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This paper considers key factors which have an impact on the development and implementation of innovations in the public sector and explores how beneficial elements of private sector governance can be utilised and incorporated into approaches to support innovation in the public sector. It discusses a number of concepts which could be important for innovation in the public sector; these include overt and covert innovation, primary and secondary innovation and organisational equilibrium. The relationship between risk and trust is considered and the importance of accountability is addressed. The utilisation of special purpose vehicles is discussed, highlighting how private sector governance can be utilised to support innovation in the public sector. The value of this approach is supported by an example which has been in operation for seven years; the special purpose vehicle operates using private sector governance but is essentially owned by a group of large public sector organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how appreciative inquiry (AI) as a pedagogical tool can be generative in nature creating opportunities for development and change in a business school context.

Using a qualitative approach this research involved data collection and analysis in three stages of AI with a group of undergraduate students enrolled in strategic management and organizational change courses. Initial data collection occurred over a three‐hour period with a larger group of students, followed by two sessions with a smaller group of organizational change students.

The experiential nature of the AI process was a success in promoting inquiry and dialogue, encouraging collaboration and team building, and empowering individuals toward a collection vision. Through an iterative process, four possibility statements were developed including: meaningful relationships with professors and peers; leadership opportunities; experiential learning; and creativity and flexibility in program design. These statements serve as a starting point for future planning to the business school under study.

The process offered a number of insights for both faculty and students regarding the symbiotic relationships between learning and change as fundamental to moving a business school from a place of learning to a learning organization. The inquiry process of AI opens the system up to learning about itself as a prelude to change. By intentionally ignoring the traditional deficit approach to change, AI encourages the system to seek its point of light, its achievements, and in so doing, inhibits the dissipative nature of problem‐centred methodologies.

The use of AI in this context demonstrates the potential for AI as a pedagogical tool, as well as the usefulness of AI as a bridge to creating partnerships with multiple stakeholders in developing business schools into learning organizations.

Argues that the general area of commercial sponsorship activity, while attracting increasing interest from marketing practitioners as an important strategic option in marketing communications, has not been the subject of sufficiently rigorous and comprehensive investigation by theoreticians. States the purpose is to establish and consolidate the available body of knowledge combining an overview of the standard conceptual approaches to marketing communication with an examination of the recent academic research in sponsorship, while maintaining a focus on current marketplace practice. Argues for a coherent and structured approach to the management of sponsorship expenditure through the application of a ‘management by objectives’ approach. Parameters are established in terms of a working definition of sponsorship, a review of its commercial development and an overview of current activity. Develops a commercially ration framework within which sponsorship activity may be undertaken. Views objective‐setting as the cornerstone of sponsorship management and outlines a classification of sponsorship objectives that subsumes current practice clarifies the range of potential benefits. Examines the criteria that govern rational sponsorship selection and proposes an evaluation strategy based on stated criteria. Methods of evaluating effects of marketing communications (sponsorship particularly) are examined and new evaluation techniques are advanced to facilitate the implementation of this rigorous scientific approach.

This paper aims to describe three dementia assessment services for people with intellectual disabilities to provide professionals with insight into planning this type of service.

Three services in England were contacted via email and telephone to collect data on their service provision. They were asked about the average age of individuals when receiving a baseline assessment, frequency of follow-up assessment, assessment instruments used and descriptive aspects of their services.

All three services offered proactive dementia assessment services to people with Down's syndrome (DS), with one service providing systematic screening via the GP. None offered proactive screening to people with intellectual disabilities who did not have a diagnosis of DS. All offered reactive assessment to this population if they experienced a decline in function. Services differed in terms of age at which baseline assessments were offered, frequency of follow-up and instruments used.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to compare dementia assessment provision between different services in England.

Using qualitative data from 20 managers in four small Singaporean businesses in the services sector this article explores the issue of organisational commitment. The findings generally support those in the positivistic literature on organisational commitment. It also argues, however, that continuance commitment, largely seen as negative for organisations and performance, can be both positive and negative in certain circumstances. The article further suggests that owner/manager style in the businesses may have an important impact on manager commitment and that the future growth and development of these businesses may be stunted as a consequence of negative aspects of the entrepreneurial management style.

