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Aims REVEAL was the first randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that adding cholesteryl ester transfer protein inhibitor therapy to intensive statin therapy reduced the risk of major coronary events. We now report results from extended follow-up beyond the scheduled study treatment period. Methods and results A total of 30 449 adults with prior atherosclerotic vascular disease were randomly allocated to anacetrapib 100 mg daily or matching placebo, in addition to open-label atorvastatin therapy. After stopping the randomly allocated treatment, 26 129 survivors entered a post-trial follow-up period, blind to their original treatment allocation. The primary outcome was first post-randomization major coronary event (i.e. coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization) during the in-trial and post-trial treatment periods, with analysis by intention-to-treat. Allocation to anacetrapib conferred a 9% [95% confidence interval (CI) 3–15%; P = 0.004] proportional reduction in the incidence of major coronary events during the study treatment period (median 4.1 years). During extended follow-up (median 2.2 years), there was a further 20% (95% CI 10–29%; P Conclusion The beneficial effects of anacetrapib on major coronary events increased with longer follow-up, and no adverse effects emerged on non-vascular mortality or morbidity. These findings illustrate the importance of sufficiently long treatment and follow-up duration in randomized trials of lipid-modifying agents to assess their full benefits and potential harms. Trial registration International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) 48678192; ClinicalTrials.gov No. NCT01252953; EudraCT No. 2010-023467-18.

This article develops a conceptual model of fine-tuning by elite policymakers. Fine-tuning is a set of strategic practices employed by policy elites to construct the signals sent to stakeholders outside the organization. Such signals are used to influence immediate stakeholder behavior as well as maintain longer-term agency reputation. The clarity of the signal varies strategically from transparency to opacity according to political and economic circumstances. We identify two fine-tuning practices, expectation modulation and credibility filtering, which are part of the toolkit of the signalers. These practices are grounded in an agency's sense of its image and identity. Using verbatim transcripts of meetings at the Federal Reserve, this article explores the fine-tuning practices that are employed by policymakers to store up trust, anticipate threats, and rationalize failure to stakeholders.

How do elite policy-making groups make sense of complex and ambiguous environments while remaining consistent with the group’s institutionalized operating model? This paper identifies a sensemaking process based in shared narrative construction. It is a social process of pattern recognition involving abduction, the comparison of culturally approved models to the current conditions to establish relevant facts and events; plotting, the reordering of those facts and events into a plausible narrative; and selective retention, the collective negotiation of a policy choice that fits the emerging narrative. This paper uses verbatim transcripts of meetings at the Federal Reserve to explore how policy makers use a logic of appropriateness to identify relevant cues and integrate them with existing models by weaving sensible plots. These plots are designed to control the supply of money and credit and maintain the legitimacy of the central bank.

These two quotes may be seen as bookends to the bubble economy of the last decade or so. They indicate the Federal Reserve's reluctance to inhibit the irrational exuberance of investors at the beginning and its alarm that, after the fact, market forces had allowed two successive bubbles to happen at all. This faith in the judgment of the market and self-interest of bankers as a self-regulating force is referred to as market fundamentalism in this essay. Market fundamentalism, I argue, is poorly suited to diagnose or prescribe a remedy for bubbles. I argue further that it is market funda mentalism that underlies the Fed's role in inflating the bubble economy and its reluctance to restrain it. My goal is to explore how such an ideology was adopted and the confluence of ideas, interests and events that explain its adoption. The underlying premise of the essay is institutional, i.e. that organizations are constituted by the narratives, logics of action and ideologies that exist in a particular field (Phillips et al., 2004). My argument relies on work in organizational and historical institutionalism that shows how economic and managerial theories come to be adopted in both private and public sector policy-making (Campbell, 1998; Guillen, 1994; Flail, 1989; Weir and Skocpol, 1985). Following Campbell (1998), the argument shows how an idea, in this case market fundamentalism, can both constrain and enable the policy-making process. Although this argument has echoes of Keynes's famous obser vation that policy-makers 'are often the slaves of some defunct economist' (Keynes, 1936: 383), it does not grant sole influence to talented academics and their ideas. Rather, it explores how the choice of ideas adopted may be affected also by the nature of national political discourse, the receptiveness of state structures and the goals of ruling political parties. These institutional pres sures, when taken together, help to explain why a bubble economy may still occur despite the existence of the knowledge and organizational capacity needed to inhibit it. This essay is organized around three questions: What do we know about speculative bubbles? Why do they still occur? Can they be managed? Before proceeding to explore the latter two ques tions, however, 1 introduce various analytic perspectives that have been used to explain speculative bubbles. For our purposes, bubbles will be defined simply as a condition in which 'prices are high...

