, formal organisation with a group often considered by the broader Australian community as ‘outsiders’, and without access to many mainstream services and opportunities. This chapter discusses how Red Cross adapted and changed the service delivery model from individual casework to a community development approach.Less

Upper Limb—Forearm, Wrist, and Hand

Alex Trompeter and David Elliott (eds)

in Trauma for the FRCS (Tr + Orth) Examination