Cultural Revolution and Education in China during 1960s

The role of education in the social development is significant because the changes in the education sphere can influence not only the aspects of the people’s everyday life and social status but also their occupation and economic status. The Cultural Revolution in China of 1966-1977can be discussed as the catalyst and process which changed the history of the Chinese society significantly.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Cultural Revolution and Education in China during 1960s-1970s specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More All the economic and social spheres of the community’s development were reformed with references to changing the traditional visions of the Chinese people. The Communist ideals promoted by Mao Zedong became to play the key role in determining the principles of the Chinese people’s life in relation to their education and labor. Different ideological techniques used by the Comm unists were chosen as the means of the Cultural Revolution in order to affect the society. That is why, there is a range of ideas on the impact of the Cultural Revolution on education and its role within the society. The strategies of the Cultural Revolution affected the development of the Chinese society notably, and it is important to learn what impact the Cultural Revolution had on the sphere of education in China during the period of the 1960s-1970s. Although researchers propose different views to answer the question, the general impact of the Cultural Revolution on the education in China during the 1960s-1970s can be discussed as negative because of the strong connection of education and agricultural growth instead of improving education independently, the focus on economic benefits of reforms, and because of provoking the interrupted education. The discussion of this argument is important to analyze the effects of the Cultural Revolution directly on education, without referenc es to the economic sphere. The perspectives from which it is possible to discuss the role of the Cultural Revolution in the progress of the education sphere in China are various that is why researchers are inclined to evaluate the consequences of the Cultural Revolution for education regarding different outcomes and priorities. From this point, many researchers focus on the positive features and outcomes of the Cultural Revolution for reforming the sphere of education in China according to the Communist standards. The other scholars choose not to conclude about the consequences directly, and their positions can be considered as uncertain. To see the complete picture of the process depending on different viewpoints in order to evaluate the outcomes, it is necessary to concentrate on various discussions of the question.Advertising Looking for research paper on asian? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Thus, according to Han, the Cu ltural Revolution had the positive effect on education because of increasing the number of schools and improving the school curricula in relation to the local needs of the rural territories (Han 60). The improvements and revisions in the curriculum led to the rapid educational expansion and to providing more educational opportunities for the Chinese people (Han 70). This opinion is based on discussing the positive effects of education reforms associated with the general educational expansion. However, this approach cannot be discussed as relevant because Han predominantly operates the evidences on the positive changes in the agricultural sphere. Han focuses on the role of reforms during the Cultural Revolution era for developing people’s farming and industrial skills necessary for the progress of the rural territories (Han 80). Nevertheless, the aspect of the education quality for the Chinese people is not discussed independently, without references to the agricultural sphere . Such researchers as Wang avoid providing the evaluation of the consequences of the Cultural Revolution for the progress of the Chinese society, including the sphere of education because of the lack of credible evidences which can be used to support definite ideas (Wang 199-203). In his work, Wang states that the discussion of the process’s effects on the social sphere is impossible without references to the views of liberal and radical political forces that is why there are always several positions regarding the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the economic and social development of China, including the analysis of reforms in the sphere of education (Wang 215-217). However, the uncertainness in relation to answering the problematic question about the impact of the Cultural Revolution in China cannot be discussed as the appropriate evaluation of the observed effects. Moreover, Wang’s position is irrelevant because today it is possible to refer to a lot of evidence s and resources to state certain ideas and evaluate the role of the Cultural Revolution for education during the post-revolution period. The discussed views are supported by different scholars, but more concrete answers are necessary to respond to the problematic question clearly. From this perspective, it is possible to state that in spite of the focus on reformation, the Cultural Revolution influenced education in China during the period of the 1960s-1970s negatively because the aspect of education quality was not taken into consideration without linking to the effects on the economic development of the rural territories in China.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Cultural Revolution and Education in China during 1960s-1970s specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Thus, the progress of rural territories was the priority for politicians to implement the reforms in education along with intensifying the labor for ce possibilities in the agricultural sector. During the Cultural Revolution, the improvements in education were not discussed as independent reforms because they were oriented to influencing the economic sphere of the rural territories positively. As a result, the general effect of such reforms was negative because of ignoring the quality aspect. In their work, Zhou and Hou state that the connection of education development and agricultural growth was direct because politicians chose to use the send-down policy and to force former students to live and work at the rural territories in order to contribute to the progress of the agricultural sector (Zhou and Hou 15). Thus, â€Å"in a 12-year period, over 17 million urban ‘educated youth’ (mostly graduates from only junior and senior high school) were forced to live and work in rural areas†, and many schools in the urban territories were closed (Zhou and Hou 13). Following the ideological and political principles of Communism, those authorities who realized the Cultural Revolution in the sphere of education contributed to the educational decline, but stimulated the progress in farming and agriculture. Nevertheless, the focus on economic benefits of the reforms in the sphere of education can also be discussed more generally. Thus, changes in the approaches to education in the rural territories could guarantee the satisfaction of the local economic needs (Zhou and Hou 12-14). Mao Zedong proclaimed the idea that the economy of China could progress as a result of the Cultural Revolution with the help of re-education processes when millions of students were forced to leave their studies because of the necessities to reform the agricultural sector and educate the youth in relation to the development of farming and industrial skills (Zhou and Hou 12-13). The effects of the re-education policies and tendencies and the focus on developing school and university curricula in detail led to the catastrophic results for the quality of education because of the lack of possibilities for students to continue their education during the Cultural Revolution era (Zhou and Hou 14-15). Many educational institutions ceased their activities for a certain period of time, and the send-down policy resulted in the progress of economy along with the obvious educational decline. Instead of providing students with the necessary knowledge on different academic disciplines, the authors of the policies and reforms concentrated on improving the economy with the help of re-education and re-distribution of labor force at the territories of the country.Advertising Looking for research paper on asian? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More One of the most dramatic effects of the reforms typical for the period of the Cultural Revolution on education was the emphasis on interrupted education. The Cultural Revolution can be discussed as the prolonged process during which the approaches to education were re-examined from the social and economic perspectives. To respond to the local needs of the rural territories, the majority of schools in towns were closed to provide the country regions with educated farmers and professionals in agriculture. According to Meng and Gregory, â€Å"the 11 years of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-77, affected the formal education of a whole generation of young people† (Meng and Gregory 935). Thus, schools were closed, and the quality of people’s knowledge decreased because of impossibility to get the access to education. New students were not recruited in universities, and those ones who studied there when the reforms started had to cease their academic activities (Meng and Gregor y 936). As a result, there were no real positive improvements in the education sphere until 1977-1978 when the new curricula were implemented in schools and universities. The interrupted education became the sign of the period in relation to the education question, and this process resulted in decreasing of the general quality of education and knowledge because students experienced significant difficulties while continuing their education after the period of reformation. From this perspective, interrupted education as well as the focus on the economic benefits can be discussed as the negative effects which are connected with the period of reforming and improving the education sphere in the context of the Cultural Revolution. Although the representatives of the new political force stated that the all the spheres of the economic and social life could benefit from realizing the reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution, the real situation differed significantly from the authoriti es’ proclamation (Han; Meng and Gregory). Education can be discussed as the aspect of the Chinese people’s social life which was most negatively affected by the proclaimed reforms and improvements. The evidences provided by Han and Wang on the role of the Cultural Revolution for education in China during the period of the 1960s-1970s cannot be discussed as relevant to state that these reforms had the positive impact on the sphere of education because the proper analysis of the topic supports the view that reforms responded to the economic needs but not to educational issues. That is why, it is rather problematic to focus on the minor positive effects of the process instead of analyzing the general and complete picture according to which the Cultural Revolution did not contribute to the progress of educational sphere. Thus, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on education in China during the period of the 1960s-1970s can be