International human resource management (IHRM) is becoming increasingly fundamental to organisational success, as globalisation forces demand organisations to design and implement a global strategy. One of the most critical choices faced by IHRM practitioners is whether and when an organisation should adapt its human resource policies and practices to the local context (localisation). A typology of International Human Resource Management Orientations (IHRMO) that clarifies what IHRMO’s are and what they entail is developed from a review of the literature on localisation and globalisation, convergence and divergence and Perlmutter’s management typology. Additionally, two theoretical models are developed that predict which IHRM orientation identified in the typology should be adopted. The article takes a step towards elucidating effective IHRM strategy and practice decision‐making by showing that culture and institutional pressures, amongst other tings, do make a difference.

Over the last twenty years or so the study of organizations has gone through a period of considerable change and instability. Both in terms of its substantive agenda and the theoretical perspectives through which it has been articulated and pursued, discontinuity and flux have been the order of the day. The recurring theme has been one of a fundamental transformation — some would say a veritable “paradigm shift” — in the theoretical forms through which the field is defined and structured as a coherent discipline. Intellectual change and discontinuity have been mirrored by the emergence of novel organizational structures and practices which seem to signify a sharp break with more orthodox arrangements based on the principles of rational bureaucracy. Indeed, the scale and intensity of intellectual fermentation and institutional innovation have prompted some commentators to suggest that organizational studies can no longer be regarded as a discipline or, less ambitiously, as a sub‐ discipline within the general field of social science. At the other end of the theoretical spectrum, there are some people fighting a rearguard action against the proliferation of alternative approaches and the corrosive influence which it has exerted on established orthodoxies and the order that they once provided.

Strategic management researchers in Europe challenged the historical concern of the field with economic performance. As a result corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been transformed into a key strategic issue. Given the large amount of social problems in Latin America, much of them related to the large amount of foreign direct investments inflows over the last decade, the growing literature on strategic corporate social responsibility (SCSR) produced in the US has been reproduced in the region by consulting firms, big corporations firms and strategic management researchers. Drawing upon critical arguments of Latin American scholars on the dominance of the US literature in the region and on problematic outcomes of the large amount of foreign direct investments inflows this paper develops a critical analysis on the so‐called SCSR. The vantage point construed by big corporations within the fields of strategic management and organization studies, the increasing dependence of the field of strategic management on corporate resources, and the decreasing power of the state and civil society in relation to big corporations are pointed out as key issues for the development of a critical approach on SCSR in Latin America. In the end the author argues that the responsibilities of big corporations, especially in Latin America, are too important to be addressed only by the field of strategic management.

Microbiologically‐influenced corrosion (MIC) is extremely harmful to both the industry and the environment. Sulfate‐reducing bacteria (SRB) are also important: we have to know what they really are and what they really do to us; this means we have to improve our understanding of SRB and their characteristics. MIC is the officially accepted terminology by NACE[1] to address this type of corrosion. It is a kind of corrosion in which effects of certain microorganisms are felt. MIC is still a matter open for discussion: we cannot explain what is really meant by “microbiological” component, i.e. does it express the possibility that some microbial activity observed at corroded sites on metal surfaces may not result from bacterial growth on metal, but rather that chemical or electrochemical attack on the metal may provide a favorable niche for bacteria to grow? Nor can we be sure about our understanding of the importance of working mechanisms and even the types of microorganisms involved in MIC. In order to have a deeper understanding about corrosion caused by sulfate‐reducing bacteria (SRB), we have to know more about SRB themselves. So, after discussing the importance of MIC, we will mainly focus on SRB and their characteristics that may be new and interesting to the reader.

In this article “Japanisation” is used as a shorthand term for the diffusion of Japanese management systems and practices, whether this be via Japanese direct investment overseas or the emulation of such systems and practices in non‐Japanese organisations. Based on the philosophies of total quality control (TQC) and just‐in‐time (JIT) produc‐tion, the Japanese organisational form has been held up as a new “paradigm” which challenges the logic of tradi‐tional Western production regimes (Aoki 1987; Oliver and Wilkinson 1988a) and has crucial implications for both intra‐ and inter‐organisational structures and relations of power and control (Wilkinson and Oliver 1989).