High prices and concerns about energy security in the oil and gas industry are driving expansion into ever more sensitive environments with greater technoological, political and social risks.While brands such as BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are well known, some 70 per cent of oil and gas industry activities are typically contracted out to service providers and their subcontractors. The fallout from the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster has shone a spotlight on alleged systemic failures and ongoing difficulties in contracting relationships. As the governments of oil producing countries - from Nigeria to Kazakhstan to Venezuela - seek to take greater control of their oil and gas resources, there are pressures to expand the role of local businesses in chains of contractors. Government targets for local hiring and procurement paper draws on three years of research and interviews within the oil and gas sector to highlight an array of critical challenges facing oil and gas companies involved in complex supply chains, and to identify urgent and longer-term actions for progress.

This book traces the growth of managed care as a mechanism for curbing excessive growth in health costs, and the controversies that have risen around for-profit health care. Also examined are decentralization in US health care, and the absence of comprehensive health care planning, access rules, and minimum health care benefit standards. Finally, the author proposes a framework for improving access to quality, affordable health care in a competitive market environment.

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a governance framework promoted by influential policy makers such as the European Commission and academics from the fields of science and technology studies and management. This book is the first text to serve industry. Inspired by existing Corporate Responsibility standards and principles, it offers a selection of tools that can assist practitioners in implementing RRI in business and industry. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is integrative. It is a convergence of Technology Assessment (TA) and Ethics, including corporate responsibility. The task of linking RRI to existing frameworks has only just begun. This book is a welcome example, showing how Corporate Responsibility tools can drive the implementation of RRI. Prof. Armin Grunwald, Head of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag and Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. This is a simple, short, yet encyclopaedic work designed to help business implement RRI using the many tools of Corporate Responsibility (CR) already in place, everything from ISO9001 to the Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability. It makes clear the ways in which RRI is an extension of ideas already well-developed in CR. I learned a lot reading it. Prof. Michael Davis, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA Increase the chance of success for your startup's business idea by using your future customers' knowledge about the market! This engagingly written book explains how. Dr Thomas Frenken, CEO oldntec, Germany

One of the fundamental issues confronting those who create, analyze, or work within the framework of modern American social welfare policy is the relationship of the family and the state in the delivery of social care through social services. Dr. Moroney develops the idea of the family as both recipient and dispenser of social services. Simply and effectively he "paints the landscape" with respect to American families. He focuses on two special cases: families with frail elderly and families with severely mentally handicapped children. The notion of shared responsibility between the family and state, the nature of social welfare response through government programs and the professional response of social workers to families in need, and some of the dilemmas inherent in formulating family policy in a multicultural, pluralistic society are examined.

Agenda for Change (1991) examines the experiences of five industrialised market economies in a period of profound change in industrial relations. It looks at the national history and culture affecting industrial relations, the obstacles to change and the levers that could effect it, and the respective roles of employers, unions and governments in bringing about improvement. Is there any single model of an industrial relations system to which a country could aspire?