discussed as negative and even catastrophic because the real needs of the sphere of education were ignored and changed with the other economic and social goals which were not directly connected with the quality of education. The process was not advantageous for students because they had to leave schools and universities in order to live and work in the rural territories. As a result, the economic state of the territories was improved, and the agricultural sector started the development according to the new directions. On the contrary, the sphere of education was in decline because the needs of this sphere were not responded and satisfied adequately according to the proclaimed goals and ideals. The statement of the idea that the reforms of the Cultural Revolution were not effective for education during the period of the 1960s-1970s is significant because it allows the critical evaluation of the era’s results for the quality of education which can be discussed as the main criterion to speak about education as the social value. The increase in number of schools in the rural territories, and the focus on providing the educational opportunities for people in the country were previously discussed as positive moments associated with the Cultural Revolution. However, the analysis of the evidences supports the idea that these advantages cannot be considered as positive without references to the economic aspect. The advantages for people in relation to the quality of education were not taken into consideration, and they were not discussed the policies’ priorities. Works Cited Han, Dongping. â€Å"Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Rural Education and Economic Development: The Case of Jimo County†. Modern China 27.1 (2001): 59-90. Print. Meng, Xin, and Robert Gregory. â€Å"The Impact of Interrupted Education on Subsequent Educational Attainment: A Cost of the Chinese Cultural Revolution†. Economic Development and Cultural Change 50.4 (2002): 935-959. Print. Wang, Shaoguang. â€Å"â €™New Trends of Thought’ on the Cultural Revolution†. Journal of Contemporary China 8.21 (1999): 197-217. Print. Zhou, Xueguang, and Liren Hou. â€Å"Children of the Cultural Revolution: The State and the Life Course in the People’s Republic of China†. American Sociological Review 64.1 (1999): 12-36. Print. This research paper on Cultural Revolution and Education in China during 1960s-1970s was written and submitted by user N1k0las to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

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Effect of Supplier Management Procurement on Public Sectors

Effect of Supplier Management Procurement on Public Sectors One: Introduction Best Value (BV) was introduced into the public sector in 1998, announced through the government’s white paper Modern Local Government in Touch with the People. This paper introduced extensive reform to local government, including the new initiative of BV. Within this BV is the e-Government, Community Planning, Strategic Partnerships and new political management structures (White Paper 1998). BV replaced the system of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) (Local Government Act 1999). The aim of BV is to influence the efficient expenditure of public money; estimated to total  £455.2 billion for 2004, forecasted to grow by 3-5% for the period 2005-9 (www.statistics.gov.uk/). The 2001 review of local government procurement in England (Delivering Better Services for Citizens) was published as a consultation paper. The report included the following recommendation; there should be clear political responsibility for procurement, with elected members taking a strategic role in secur ing outcomes. Best Value is about breaking down the boundaries between the public and private sectors in local service delivery (The Byatt Report 2001). Supplier relationship management within the public sector has to an extent been dictated by the central government initiatives evolving the CCT era into the Best Value regime. Best Value has led to distinctively different approaches within the public sector to consultation, competition, performance reviews, and to partnership working. Since the abolition of CCT, evidence is emerging of a new maturity in localgovernments relationships with the private sector. In some authorities, this is evidenced by the fact that they are now recognisingthe inevitability of the mixed economy of provision,and are prepared to work within it (Bovaird, 2000). Procurement, and best value procurement, is a complicated subject to examine, largely because getting the best value for a product or service does not necessarily mean choosing the lowest bidder. Indeed, modern procurement strategies need to consider several interrelated factors, of which costs is just one, when determining and implementing the best value procurement process. This implies a significant increase in the number of issues encountered by many public sector agencies, for who best value procurement and competitive tendering concerns have replaced the simpler days of low bid auctions for services. As a result of these changes, best value procurement has now developed into a significant strategic option, which can provide many advantages to the public sector procurement professionals. However, along with the potential benefits, best value procurement also brings significant related risk factors, especially in the public sector where policy and political considerations can lea d to significantly different interpretations of best value both across public sector organisations and across individual projects within the same organisation. Indeed, when efficiently written and executed, best value contracts can both save money and increase service levels, however by its very nature best value involves a great deal of evaluation and comparison, which can complicate the process to the point where the potential gains are lost. Equally, distortions caused by interpretations and political factors may enter into play when gauging the many factors in addition to price, often leading to debates around different perceptions of what constitutes value for a given product or service. Each best value procurement example is subjective and entirely unique, especially in the public sector, and because of this, communication between end users, procurement professionals, policy makers, and suppliers is of utmost importance. In procurement, as in other fields, people with the right knowledge about the product or service being supplied, and the project for which it is required, will be able to make better decisions than those without the necessary information. As such, when choices must be made, project sponsors, buyers, contract administrators, technical authorities, advisors, bidders, and contractors must be kept in the know. This leads to the hypothesis that supplier relationship management in the public sector will, by virtue of increasing the spread of knowledge along the procurement chain, better help the public sector to achieve best value in its procurement activities. This work intends to test this hypothesis through a detailed search of the existing literature on procurement in the public sector, and the various aspects of procurement which underlie the provision of best value for public sector organisations. This will be achieved using the positivist paradigm and phenomenological hermeneutics to identify, contextualise and analyse the various research on best value, and also to determine how supplier relationship management will impact on this for public sector organisations. Two: Methodology Due to the wide scope of the subject matter of this dissertation, and the specialised nature of procurement within the public sector, the work will be solely based on existing secondary research. As there is no primary research to interpret, the research process will be different from conventional dissertations. As such, the interpretation of the existing research will form the cornerstone of the analysis and also drive any conclusions. This means that the dissertation will not only need to analyse the content of these articles, but also the motive of the authors for writing them, the context and any inherent bias. A research method is needed that will identify any contextual factors or bias and exclude them from the overall results. The chosen method is phenomenological hermeneutics, because this methodology states that literature can only be fully interpreted through an analysis of its contextual basis. The method further argues that, instead of being based on historical or cultura l contexts, each text reflects the mental frame of the writer or writers. As such, phenomenological hermeneutics will be used as the research methodology and philosophy because it allows one to take a text and methodically isolate it from all extraneous things including the subjects biases and allow it to communicate its meaning to the subject (Demeterio, 2001). In order to effectively achieve this goal, the research method shall focus on eliminating any sources of inherent bias in order to draw out its key messages and fit them into a coherent discussion and analysis; however, as Lye (1996) states, In order to understand one must fore understand, have a stance, an anticipation and a contextualization. This is what is known as the hermeneutic circle: one can only know what one is prepared to know, in the terms that one is prepared to know. As such, this work will need to examine the various articles of literature in the context of each other; to enable the construction of a hermeneutic circle and to truly understand the points each author is trying to make. As such, the interaction of the text with the contextual frame of reference given by the literature as a whole will lead to an interpretive paradigm being formed (Lye, 1996), through which it will be possible to draw out the common themes and the salient points from the literature. To appropriately construct this paradigm, it is necessary to understand that each article will be an embodiment of the ideas, beliefs, knowledge and experiences of the author, and that the interpretation of the text will also be an embodiment of the ideas, beliefs, knowledge and experience of the reader; as such, it will be necessary for the author of this work to be aware of the impact that this will have on the interpretation of the articles. This work will embody the style of the author (Lye, 1996), and will likely reveal some significant aspects of the authors views on politics and asset allocation, both conscious and unconscious. This will potentially add a further contextual bias to the interpretation, and one which may be significantly harder to identify, isolate and remove. This potential contextual bias will also make it difficult to effectively apply the logical positivist paradigm, which is strongly based on taking an objective view of reality, rather than a subjective view. The view of positivism that knowledge can only be obtained by the use of data that can be verified by an independent observer (Schrag, 1992) implies that someone attempting to use the positivist paradigm for research purposes must be as objective and unbiased as possible. Indeed, as all phenomena are subject to natural laws that coexist with each other in a logical manner, humans can only discover these laws through the use of inductive and deductive hypotheses and empirical testing of social and scientific theories. As such, the positivist paradigm will have to be carefully applied to