The Public Value of the Social Sciences

The Public Value of the Social Sciences PDF Author: John D. Brewer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780931786
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
What is the purpose of social science? How can social science make itself relevant to the intractable problems facing humanity in the twenty-first century? The social sciences are under threat from two main sources. One is external, reflected in a global university crisis that imposes the marketization of higher education on the ancient practice of scholarship. The other, internal threat is social science's withdrawal from publicly–engaged teaching and research into the protective bunker of disciplinarity. In articulating a vision for the public role of social science in the twenty-first century, John Brewer argues that these threats also constitute an opportunity for a new public social science to emerge, confident in its public value and fully engaged with the future of humanity in its teaching, research and civic responsibilities, while also remaining committed to science. The argument is presented in the form of an interpretive essay: thought-provoking, forward-looking, and challenging to intellectual orthodoxy. It should be read and debated by all researchers and teachers in the social science disciplines who are concerned by the future of higher education and the relevance of their subjects to the future of humankind.

The Public Value of the Social Sciences

The Public Value of the Social Sciences PDF Author: John D. Brewer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780931786
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
What is the purpose of social science? How can social science make itself relevant to the intractable problems facing humanity in the twenty-first century? The social sciences are under threat from two main sources. One is external, reflected in a global university crisis that imposes the marketization of higher education on the ancient practice of scholarship. The other, internal threat is social science's withdrawal from publicly–engaged teaching and research into the protective bunker of disciplinarity. In articulating a vision for the public role of social science in the twenty-first century, John Brewer argues that these threats also constitute an opportunity for a new public social science to emerge, confident in its public value and fully engaged with the future of humanity in its teaching, research and civic responsibilities, while also remaining committed to science. The argument is presented in the form of an interpretive essay: thought-provoking, forward-looking, and challenging to intellectual orthodoxy. It should be read and debated by all researchers and teachers in the social science disciplines who are concerned by the future of higher education and the relevance of their subjects to the future of humankind.

The Public Value of Science

The Public Value of Science PDF Author: James Wilsdon
Publisher: Demos Medical Publishing
ISBN: 9781841801513
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description


Public Values and Public Interest

Public Values and Public Interest PDF Author: Barry Bozeman
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589014015
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Economic individualism and market-based values dominate today's policymaking and public management circles—often at the expense of the common good. In his new book, Barry Bozeman demonstrates the continuing need for public interest theory in government. Public Values and Public Interest offers a direct theoretical challenge to the "utility of economic individualism," the prevailing political theory in the western world. The book's arguments are steeped in a practical and practicable theory that advances public interest as a viable and important measure in any analysis of policy or public administration. According to Bozeman, public interest theory offers a dynamic and flexible approach that easily adapts to changing situations and balances today's market-driven attitudes with the concepts of common good advocated by Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and John Dewey. In constructing the case for adopting a new governmental paradigm based on what he terms "managing publicness," Bozeman demonstrates why economic indices alone fail to adequately value social choice in many cases. He explores the implications of privatization of a wide array of governmental services—among them Social Security, defense, prisons, and water supplies. Bozeman constructs analyses from both perspectives in an extended study of genetically modified crops to compare the policy outcomes using different core values and questions the public value of engaging in the practice solely for the sake of cheaper food. Thoughtful, challenging, and timely, Public Values and Public Interest shows how the quest for fairness can once again play a full part in public policy debates and public administration.

Recognizing Public Value

Recognizing Public Value PDF Author: Mark H. Moore
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674071379
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Mark H. Moore’s now classic Creating Public Value offered advice to public managers about how to create public value. But that book left a key question unresolved: how could one recognize (in an accounting sense) when public value had been created? Here, Moore closes the gap by setting forth a philosophy of performance measurement that will help public managers name, observe, and sometimes count the value they produce, whether in education, public health, safety, crime prevention, housing, or other areas. Blending case studies with theory, he argues that private sector models built on customer satisfaction and the bottom line cannot be transferred to government agencies. The Public Value Account (PVA), which Moore develops as an alternative, outlines the values that citizens want to see produced by, and reflected in, agency operations. These include the achievement of collectively defined missions, the fairness with which agencies operate, and the satisfaction of clients and other stake-holders. But strategic public managers also have to imagine and execute strategies that sustain or increase the value they create into the future. To help public managers with that task, Moore offers a Public Value Scorecard that focuses on the actions necessary to build legitimacy and support for the envisioned value, and on the innovations that have to be made in existing operational capacity. Using his scorecard, Moore evaluates the real-world management strategies of such former public managers as D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, and Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue John James.

Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal

Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal PDF Author: Heather E. Douglas
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 082297357X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
The role of science in policymaking has gained unprecedented stature in the United States, raising questions about the place of science and scientific expertise in the democratic process. Some scientists have been given considerable epistemic authority in shaping policy on issues of great moral and cultural significance, and the politicizing of these issues has become highly contentious. Since World War II, most philosophers of science have purported the concept that science should be "value-free." In Science, Policy and the Value-Free Ideal, Heather E. Douglas argues that such an ideal is neither adequate nor desirable for science. She contends that the moral responsibilities of scientists require the consideration of values even at the heart of science. She lobbies for a new ideal in which values serve an essential function throughout scientific inquiry, but where the role values play is constrained at key points, thus protecting the integrity and objectivity of science. In this vein, Douglas outlines a system for the application of values to guide scientists through points of uncertainty fraught with moral valence.Following a philosophical analysis of the historical background of science advising and the value-free ideal, Douglas defines how values should-and should not-function in science. She discusses the distinctive direct and indirect roles for values in reasoning, and outlines seven senses of objectivity, showing how each can be employed to determine the reliability of scientific claims. Douglas then uses these philosophical insights to clarify the distinction between junk science and sound science to be used in policymaking. In conclusion, she calls for greater openness on the values utilized in policymaking, and more public participation in the policymaking process, by suggesting various models for effective use of both the public and experts in key risk assessments.

The Public Value of the Humanities

The Public Value of the Humanities PDF Author: Jonathan Bate
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1849660638
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Recession is a time for asking fundamental questions about value. At a time when governments are being forced to make swingeing savings in public expenditure, why should they continue to invest public money funding research into ancient Greek tragedy, literary value, philosophical conundrums or the aesthetics of design? Does such research deliver 'value for money' and 'public benefit'? Such questions have become especially pertinent in the UK in recent years, in the context of the drive by government to instrumentalize research across the disciplines and the prominence of discussions about 'economic impact' and 'knowledge transfer'. In this book a group of distinguished humanities researchers, all working in Britain, but publishing research of international importance, reflect on the public value of their discipline, using particular research projects as case-studies. Their essays are passionate, sometimes polemical, often witty and consistently thought-provoking, covering a range of humanities disciplines from theology to architecture and from media studies to anthropology.

The Impact of the Social Sciences

The Impact of the Social Sciences PDF Author: Simon Bastow
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446293254
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
The impact agenda is set to shape the way in which social scientists prioritise the work they choose to pursue, the research methods they use and how they publish their findings over the coming decade, but how much is currently known about how social science research has made a mark on society? Based on a three year research project studying the impact of 360 UK-based academics on business, government and civil society sectors, this groundbreaking new book undertakes the most thorough analysis yet of how academic research in the social sciences achieves public policy impacts, contributes to economic prosperity, and informs public understanding of policy issues as well as economic and social changes. The Impact of the Social Sciences addresses and engages with key issues, including: identifying ways to conceptualise and model impact in the social sciences developing more sophisticated ways to measure academic and external impacts of social science research explaining how impacts from individual academics, research units and universities can be improved. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and anyone involved in discussions about how to improve the value and impact of funded research.

Public Value

Public Value PDF Author: Adam Lindgreen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351671154
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
Over the last 10 years, the concept of value has emerged in both business and public life as part of an important process of measuring, benchmarking, and assuring the resources we invest and the outcomes we generate from our activities. In the context of public life, value is an important measure on the contribution to business and social good of activities for which strict financial measures are either inappropriate or fundamentally unsound. A systematic, interdisciplinary examination of public value is necessary to establish an essential definition and up-to-date picture of the field. In reflecting on the ‘public value project’, this book points to how the field has broadened well beyond its original focus on public sector management; has deepened in terms of the development of the analytical concepts and frameworks that linked the concepts together; and has been applied increasingly in concrete circumstances by academics, consultants, and practitioners. This book covers three main topics; deepening and enriching the theory of creating public value, broadening the theory and practice of creating public value to voluntary and commercial organisations and collaborative networks, and the challenge and opportunity that the concept of public value poses to social science and universities. Collectively, it offers new ways of looking at public and social assets against a backdrop of increasing financial pressure; new insights into changing social attitudes and perceptions of value; and new models for increasingly complicated collaborative forms of service delivery, involving public, private, and not-for-profit players.

Social Science Research

Social Science Research PDF Author: Anol Bhattacherjee
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781475146127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.

Universities and Global Human Development

Universities and Global Human Development PDF Author: Alejandra Boni
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317587189
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book makes the case for a critical turn in development thinking around universities and their contributions in making a more equal post-2015 world. It puts forward a normative approach based on human development and the capability approach, one which can gain a hearing from policy, scholarship, and practitioners dealing with practical issues of understanding policy, democratising research and knowledge, and fostering student learning - all key university functions. The book argues that such an approach can elucidate development debates drawing on local, national and international issues and examples to show why higher education matters for sustainable development goals both in educational and social terms. It advocates a new arena of engagement with universities as key sites of development and freedoms beyond human capital and challenges development omissions and gaps around university education. The book explores how the human development approach addresses the following core ideas: the meaning of well-being, the idea of agency, participation and democratic citizenship, how to address inequalities, the relation between local and global, and the idea of equitable partnerships. This book is addressed to researchers and postgraduate students in development studies, university education, the capability approach and human development community.