In this article we argue that the rhetorical power of critical ethnography cannot be fully explained by current concepts in rhetorical studies. Although rhetorical studies acknowledge the role played by sympathy and imagination, they have not recognized the extent to which organizational ethnographers elicit the identification of readers with characters through the depiction of `hidden emotions.' Hidden emotions are those that are subjectively experienced but not publicly expressed. They tend to be depicted in situations in which characters are faced with evaluative judgment or the potential for such judgment. Rhetorical data from four widely-read critical ethnographies were analyzed using this framework. The analysis revealed strong patterns in the ways the ethnographers portray characters experiencing hidden emotions in controlling institutional contexts. It is through this strategy that the authors are able to succeed in their narrative aims to elaborate Max Weber's `iron cage.'

Scholars generally agree that highly effective organizations require the cultivation of personal relationships that are high in trust. However, although most conceptualizations of relational trust stress the roles of intention and choice, few explain how these are socially constructed in discrete interactions. To this end, the authors introduce the concept of consideration. Consideration entails a mode of interaction in which (a) a resource is bestowed to a recipient, (b) under a context of choice, (c) involving little sacrifice on the part of the giver, and (d) implying that the recipient’s situation is present in the giver’s thoughts and feelings. Consideration was observed to be central to trust formation and maintenance in a large defense company. Collegial relationships high in trust are characterized by the consistent application of consideration where there are perceived opportunities. These findings have useful implications for management, network theory, social capital, economic sociology, and friendship in the workplace.

This study draws on sociological theory framework to study the development of evaluation as a profession. The paper specifically addresses similarities and variations in academics’ and practitioners’ experiences of professionalism. The differences in the degree of professionalism experienced by academics and practitioners are measured based on the following theoretical constructs of professions: professional association, professional activities, training, licensure, definition of work, autonomy, and identity.

This article argues that the economic, political, and cultural spheres of society are not separate but rather mutually embedded in one another. The market is not just an economic phenomenon, but a political and cultural one as well. Markets, in this reframing, include not just the convenient fiction of atomized buyers and sellers but trade and professional associations and a field of public actors including assorted regulators and courts. It is the interaction of these parties that creates a market culture. These cultures exhibit contradictory tendencies that are generated by exchange relations and resolved by power dynamics. The contradictory tendencies reflect the tension between accumulative and regulative norms in market cultures. These include opportunism versus restraint, innovation versus standard practice, and growth versus stability. The resolution of the cultural contradictions of markets is not a natural tendency toward equilibrium, but rather an ideal of public policy to be attained by countervailing power in effective legal and regulatory institutions.

What do exemplary qualitative accounts look like, and how do they convince readers of their correctness? What sort of standards can be used to assess qualitative research accounts for public administration? To address these questions, the authors examined 72 recent qualitative research journal articles. Proceeding from a set of preliminary guidelines, they worked iteratively between articles and the emergent template to produce refined guidelines. In addition, they identified specific types of dilemmas for public bureaucracies and policies that trigger researchers’ strategies for persuading readers that their qualitative accounts are credible. They conclude with four actionable recommendations for improving the field’s qualitative research.