all research and interpretation in this work, taking into account the phenomenological hermeneutic interpretation to provide a well rounded argument and conclusion. Regarding the research and data collection methods used, an inductive approach has been taken, which is appropriate as it involves interpretation of the research and data during the gathering, as well as the analysis phase. This has been extended through the use of a standard horizontal and vertical analysis of the existing literature and the initial sources found. The horizontal aspect of the research has involved using the terminology, key words and arguments underlying historical public sector procurement processes and strategies to uncover other related works which discuss the same concepts but with different arguments and in different contexts. The vertical aspect has involved examining the sources cited in the initial sources used to move back up the chain of argument and see how different arguments and theories have been formed and influenced over time. Online searches have also been used to facilitate looking for sources which cite the identified articles and examining how th ese sources have further developed the article. The research and data gathered for this dissertation is composed entirely of secondary research. Initially, the author considered gathering and analysis primary data, however this was deemed to be unfeasible for two reasons. The first reason is that the majority of people working within public sector procurement are busy professionals, working full time to ensure that their procurement goals are met. As such, they would be unlikely to have the time available to assist in the research process, and their responses would be limited by the commercial and confidentiality considerations that underlie most procurement projects. Secondly, as was discussed above, this topic is highly specialised, with practitioners, advisors and academics having significant levels of knowledge and experience. As a result, it is more appropriate, and probably more accurate, to use the results of experienced academics and practitioners, who have carried out significant amounts of in depth, and often independent , research on this subject, as a contextual basis of the positivist paradigm being used; however, research gaps should be discussed when identified. Another important consideration when collecting the data was the time horizon because, as stated above, the UK public sector procurement industry is now in a fundamentally different state than at any time in its prior history following the longest consecutive period under Labour rule. As such, examining research data and literature from too far in the past will likely be of limited use when discussing public sector procurement in the modern economic and political environment. Therefore it has been decided that data will only be used from the period 1997 to 2007, which is the period for which the Labour government has been in power, and within which most of the major reforms underlying the current processes, strategies, and improvements have been drawn up and implemented. This research methodology has produced analyses of about fifty major articles on which the work will be based; together with some other articles defining the research methodology itself, and some sources providing general public sector procurement context and supplementary information. The major articles have been analysed and reviewed in the Structured Literature Review, under each of the main themes identified. This is the most logical method of analysis for this work, as the majority of the articles and surveys carried out around best value in the UK public sectors have been focused on specific areas such as the Public Private Partnership initiatives and the work of the Audit Commission. As such, a longitudinal method of analysis is also useful for the phenomenological hermeneutic approach taken by this work, as it will enable progressive clarity of understanding of the contextual factors underling the literature reviewed. Considering the chosen methodology for this work, this dissertation will have a Structured Literature Review instead of a conventional literature review. This is because the research used is solely secondary; therefore there is no need to conduct a standard literature review, which is usually done to contextualise and direct any primary research and to help explain its results. As this work is not based on primary research, there is no need for a standard literature review, and hence the structured literature review is more appropriate, because it can serve as the findings, results and analysis for the work, which shall be interpreted within the ‘findings’. Because the research philosophy and methodology is phenomenological hermeneutics, an interpretive, positivist method of analysis is required, which is facilitated by a structured approach to the analysis. Finally, as the literature review is being conducted along various themes, it is vital that it is correctly struct ured to ensure that it is analytical rather than just descriptive, and that it maintains some criticality. As such, the structured literature review will involve a thematic/structured review of all the salient articles in the work, analysing the arguments and themes within each article and linking the various articles and themes to each other. The last part of the literature review will be an interpretation of all the articles discussed in the review, identifying common themes, disagreements and any potential implications or conflicts. This analysis will need to consider the various biases, backgrounds and any knowledge of the authors. Many of the major disagreements may not be based on the subject of best value itself, but rather the authors views on the ultimate aims of ‘procurement’ and the importance of the process and methodology underling it. This scrutiny will enable analysis of the validity and reliability of the articles by means of triangulation with the other articles reviewed and analysed. This will further assist in the phenomenological hermeneutic approach taken by this work, and it will facilitate the identification of any bias or conflicts that were not obvious in the initial review of the literature. The methodology will also attempt to identify existing gaps within the literature, and highlight areas where further research could be beneficial to the work. Because most of the literature is written from academic perspectives, there are likely to be gaps around the various objectives and contextual factors of the various public sector organisations; and the various procurement frameworks the have in place; and potentially a lack of in depth research around issues such as political pressure and policy directives. As such, this work will attempt to identify where the existing literature has failed to focus on areas such as these, and how these omissions can be addressed by future studies and research. Three: Literature Best Value Procurement in the UK Public Sector There is a large volume of research focusing on procurement strategies and measures of value for private sector organisations, and recently literature (Male et al, 2007; Lian and Laing, 2004) has begun to focus on the different procurement practices needed by the public sector. Indeed, Lian and Laing (2004) focused on the transactional and relationship based nature of procurement strategies to determine to what extent procurement is different between the public and the private sector. They focused on health services, as public health services are often seen as one of the most complex services provided by the public sector (Male et al, 2007), and their research demonstrated how the differing environmental factors, such as politics and resource allocation in the public sector, impacted on procurement, whilst many service specific factors, such as the need for medicines and temporary staff, were constant across the public and private spheres Indeed, their research demonstrated that poli tics and policy drivers have a major impact on the procurement strategies used by public sector organisations, and that these strategies, and the methods used to engage suppliers, were significantly different from that of private sector organisations. This research ties in with that of Dixon et al (2005) which showed that, whilst the private sector tended to build relationships with suppliers, and leverage these to obtain better value, public sector organisations often based their procurement strategies on the costs of individual transactions. As such, the literature concludes that the private sector’s relationship based procurement strategies offer better value than those of the public sector. However, Lian and Laing (2004) also commented that public policy decisions often restrict public sector organisations from building relationships with their suppliers, and thus the very nature of public sector organisations often hinders or prevents them from achieving best value from their procurement activities. Palaneeswaran et al (2003) criticise this political dimension, claiming that procuring best value should be one of the key objectives (for the) public sector. Their argument is that best value depends upon the use of sound selection strategies, intended to ensure that all the procurement objectives are met, which includes the client and end user demands. As such, best value initiatives should all be geared towards the final state of business, rather than to serve public policy decisions. They conclude that, whilst the overall goal of any public sector organisation should be determined by public policy, best value procurement efforts should all be directed towards that goal and be free from political interference. Unfortunately, as Lian and Ling commented, whilst this may be desirable it is not always possible. Current successes and failures of procurement strategies within central and local government Walker (2006) notes that UK public sector organisations often make their main procurement decisions, for assets and services, at the local level, reflected in the fact that the NHS trusts and local government authorities all have their own procurement departments. Whilst this policy allows individual bodies to select the procurement strategy that best suits their needs, the lack of coordination of the procurement process can lead to inefficient supply markets, with either too few or too many suppliers, which reduces the efficiency of individual suppliers and thus increased the cost to the purchasers. These local procurement decisions are also often superseded or influence by central government guidelines and policies, for example Builders Merchants Journal (2006) detailed a new central government policy on public sector timber procurement. This policy specified that, whilst organisations are still responsible for their own procurement decisions, they must ensure that any timber they procure comes from a legal source, which increases the administrative burden for the local organisations. Furthermore, the government has also specified that organisations should supply sustainable timber wherever possible, however this is not compulsory. Such vague policy guidelines also make it difficult for organisations trying to balance budgets against policy. Equally, such fragmented policies make it hard for public sector organisations to plan long term procurement strategies to respond to market uncertainty. For example, Loveday (2005) reported that the UK public sector