LINKAGE ONE: First edition of a newsletter concerned with inter-organisational relations in providing community services

Abstract

This newsletter and its two successors - LINKAGE TWO and THREE - were published by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in association with a three year IOR research programme of research on inter-organisational relations in the provision of community services that was supported by the UK Social Science Research Council between 1975 and 1978. That programme followed an earlier IOR project on decision networks in regional development, which led to the publication in 1974 of a book Public Planning: the inter-corporate dimension by Friend, Power and Yewlett. The publication of this happened to come the week before the a comprehensive restructuring in the UK of local government and health and water services; so the main focus of the follow-up programme was on the specific challenges of inter-organisational working that were arising within this new structure. An external steering group was formed, and met periodically in Coventry to review priorities. In order to publish the results of the research speedily enough to address the problems of transition to this new structure, it was agreed to publish the research outcomes incrementally through an occasional newsletter rather than save them for a final research report. This newsletter would be distributed free to a wide circulation list, including public service managers as well as other researchers. The newsletter’s editors would invite contributions from readers in the UK and overseas as well as the research team.

Author

Eric Dixon, Adrian Noad, John Friend, Gerhard Fehl, Lesley Bailey, Michael Norris, William Ogden

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