June 2008 News
Links for 23 June 2008
Here are the links we found interesting today:
Demos | Publications | The Politics of Public Behaviour
Link to this collection of essays by Demos
Millions of books to choose from - yours will take only minutes to print - News - Independent.co.uk
Changes to the publishing industry - print on demand
Designing citizen-centred governance
Paper...
What might a Conservative government have in store for the VCS?
There has undoubtedly been a greater interest in the VCS from the Conservative party in recent years. This has been influenced by Cameron’s vision of Compassionate Conservatism and the work of the Social Justice Policy Group including their reports ‘Breakdown Britain’ and ‘Breakthrough Britain’. They have developed thinking on issues recently seen as the remit of the left such as social breakdown and justice, poverty and the environment; issues that are often a key concern for large parts of ...
Links for 14 June 2008
Here are the links we found interesting today:
Preparing for the Worst - ippr
Outlining the need for preparation to ensure resilience against future threats.
‘One small step for man….’
I recently read an interesting article about individual responses to environmental change. The main thrust of the piece centred on the fact that steps taken by one person can lead others to do the same. The author termed it ‘viral social change’ and it seems to me that this is probably the biggest influencer of people’s behaviour in all manner of things. It’s the modern version of ‘lead by example’ but this current change relies more on peer leadership than anything else. This is quite...
How do sector leaders feel about the future 3 months on?
Today NCVO has published the second round of its new Charity Forecast report which reveals the confidence levels and plans of sector leaders. As future change is partly based on present intentions, the report provides valuable information to inform strategic plans; revealing trends in collaboration and competition and how VCOs are feeling about the funding environment and the economy.
Headline findings
- Charity leaders’ confidence has fallen 5% in the last quarter, but still shows a net...
The world of work in 2018
A little while ago, I attended a futures symposium organised by the European Futures Observatory and a network of professional futurists. One of the presentations was based on the newly published report (PDF 991 KB) on what the world of work in 2018 would look like by the Chartered Management Institute. The world of work has changed dramatically in the last decade. The management and leadership skills needed to survive or succeed today are very different from those of a generation ago, and...
Links for 5 June 2008
Here are the links we found interesting today:
Conservative Green Paper - Voluntary Action in the 21st Century
Sets out broad policy agenda for the VCS for the first time since Cameron has been in power
Assertive consumers
I am currently thinking about the relationship between organisations and users for one of the chapters of the strategic analysis. One of the key drivers is that users are more assertive and less deferential. An interesting project from Demos has been looking at how this is impacting on the conversations that health professionals have with their patients, finding that they are learning to talk and listen to increasingly assertive patients and letting go of some old assumptions about...
We are currently thinking about…
Natalie, Veronique and I are currently deep into writing the next edition of the Voluntary Sector Strategic Analysis, our annual analysis of the drivers shaping the future of the sector. This year’s edition will focus on the following five themes:
- National politics – clearly a period of greater uncertainty than at any time since 1997 election (or perhaps even 1992)?
- The economy – higher on most people’s agenda than it has been for many years and (again) a time of uncertainty (this will also be...
The politics of public behaviour
Despite a retreat from the state in many traditional areas, the UK government is increasingly finding itself drawn into a variety of new personal challenges such as how much people eat, drink, travel, save or dispose of their personal waste. Across the political spectrum, behaviour change is increasingly underpinning policy programmes. One of the reasons for the emergence of this agenda is the growing sense that the intractable problems or ‘wicked issues’ in society (e.g. obseity or climate...