was forced to cut back service provision as a result of significant energy price rises which they had not planned for. Whilst this failing is shared with the private sector, which Loveday (2005) stated as having lost over  £1 billion due to a lack of energy procurement strategies and poor energy risk management, the fragmented nature of local procurement means that the public sector is often as much as risk from utility price rises as small businesses, some of which have been almost bankrupted due to rising energy bills in recent years (Loveday, 2005). Perhaps in response to these drawbacks, the literature highlights one of the main strategies used in recent years by the public sector to improve its procurement strategies: the rise of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which form long term partnerships with private sector organisations to share the provision of public services. Smyth and Edkins (2007) examined the management of these projects, the relationships between the primary public and private sector partners and the use of the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPUs) to facilitate the partnerships. They found that the management of these relationships had two main dynamics: the contract, transactional, approach of the public sector, and the relationship management approach of the private sector. The combination of these two approaches, and how they influenced the project management discipline within the partnership, showed that they led to greater strategic and tactical consideration being giv en to functions such as procurement, leading to greater value generation. This consideration led to greater collaboration, both between and within the organisations, as they adjusted to new procurement conditions, demonstrating improved proactive and strategic relationship management versus individual public sector organisations (Smyth and Edkins, 2007). Dixon et al (2005) also examined the several case studies of the success of the Private Finance Initiative schemes, focusing on projects related to the construction of infrastructure and other facilities. These studies highlighted several examples of best practice and best value procurement, together with the key critical factors for success in PFI projects, whilst also pointing out some drawbacks and lessons for future projects. Indeed, the literature demonstrated that the key value benefits of the PFI are that the public sector obtains increased value for money, whilst also transferring risk to the private sector partner. However, this transfer is offset by higher procurement and transaction costs, relative to the private sector’s standard costs; partly due to the cultural differences between the public and private sector, and partly due to large-scale nature of PFI projects, which frequently acts as a barrier to entry for some financing partners and suppliers. This highligh ts the need to develop competitive public sector supplier markets, and also to develop the appropriate procurement and project management skills within the public sector to ensure that they can work with private sector partners to ensure best value (Dixon et al, 2005). These show two contrasting views of the PFI/PPP, with Smyth and Edkins (2007) seeing the initiatives as an excellent way to bring private sector efficiency to public sector procurement, but with Dixon et al (2005) claiming that the wide differences in skill sets mean that a lot of the benefits from the private sector methodologies are lost. In response to contrasting views such as these, Li et al (2005) conducted research into the various perceptions of what makes the PFI attractive or unattractive to potential partners as a procurement system for projects. The research was based on a questionnaire / survey of stakeholders in the various projects, with the various potential issues and factors for the survey identified from the existing literature. This research showed that PPP and PFI procurement efficiency can have wide ranging benefits and drawbacks across different areas of a project. In particular, Li et al (2005) found the public / private sector partnerships were perceived as g iving better access to the technology required for projects, and thus leading to better project economy. This in turn drove greater public benefit, helped the public sector avoid transactional costs, and also helped manage or avoid some regulatory and financial constraints, such as the public sector timber procurement policy (Builders Merchants Journal, 2006). However, they also found that participants inexperienced is public / private sector co-operation, the high costs of setting up and participating in the initiatives, the length of time they took, and the tendency to over-commercialise some projects could lead to PPP / PFI procurement being less attractive for both parties. These various factors will impact differently on different projects, thus showing why there are such wide disparities between articles in the literature on the relative merits of PPP and PFI. For example, Weston and Cassidy (2006) claim that the procurement of public facilities and services under the PPP and PFI arrangements provides a wide variety of significant benefits to the public sector, and to the private sector partners. In contrast, Chapman (2006) highlights claims that private sector participation harms services and efficiency, whilst purely focusing on guaranteeing the private sector partners their profits. As a result, the literature concludes that the difference between the success and failure of PFI and PPP schemes depends on a clear and common understanding of the positive and negative factors surrounding PPP / PFI procurement (Li et al, 2005). Another development in procurement is that direct competition between providers, via invitations to tender, is now widely used as the means of choosing suppliers or outsourcers for many public services in the UK. Smyth (1997) describes how competitive tendering can ensure local accessibility and accountability for users, innovation, from providers and help purchasers to reduce procurement and transaction costs. However, in common with many other writers, Smyth (1997) discusses co-operation and collaboration and the interference of policy decisions and the political process, which has led to the emergence of monopolies and inefficient integrated delivery systems, often to the detriment of value in the procurement process (Smyth, 1997). Another effort made by the public sector, specifically the UK NHS, to improve purchasing efficiency is in the use of the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency, PaSA, to negotiate National Framework Agreements through which individual NHS trusts can procure goods and services at bulk negotiated rates. However, as each NHS trust is a separate legal and managerial entity, responsible only to the Department of Health, a significant number of NHS trusts have resisted the move towards this centralised procurement approach in favour of their own relationships with suppliers. As a result, Cox et al (2005) discussed how PaSA, and the NHS senior management as a whole, have created regional procurement hubs and confederations in order to overcome this inability to enforce the Agreements within individual NHS Trusts. Whilst this was a sensible approach to resolving the lack of effective consolidation of demand at the individual Trust level, the individual procurement practices of regionally based NHS Trusts is still strongly driven by their own supply and demand considerations, and this has created a number of internal demand problems that the regionalised procurement approach has failed to overcome. These include the failure by the Trusts individually, and by the NHS centrally, to control and manage the NHS design and specification process effectively and, in many cases, an inability to measure or collect information on the clinical and cost effectiveness of medical interventions (Cox et al, 2005). As such, whilst these new reforms can be seen as a significant improvement on past collaborative procurement efforts, it is likely that they are still destined to fail, due to the fundamental nature of procurement in the NHS, and the lack of understanding around effectively aligning supply and demand at all levels of the NHS. One final area, in which the public sector is often accused of being inefficient by the Audit Commission, and failing to secure best value procurement, is in the employing of management consultants for project management and other support roles. Corcoran and McLean (1998) investigated the purchase of management consultants in the public sector context, specifically the appointment of consultants to work with government departments, focusing specifically on the particular selection decisions. They found that, in accordance with government policy, many public sector decision makers focus mainly on securing best value for money when procuring consultants, however the criteria and information sources used to make the procurement decisions were often inconsistent. Similar to Cox et al (2005), Corcoran and McLean (1998) found that whilst the government’s public sector procurement principle was well known and relatively well understood, public sector decision makers seemed to be unab le to connect this principle to the procurement process, often claiming that they did not have access to sufficient information to make an informed choice. Paradoxically, the majority of government departments tend to hire management consultants in an attempt to understand the procurement process that has hired the management consultants in the first place. One significant outcome of this is that the decision makers in many government organisations stated that they didn’t believe the selection process and decision around hiring management consultants was difficult, and would be straightforward if sufficient information was made available (Corcoran and McLean, 1998). Future developments in procurement and threats to movement The public sector is increasing beginning to rely on private sector organisations to form supplier consortia for major projects, especially those where the scale is such that individual suppliers are unable to cope with the demand. As the number of projects, especially the major PPP / PFI projects, increases; the demand for these consortia is likely to rise, and Jost (2005) believes that this may become the dominant model for public sector procurement in future. However, in order for this to occur, greater attention must be paid to building successful relationships, both between the consortium and the public sector organisation, and between the members of the consortium itself. Jost (2005) conducted a qualitative study of the existing consortia, and claimed that building trust, engaging staff and reconciling the differing objectives of the partners will be the main factors critical to this development, and a lack of trust among the private sector partners will be the biggest threat t o progress. Indeed, Swan and Khalfan (2007) claim that partnering will continue to grow significantly throughout the UK public sector. They focus on the UK public sector construction industry, and identified that, in future, factors such relationship management with external stakeholders, the general public in the case of public sector projects, will be important to the growth in partnership based projects. Indeed, whilst issues such as cost, quality, timeliness and safety will remain crucial to successful delivery, objectives such as sustainable and environmental development will grow in importance, and failure to acknowledge and address these issues will again pose threats to movement. Swan and Khalfan’s research showed that the industry is already moving forward, with a su Effect of Supplier Management Procurement on Public Sectors Effect of Supplier Management Procurement on Public Sectors One: Introduction Best Value (BV) was introduced into the public sector in 1998, announced through the government’s white paper Modern Local Government in Touch with the People. This paper introduced extensive reform to local government, including the new initiative of BV. Within this BV is the e-Government, Community Planning, Strategic Partnerships and new political management structures (White Paper 1998). BV replaced the system of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) (Local Government Act 1999). The aim of BV is to influence the efficient expenditure of public money; estimated to total  £455.2 billion for 2004, forecasted to grow by 3-5% for the period 2005-9 (www.statistics.gov.uk/). The 2001 review of local government procurement in England (Delivering Better Services for Citizens) was published as a consultation paper. The report included the following recommendation; there should be clear political responsibility for procurement, with elected members taking a strategic role in secur ing outcomes. Best Value is about breaking down the boundaries between the public and private sectors in local service delivery (The Byatt Report 2001). Supplier relationship management within the public sector has to an extent been dictated by the central government initiatives evolving the CCT era into the Best Value regime. Best Value has led to distinctively different approaches within the public sector to consultation, competition, performance reviews, and to partnership working. Since the abolition of CCT, evidence is emerging of a new maturity in localgovernments relationships with the private sector. In some authorities, this is evidenced by the fact that they are now recognisingthe inevitability of the mixed economy of provision,and are prepared to work within it (Bovaird, 2000). Procurement, and best value procurement, is a complicated subject to examine, largely because getting the best value for a product or service does not necessarily mean choosing the lowest bidder. Indeed, modern procurement strategies need to consider several interrelated factors, of which costs is just one, when determining and implementing the best value procurement process. This implies a significant increase in the number of issues encountered by many public sector agencies, for who best value procurement and competitive tendering concerns have replaced the simpler days of low bid auctions for services. As a result of these changes, best value procurement has now developed into a significant strategic option, which can provide many advantages to the public sector procurement professionals. However, along with the potential benefits, best value procurement also brings significant related risk factors, especially in the public sector where policy and political considerations can lea d to significantly different interpretations of best value both across public sector organisations and across individual projects within the same organisation. Indeed, when efficiently written and executed, best value contracts can both save money and increase service levels, however by its very nature best value involves a great deal of evaluation and comparison, which can complicate the process to the point where the potential gains are lost. Equally, distortions caused by interpretations and political factors may enter into play when gauging the many factors in addition to price, often leading to debates around different perceptions of what constitutes value for a given product or service. Each best value procurement example is subjective and entirely unique, especially in the public sector, and because of this, communication between end users, procurement professionals, policy makers, and suppliers is of utmost importance. In procurement, as in other fields, people with the right knowledge about the product or service being supplied, and the project for which it is required, will be able to make better decisions than those without the necessary information. As such, when choices must be made, project sponsors, buyers, contract administrators, technical authorities, advisors, bidders, and contractors must be kept in the know. This leads to the hypothesis that supplier relationship management in the public sector will, by virtue of increasing the spread of knowledge along the procurement chain, better help the public sector to achieve best value in its procurement activities. This work intends to test this hypothesis through a detailed search of the existing literature on procurement in the public sector, and the various aspects of procurement which underlie the provision of best value for public sector organisations. This will be achieved using the positivist paradigm and phenomenological hermeneutics to identify, contextualise and analyse the various research on best value, and also to determine how supplier relationship management will impact on this for public sector organisations. Two: Methodology Due to the wide scope of the subject matter of this dissertation, and the specialised nature of procurement within the public sector, the work will be solely based on existing secondary research. As there is no primary research to interpret, the research process will be different from conventional dissertations. As such, the interpretation of the existing research will form the cornerstone of the analysis and also drive any conclusions. This means that the dissertation will not only need to analyse the content of these articles, but also the motive of the authors for writing them, the context and any inherent bias. A research method is needed that will identify any contextual factors or bias and exclude them from the overall results. The chosen method is phenomenological hermeneutics, because this methodology states that literature can only be fully interpreted through an analysis of its contextual basis. The method further argues that, instead of being based on historical or cultura l contexts, each text reflects the mental frame of the writer or writers. As such, phenomenological hermeneutics will be used as the research methodology and philosophy because it allows one to take a text and methodically isolate it from all extraneous things including the subjects biases and allow it to communicate its meaning to the subject (Demeterio, 2001). In order to effectively achieve this goal, the research method shall focus on eliminating any sources of inherent bias in order to draw out its key messages and fit them into a coherent discussion and analysis; however, as Lye (1996) states, In order to understand one must fore understand, have a stance, an anticipation and a contextualization. This is what is known as the hermeneutic circle: one can only know what one is prepared to know, in the terms that one is prepared to know. As such, this work will need to examine the various articles of literature in the context of each other; to enable the construction of a hermeneutic circle and to truly understand the points each author is trying to make. As such, the interaction of the text with the contextual frame of reference given by the literature as a whole will lead to an interpretive paradigm being formed (Lye, 1996), through which it will be possible to draw out the common themes and the salient points from the literature. To appropriately construct this paradigm, it is necessary to understand that each article will be an embodiment of the ideas, beliefs, knowledge and experiences of the author, and that the interpretation of the text will also be an embodiment of the ideas, beliefs, knowledge and experience of the reader; as such, it will be necessary for the author of this work to be aware of the impact that this will have on the interpretation of the articles. This work will embody the style of the author (Lye, 1996), and will likely reveal some significant aspects of the authors views on politics and asset allocation, both conscious and unconscious. This will potentially add a further contextual bias to the interpretation, and one which may be significantly harder to identify, isolate and remove. This potential contextual bias will also make it difficult to effectively apply the logical positivist paradigm, which is strongly based on taking an objective view of reality, rather than a subjective view. The view of positivism that knowledge can only be obtained by the use of data that can be verified by an independent observer (Schrag, 1992) implies that someone attempting to use the positivist paradigm for research purposes must be as objective and unbiased as possible. Indeed, as all phenomena are subject to natural laws that coexist with each other in a logical manner, humans can only discover these laws through the use of inductive and deductive hypotheses and empirical testing of social and scientific theories. As such, the positivist paradigm will have to be carefully applied to all research and interpretation in this work, taking into account the phenomenological hermeneutic interpretation to provide a well rounded argument and conclusion. Regarding the research and data collection methods used, an inductive approach has been taken, which is appropriate as it involves interpretation of the research and data during the gathering, as well as the analysis phase. This has been extended through the use of a standard horizontal and vertical analysis of the existing literature and the initial sources found. The horizontal aspect of the research has involved using the terminology, key words and arguments underlying historical public sector procurement processes and strategies to uncover other related works which discuss the same concepts but with different arguments and in different contexts. The vertical aspect has involved examining the sources cited in the initial sources used to move back up the chain of argument and see how different arguments and theories have been formed and influenced over time. Online searches have also been used to facilitate looking for sources which cite the identified articles and examining how th ese sources have further developed the article. The research and data gathered for this dissertation is composed entirely of secondary research. Initially, the author considered gathering and analysis primary data, however this was deemed to be unfeasible for two reasons. The first reason is that the majority of people working within public sector procurement are busy professionals, working full time to ensure that their procurement goals are met. As such, they would be unlikely to have the time available to assist in the research process, and their responses would be limited by the commercial and confidentiality considerations that underlie most procurement projects. Secondly, as was discussed above, this topic is highly specialised, with practitioners, advisors and academics having significant levels of knowledge and experience. As a result, it is more appropriate, and probably more accurate, to use the results of experienced academics and practitioners, who have carried out significant amounts of in depth, and often independent , research on this subject, as a contextual basis of the positivist paradigm being used; however, research gaps should be discussed when identified. Another important consideration when collecting the data was the time horizon because, as stated above, the UK public sector procurement industry is now in a fundamentally different state than at any time in its prior history following the longest consecutive period under Labour rule. As such, examining research data and literature from too far in the past will likely be of limited use when discussing public sector procurement in the modern economic and political environment. Therefore it has been decided that data will only be used from the period 1997 to 2007, which is the period for which the Labour government has been in power, and within which most of the major reforms underlying the current processes, strategies, and improvements have been drawn up and implemented. This research methodology has produced analyses of about fifty major articles on which the work will be based; together with some other articles defining the research methodology itself, and some sources providing general public sector procurement context and supplementary information. The major articles have been analysed and reviewed in the Structured Literature Review, under each of the main themes identified. This is the most logical method of analysis for this work, as the majority of the articles and surveys carried out around best value in the UK public sectors have been focused on specific areas such as the Public Private Partnership initiatives and the work of the Audit Commission. As such, a longitudinal method of analysis is also useful for the phenomenological hermeneutic approach taken by this work, as it will enable progressive clarity of understanding of the contextual factors underling the literature reviewed. Considering the chosen methodology for this work, this dissertation will have a Structured Literature Review instead of a conventional literature review. This is because the research used is solely secondary; therefore there is no need to conduct a standard literature review, which is usually done to contextualise and direct any primary research and to help explain its results. As this work is not based on primary research, there is no need for a standard literature review, and hence the structured literature review is more appropriate, because it can serve as the findings, results and analysis for the work, which shall be interpreted within the ‘findings’. Because the research philosophy and methodology is phenomenological hermeneutics, an interpretive, positivist method of analysis is required, which is facilitated by a structured approach to the analysis. Finally, as the literature review is being conducted along various themes, it is vital that it is correctly struct ured to ensure that it is analytical rather than just descriptive, and that it maintains some criticality. As such, the structured literature review will involve a thematic/structured review of all the salient articles in the work, analysing the arguments and themes within each article and linking the various articles and themes to each other. The last part of the literature review will be an interpretation of all the articles discussed in the review, identifying common themes, disagreements and any potential implications or conflicts. This analysis will need to consider the various biases, backgrounds and any knowledge of the authors. Many of the major disagreements may not be based on the subject of best value itself, but rather the authors views on the ultimate aims of ‘procurement’ and the importance of the process and methodology underling it. This scrutiny will enable analysis of the validity and reliability of the articles by means of triangulation with the other articles reviewed and analysed. This will further assist in the phenomenological hermeneutic approach taken by this work, and it will facilitate the identification of any bias or conflicts that were not obvious in the initial review of the literature. The methodology will also attempt to identify existing gaps within the literature, and highlight areas where further research could be beneficial to the work. Because most of the literature is written from academic perspectives, there are likely to be gaps around the various objectives and contextual factors of the various public sector organisations; and the various procurement frameworks the have in place; and potentially a lack of in depth research around issues such as political pressure and policy directives. As such, this work will attempt to identify where the existing literature has failed to focus on areas such as these, and how these omissions can be addressed by future studies and research. Three: Literature Best Value Procurement in the UK Public Sector There is a large volume of research focusing on procurement strategies and measures of value for private sector organisations, and recently literature (Male et al, 2007; Lian and Laing, 2004) has begun to focus on the different procurement practices needed by the public sector. Indeed, Lian and Laing (2004) focused on the transactional and relationship based nature of procurement strategies to determine to what extent procurement is different between the public and the private sector. They focused on health services, as public health services are often seen as one of the most complex services provided by the public sector (Male et al, 2007), and their research demonstrated how the differing environmental factors, such as politics and resource allocation in the public sector, impacted on procurement, whilst many service specific factors, such as the need for medicines and temporary staff, were constant across the public and private spheres Indeed, their research demonstrated that poli tics and policy drivers have a major impact on the procurement strategies used by public sector organisations, and that these strategies, and the methods used to engage suppliers, were significantly different from that of private sector organisations. This research ties in with that of Dixon et al (2005) which showed that, whilst the private sector tended to build relationships with suppliers, and leverage these to obtain better value, public sector organisations often based their procurement strategies on the costs of individual transactions. As such, the literature concludes that the private sector’s relationship based procurement strategies offer better value than those of the public sector. However, Lian and Laing (2004) also commented that public policy decisions often restrict public sector organisations from building relationships with their suppliers, and thus the very nature of public sector organisations often hinders or prevents them from achieving best value from their procurement activities. Palaneeswaran et al (2003) criticise this political dimension, claiming that procuring best value should be one of the key objectives (for the) public sector. Their argument is that best value depends upon the use of sound selection strategies, intended to ensure that all the procurement objectives are met, which includes the client and end user demands. As such, best value initiatives should all be geared towards the final state of business, rather than to serve public policy decisions. They conclude that, whilst the overall goal of any public sector organisation should be determined by public policy, best value procurement efforts should all be directed towards that goal and be free from political interference. Unfortunately, as Lian and Ling commented, whilst this may be desirable it is not always possible. Current successes and failures of procurement strategies within central and local government Walker (2006) notes that UK public sector organisations often make their main procurement decisions, for assets and services, at the local level, reflected in the fact that the NHS trusts and local government authorities all have their own procurement departments. Whilst this policy allows individual bodies to select the procurement strategy that best suits their needs, the lack of coordination of the procurement process can lead to inefficient supply markets, with either too few or too many suppliers, which reduces the efficiency of individual suppliers and thus increased the cost to the purchasers. These local procurement decisions are also often superseded or influence by central government guidelines and policies, for example Builders Merchants Journal (2006) detailed a new central government policy on public sector timber procurement. This policy specified that, whilst organisations are still responsible for their own procurement decisions, they must ensure that any timber they procure comes from a legal source, which increases the administrative burden for the local organisations. Furthermore, the government has also specified that organisations should supply sustainable timber wherever possible, however this is not compulsory. Such vague policy guidelines also make it difficult for organisations trying to balance budgets against policy. Equally, such fragmented policies make it hard for public sector organisations to plan long term procurement strategies to respond to market uncertainty. For example, Loveday (2005) reported that the UK public sector was forced to cut back service provision as a result of significant energy price rises which they had not planned for. Whilst this failing is shared with the private sector, which Loveday (2005) stated as having lost over  £1 billion due to a lack of energy procurement strategies and poor energy risk management, the fragmented nature of local procurement means that the public sector is often as much as risk from utility price rises as small businesses, some of which have been almost bankrupted due to rising energy bills in recent years (Loveday, 2005). Perhaps in response to these drawbacks, the literature highlights one of the main strategies used in recent years by the public sector to improve its procurement strategies: the rise of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which form long term partnerships with private sector organisations to share the provision of public services. Smyth and Edkins (2007) examined the management of these projects, the relationships between the primary public and private sector partners and the use of the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPUs) to facilitate the partnerships. They found that the management of these relationships had two main dynamics: the contract, transactional, approach of the public sector, and the relationship management approach of the private sector. The combination of these two approaches, and how they influenced the project management discipline within the partnership, showed that they led to greater strategic and tactical consideration being giv en to functions such as procurement, leading to greater value generation. This consideration led to greater collaboration, both between and within the organisations, as they adjusted to new procurement conditions, demonstrating improved proactive and strategic relationship management versus individual public sector organisations (Smyth and Edkins, 2007). Dixon et al (2005) also examined the several case studies of the success of the Private Finance Initiative schemes, focusing on projects related to the construction of infrastructure and other facilities. These studies highlighted several examples of best practice and best value procurement, together with the key critical factors for success in PFI projects, whilst also pointing out some drawbacks and lessons for future projects. Indeed, the literature demonstrated that the key value benefits of the PFI are that the public sector obtains increased value for money, whilst also transferring risk to the private sector partner. However, this transfer is offset by higher procurement and transaction costs, relative to the private sector’s standard costs; partly due to the cultural differences between the public and private sector, and partly due to large-scale nature of PFI projects, which frequently acts as a barrier to entry for some financing partners and suppliers. This highligh ts the need to develop competitive public sector supplier markets, and also to develop the appropriate procurement and project management skills within the public sector to ensure that they can work with private sector partners to ensure best value (Dixon et al, 2005). These show two contrasting views of the PFI/PPP, with Smyth and Edkins (2007) seeing the initiatives as an excellent way to bring private sector efficiency to public sector procurement, but with Dixon et al (2005) claiming that the wide differences in skill sets mean that a lot of the benefits from the private sector methodologies are lost. In response to contrasting views such as these, Li et al (2005) conducted research into the various perceptions of what makes the PFI attractive or unattractive to potential partners as a procurement system for projects. The research was based on a questionnaire / survey of stakeholders in the various projects, with the various potential issues and factors for the survey identified from the existing literature. This research showed that PPP and PFI procurement efficiency can have wide ranging benefits and drawbacks across different areas of a project. In particular, Li et al (2005) found the public / private sector partnerships were perceived as g iving better access to the technology required for projects, and thus leading to better project economy. This in turn drove greater public benefit, helped the public sector avoid transactional costs, and also helped manage or avoid some regulatory and financial constraints, such as the public sector timber procurement policy (Builders Merchants Journal, 2006). However, they also found that participants inexperienced is public / private sector co-operation, the high costs of setting up and participating in the initiatives, the length of time they took, and the tendency to over-commercialise some projects could lead to PPP / PFI procurement being less attractive for both parties. These various factors will impact differently on different projects, thus showing why there are such wide disparities between articles in the literature on the relative merits of PPP and PFI. For example, Weston and Cassidy (2006) claim that the procurement of public facilities and services under the PPP and PFI arrangements provides a wide variety of significant benefits to the public sector, and to the private sector partners. In contrast, Chapman (2006) highlights claims that private sector participation harms services and efficiency, whilst purely focusing on guaranteeing the private sector partners their profits. As a result, the literature concludes that the difference between the success and failure of PFI and PPP schemes depends on a clear and common understanding of the positive and negative factors surrounding PPP / PFI procurement (Li et al, 2005). Another development in procurement is that direct competition between providers, via invitations to tender, is now widely used as the means of choosing suppliers or outsourcers for many public services in the UK. Smyth (1997) describes how competitive tendering can ensure local accessibility and accountability for users, innovation, from providers and help purchasers to reduce procurement and transaction costs. However, in common with many other writers, Smyth (1997) discusses co-operation and collaboration and the interference of policy decisions and the political process, which has led to the emergence of monopolies and inefficient integrated delivery systems, often to the detriment of value in the procurement process (Smyth, 1997). Another effort made by the public sector, specifically the UK NHS, to improve purchasing efficiency is in the use of the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency, PaSA, to negotiate National Framework Agreements through which individual NHS trusts can procure goods and services at bulk negotiated rates. However, as each NHS trust is a separate legal and managerial entity, responsible only to the Department of Health, a significant number of NHS trusts have resisted the move towards this centralised procurement approach in favour of their own relationships with suppliers. As a result, Cox et al (2005) discussed how PaSA, and the NHS senior management as a whole, have created regional procurement hubs and confederations in order to overcome this inability to enforce the Agreements within individual NHS Trusts. Whilst this was a sensible approach to resolving the lack of effective consolidation of demand at the individual Trust level, the individual procurement practices of regionally based NHS Trusts is still strongly driven by their own supply and demand considerations, and this has created a number of internal demand problems that the regionalised procurement approach has failed to overcome. These include the failure by the Trusts individually, and by the NHS centrally, to control and manage the NHS design and specification process effectively and, in many cases, an inability to measure or collect information on the clinical and cost effectiveness of medical interventions (Cox et al, 2005). As such, whilst these new reforms can be seen as a significant improvement on past collaborative procurement efforts, it is likely that they are still destined to fail, due to the fundamental nature of procurement in the NHS, and the lack of understanding around effectively aligning supply and demand at all levels of the NHS. One final area, in which the public sector is often accused of being inefficient by the Audit Commission, and failing to secure best value procurement, is in the employing of management consultants for project management and other support roles. Corcoran and McLean (1998) investigated the purchase of management consultants in the public sector context, specifically the appointment of consultants to work with government departments, focusing specifically on the particular selection decisions. They found that, in accordance with government policy, many public sector decision makers focus mainly on securing best value for money when procuring consultants, however the criteria and information sources used to make the procurement decisions were often inconsistent. Similar to Cox et al (2005), Corcoran and McLean (1998) found that whilst the government’s public sector procurement principle was well known and relatively well understood, public sector decision makers seemed to be unab le to connect this principle to the procurement process, often claiming that they did not have access to sufficient information to make an informed choice. Paradoxically, the majority of government departments tend to hire management consultants in an attempt to understand the procurement process that has hired the management consultants in the first place. One significant outcome of this is that the decision makers in many government organisations stated that they didn’t believe the selection process and decision around hiring management consultants was difficult, and would be straightforward if sufficient information was made available (Corcoran and McLean, 1998). Future developments in procurement and threats to movement The public sector is increasing beginning to rely on private sector organisations to form supplier consortia for major projects, especially those where the scale is such that individual suppliers are unable to cope with the demand. As the number of projects, especially the major PPP / PFI projects, increases; the demand for these consortia is likely to rise, and Jost (2005) believes that this may become the dominant model for public sector procurement in future. However, in order for this to occur, greater attention must be paid to building successful relationships, both between the consortium and the public sector organisation, and between the members of the consortium itself. Jost (2005) conducted a qualitative study of the existing consortia, and claimed that building trust, engaging staff and reconciling the differing objectives of the partners will be the main factors critical to this development, and a lack of trust among the private sector partners will be the biggest threat t o progress. Indeed, Swan and Khalfan (2007) claim that partnering will continue to grow significantly throughout the UK public sector. They focus on the UK public sector construction industry, and identified that, in future, factors such relationship management with external stakeholders, the general public in the case of public sector projects, will be important to the growth in partnership based projects. Indeed, whilst issues such as cost, quality, timeliness and safety will remain crucial to successful delivery, objectives such as sustainable and environmental development will grow in importance, and failure to acknowledge and address these issues will again pose threats to movement. Swan and Khalfan’s research showed that the industry is already moving forward, with a su

My Philosophy as a Teacher :: Philosophy of Education Statement Teaching Essays

My Philosophy as a Teacher I want that â€Å"A† assignment displayed on David’s refrigerator. I want Julie to recount that discussion about Elie Weisel’s Night to her friend on the bus, and I want them to feel enlightened and emotional about it. Years from now, I want to hear Jose tell his son about the class where he realized he wasn’t stupid and could write well. I want him to write a story about it. I haven’t taught a David, a Julie or a Jose yet, but one day I want to have that kind of effect on my students. No matter how a child feels about school, it plays a tremendous part in a child’s life. Teachers can brighten or burden a student’s day, every day, depending on how a teacher conducts her class and how she relates to her students. For this reason, I believe I must teach more than just English and more than that which can be measured by grades. I believe a good teacher can give a student the skills and self confidence that may propel that child through life. Whetting a child’s interest in learning and pushing a child to prove himself capable of obtaining and improving on his talents, is of vital importance. Having been a student for nearly sixteen years now, I believe that in order to be an effective conveyer of skills and knowledge, I must always plan, be organized, structured and make my expectations high and clear for my students. Whenever possible, I must streamline and simplify complex ideas in order to help students grasp new skills and concepts. Teaching freshly, creatively and entertainingly is also highly important. As an English teacher, I want to guide my students closely through their writing processes, emphasizing the revision process, which I find to be crucial in learning to write well. I want to help alleviate the intense stress that students sometimes feel about writing by making them write often. With practice, I hope to make writing feel natural and enjoyable for even my most English-hating students.

Literature for enrollment and scheduling Essay

According to some Researchers (2013), Due to their limited funds, the school maximizes its workforce to attend to every student needs that results to overloaded teachers and school personnel. Although the school has a handful of computers donated to them, they still use the traditional way of maintaining files and records that are all manually done. The current system being implemented by Metropolitan Academy of Manila is the traditional method of recording, calculating, and maintaining student grades and records. Everything is done manually. Student information is written on paper forms during enrollment. The registrar prepares a list of official enrolled students and gives copies to the principal and to the teachers. The teachers write down the names of the students in their class records for every subject and section he or she is handling and enters the rating of the students for every grade component. The teachers manually compute the grade of the students using a calculator and submit their class records to the principal for checking. The principal checks the grades one by one and if errors are found, the class record is returned to the teacher, who re-computes the grade and submit it again to the principal for checking. Correct and verified grades are then given subject grade components subject grade components rating back to the teacher to be submitted to the registrar who prepares the students’ report cards. This type of system is very tedious and takes a long time. Manually calculating, checking and re-computing the grades of students are very difficult and are very prone to human errors. Added to this is the money being spent by the school for paper files and forms, cabinets and other things needed to store student data and records. According to Forman (2007), continuing innovation in technologies can lead to organizational changes that range from improvement of day to day operation and for easy access it provides for the end users. Many schools today have adapted this innovation in offering of their services. Related Studies Local Based on the researcher, a web-based enrolment system for Veritas Parochial School (VPS) in Manila was developed to help its students enroll in a more efficient way without the hassles of waiting long hours in filling out forms, which sometimes become redundant, or to stand in line and pay at the  cashier. It is with the Web-based Enrolment System for VPS that this new style of enrolment may be achieved. This new type of system offers its students new options for enrolling at VPS. By logging on to VPS website, one can register and enroll subjects for a school year. With these, all the students are required to fill out certain forms that do not take more than a few minutes to accompl ish. The system stores its records in the school database for future references. Confirmation of the transaction made by the students need to be verified, the payment of tuition fees must be made in the school’s registrar. The students may also browse the web site of VPS and he can check his current account. He can also refer to the list of the school current tuition fee rates (Pascual & Riceo, 2008). According to the project study in 2005 by Mr. Lopez, an enrolment system help and provide efficient and reliable services to the students, enrolment personnel and administration. Moreover, this system improved the process of enrolment in terms of searching, retrieving and subject schedules. An Online Enrolment System was proposed to replace the manual enrolment system of Cavite Maritime Institute in order to advance an organized flow of transaction and an ease of work concerned on how the manual enrolment performs throughout the institution’s operations. The numerous transactions that the manual system covers, such as updating and adding student records, generating the advising and assessment slips, and the like considering the manual operating system to be inefficient for the need of the institution. Since the study involves proper record handling, tracing the constraints and evaluation of the manual system isessential(Bacala and Reano, 2009). According to Aquino (2005), importance of computer application is increasing day by day. In the latest decades of the Millennium winning organization are those which are willing to integrate business strategy and computer information technology in plying their respective trades. The use of computer information technology results for them to be able to develop products fast and make decisions fast, ability to have fluid organization structures, able to cope with the demanding work force and external environment by the rapid development of innovative approaches and lastly  using information system confirms the company’s mission vision. Schools use information systems in the way of implementing an enrolment system. This results for them to attract enrollees and earn an income. Enrollees are attracted because the use of the said system makes the transactions faster and easier. â€Å"Lack of enrollment system in schools can lead to chaos and troubles†, as stated by Ace Adr ian (2011). Students will be confused on what they should do to be able to enroll that is why such systems is extremely useful in the way that it gives an ease on working on enrolment processes. Enrollment is very useful in retrieving vital information of the students. Without it can lead difficulty both for the administration of school and student in enrollment processes. Many countries nowadays, especially the developing nations are challenged by the rapid technological changes. This has radically changed the living and working styles of the entire society. This transformation has been driven partly by rapid technological innovation. While in the 20th century saw the rise of the industrial revolution with steam-powered machines intensifying and expanding human productive power, the 21thcentury was characterized by the birth of machine-powered flight and the emergence of broadcasting and computer technologies the extend the reach of human creativity even more and made possible new ways by which humans could live and work together (Tinio, 2002). The transformation of manual enrollment transaction to automated and now into a web based automation is one example of what has driven partly by the rapid technological innovation. Any ways just to make work easier and faster like enrollment transactions is possible with the emergence of computer technologies. Technology innovation had influenced man’s work from data processing, business transaction, research, planning, monitoring and even in medical operation on human anatomy are now entrusted to computer technology. Web applications are popular due to ubiquity of its applications. The ability to update and maintain web applications without distributing and installing software on potentially thousands of client computers are key reasons for its popularity. A significant advantage of building web applications to support a standard browser feature is the ability to perform as specified, regardless of the operating system installed on a given client (Bacala&Reanno, 2009). A web-based enrollment system has featured that meet most of academic institutions system’s needs  and requirements. This includes standardized modules for student registration, enrolment, grade management, and other modules that are deemed necessary to operate a school. Foreign Literature According to researcher (2009) integrated systems are a tool to support integrated. Information systems are increasingly being used in organizations with the objective of providing competitive advantage. The Grading systems used by organizations can be grouped into different types such as transaction processing system, Scheduling System, and Grading System. It includes the changing employment patterns, archiving, and bibliographic control, security and data protection, intellectual property, marketplace issues and access. An enrollment system is basically included in one of the classification of information system that is stated by the author, thus it serves a tool to support information management with regards to the student data, enrollment fees information and other with a connection to the enrollment process .Every school gain competitive advantage of having this system for they will have the capacity on handling important information at ease and with security. The iterative impl ementation approach is a theory that eliminates problems of using a waterfall study. This is invented to avoid a linear and sequential development of study. The overall functionality of the system is broken down into feature sets. These features sets often based upon use cases from the analysis stage, containing group of individual features that are related, typically by a functional area WAMP5 (WAMP means Windows Apache Mysql PHP) is a platform of Web development under Windows. It allows you to develop dynamic Web sites with Apache server, PHP5 script language, and the database of MySQL release 5. It also possesses VB. Net MyAdmin and SQL lite manager to manage more easily your databases. Windows 7 is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, and media center PCs. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available for retail worldwide on October 22, 2009,less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7’s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released  at the same time. Windows 7 is succeeded by Windows 8. Adopting the theory of Stephen McHenry which is known as the iterative implementation covers the breakdown of overall functionality of the system to a what he called feature set and those feature sets represents different process involve in an enrollment system. It helps locate what feature an enrollment system will have since that this kind of systems does many activities and processes. India’s higher education system is the third largest in the world, after China andUnited State. The main governing body at tertiary level is the University GrantsCommission. Which enforces its standards, advises the government, and help coordinate between the centre and the state? Accreditation for higher learning is overseen by 12autonomous institutions established by the University Grants Commission. As of 2009, India has 2 central university 215 state universities, 100 deemed universities, 5 institutions established and functioning under the state act, and 13institutes which are of national importance. Other institutions include 16000 colleges, including 1800 exclusive women’s colleges, functioning under these universities and institutions. According to Jefels (2010), Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is important in primary education because it enables kids to search for the information they need and to organize what they have found. As children progress through the school system, they become increasingly responsible for their own learning. Many believe that ICT needs to be better integrated into curriculums so all schools produce computer literate, independent learners. ICT is a global phenomenon, and children who are computer literate at an early stage of their lives might deal better with the modern world. A sound knowledge of ICT makes it much easier for children to find and organize information. An Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) funded study (2009) that took place between 2005 and 2008 identified good practices in the teaching of ICT. Although the ICT curriculum was sometimes poorly balanced, its use contributed to children doing better in some subject areas. The study also found that the primary school children spent as much time on computers as the curriculum allowed. Primary school children who do well in ICT spend a lot of time going over the same ground rather than progressing. The Ofsted study (2009) found that in more than half the primary schools they visited, children did well in ICT. However, earlier work found that in more than half the primary schools they visited, children did well in ICT. However, earlier work found that children did better in schools where the computing resources were good, but had lower levels of achievement when resources were fewer. College and university campuses frequently struggle with the task of getting academic classes and the wide variety of non-academic meetings and events that they host into the appropriate rooms. Ensuring the availability of the necessary services and resources can also be difficult. A class schedule maker will go a long way in making life easier for students as this automates the process of scheduling classes to some extent. It is a useful tool that will save a lot of time. College days are tough as students have to juggle time between studies and part-time jobs to keep them afloat meanwhile and some students also have to participate in sports and athletics. And classes are only available at certain times and students have to wrap their schedule around these. A tool that will help with scheduling will be really helpful for students and teachers alike. College teachers have some of the best and most respected jobs. But enriching the intellect of young minds takes a lot of responsibility as the competence of the teacher plays a part in deciding to what extent the student will excel in that subject. And for this teachers have to spend a lot of time preparing proper study material. And if you put yourself in the academician’s shoes, you will see that this is quite difficult. Plus, there is the added responsibility of scheduling classes. This would be unnecessary added stress to the teachers and an electronic aid to help them will prove to be really helpful. A graphic representation of data is always useful and this is one of the benefits of a class schedule maker.