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The purpose of this paper is to appraise “transference” and “countertransference” when working with people with intellectual disabilities (PWID).

A review of the literature was conducted, followed by a discussion.

No research articles were found. Potential reasons for this are discussed. Historical influence, complexity of the topic and resistance among professionals may be contributing factors. Despite this, these phenomena are important for several reasons. These include the high levels of trauma these clients experience; the manner in which they have been marginalised by mainstream society; the strong likelihood of PWID evoking difficult countertransference from therapists; and the myriad of coping mechanisms and defences that these clients may employ.

Research is needed to further current understanding of these issues.

An awareness of these issues amongst practitioners and other key members of a PWID’s system is important.

This is the first review and commentary on these issues.

This paper seeks to investigate Irish hoteliers' customer service requirements of their food suppliers and to measure the trade‐offs that hotel buyers are willing to make during the purchase decision.

The study is based on a quota sample of 100 hotels throughout the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on earlier research and applying conjoint analysis, the study demonstrates how customer service improvements may be achieved through variations in the customer service mix.

Findings indicate that, for short shelf‐life products, frequency of deliveries and the ability to carry out emergency deliveries generate the highest levels of utility. More utility is created by lower prices in the case of long shelf‐life products. Small food suppliers are found to perform better on product quality and are more responsive in terms of product delivery than larger suppliers. They are perceived to be weaker on pricing, product assortment, and innovation.

The small number of observations for both four‐ and five‐star hotels in the sample limited the effectiveness of cluster analysis, which would greatly assist suppliers targeting specific markets with customer service bundles.

By highlighting the trade‐offs that buyers use in evaluating customer service, the findings provide suppliers with the basis for assessing their own particular service mix. An improvement in perceived customer service may be achieved by reallocating the given resources and effort in favour of those parts of the mix that generate most value for the buyer. The identified trade‐offs also provide manufacturers with the criteria that can be usefully applied to evaluate competing distributors for their products.

By focusing on the hotel sector, the paper provides insights into a much ignored market for food suppliers, which differs considerably from mainstream grocery in terms of concentration, buyer processes and buying criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on a number of initiatives in civil engineering undergraduate programmes at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) that allow students to complete engineering projects in the community, enabling them to learn by doing.

A formal commitment to civic engagement was undertaken by the NUIG in 2001 with the establishment of the Community Knowledge Initiative (CKI) to work on mainstreaming civic engagement (service learning) within the curriculum across the institution. Today, the majority of undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes in the College of Engineering and Informatics at NUIG have embedded service learning into their curriculum. These initiatives allow students to work with and in local communities, international communities and multi‐disciplinary groups as part of their academic courses. The paper investigates and shows that community‐based projects can enhance student learning and engagement in a number of ways. At NUIG, these projects are framed by a research orientation, commitments to civic engagement and building university‐community partnerships, city‐university partnerships and partnerships with other official agencies, so that community users can provide real learning problems and contexts for students and researchers and benefit from the results.

It was found that the students got a sense of pride and satisfaction out of the knowledge that their work may be helping communities and that learning is not just to get marks to pass the exam! The projects can increase the students’ sense of ownership of their own learning. Learners are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to do something that has an impact on others.

The work represents work done in one institution affecting a region in a country. This can be extended to include more institutions and other regions. This paper presents evidence from the aforementioned projects that by creating service‐based learning the students’ energy in learning can have a positive impact on the community.

The energy and enthusiasm of learners can be better utilised (and increased) by setting assignments as real community‐based projects.

This lies in the design of projects and assessment involving education providers and public for the benefit of learners and the society at large.

This paper investigates the threats to brand integrity in the hospitality sector where the brand owner is separated from the service provider and runs the risk of falling foul of cheating behaviour. It takes the case of the Shamrock bed and breakfast brand in the Irish tourist market. The analysis uses both the perceived risk literature and the “lemons” model developed by Akerlof to highlight potential dangers to the brand emerging on both the demand and supply sides of the bed and breakfast market. The findings suggest that quality variations may encourage the suppliers of high quality services to exit the brand, thereby reducing the average level of quality within the brand. The analysis also demonstrates that as consumers’ perceptions of quality variations increase, their trust in the Shamrock diminishes.

In investing energy in developing reasoning machines of the future, one must abstract away from the specific solutions to specific problems and ask what are the fundamental research questions that should be addressed. This paper aims to revisit some fundamental perspectives and promote new approaches to reasoning machines and their associated form and function.

Core aspects are discussed, namely the one‐mind‐many‐bodies metaphor as introduced in the agent Chameleon work. Within this metaphor the agent's embodiment form may take many guises with the artificial mind or agent potentially exhibiting a nomadic existence opportunistically migrating between a myriad of instantiated embodiments. The paper animates these concepts with reference to two case studies.

The two case studies illustrate how a machine can have fundamentally different capabilities than a human which allows us to exploit, rather than be constrained, by these important differences.

Aids in understanding some of the fundamental research questions of reasoning machines that should be addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the pilot information literacy programme for undergraduate nursing students as recently developed at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) libraries. The paper outlines the background to the programme, discusses its design and delivery and summarises participating students' initial response to it.

This paper takes a broadly practical, case study approach in terms of recounting experiences of designing and delivering a dedicated information literacy programme for undergraduate nursing students at WIT.

Although the project is still at an early or pilot stage, the feedback from the undergraduate students who attended training is very positive. The fact that the programme was so well received in its first year of operation is encouraging and inspiring, going forward.

The paper should be of interest to anyone involved in developing information literacy programmes or in the supply of information to nursing students.

This paper is likely to be of practical interest to academic librarians, who are looking for a fresh approach to information literacy training for undergraduate nursing students at third level institutions of similar scale and size to WIT.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a range of quality and continuous improvement strategies and to investigate whether there is a best choice of strategy for use within the medical devices sector.

A brief literature‐based review of a number of continuous improvement strategies. Comparison of these strategies and a subsequent discussion of the rationale that guides the choice of strategy based on the prevailing conditions. An overview of this process in the context of the medical devices sector is provided.

Quality and continuous improvement strategies can be differentiated in terms of their cultural or process focus. Moreover, the favoured leadership style of an organisation may play a part in determining which strategies are likely to be most appropriate. From the medical device and healthcare product perspective, regulatory and purchasing considerations will have a role in determining the strategy adopted.

For managers seeking to implement a strategy for continuous improvement, a review of organisational leadership styles may help the decision–making process. For the medical devices sector, in particular, the need to align the strategy adopted with regulatory requirements is perhaps self‐evident. However, only by a detailed understanding of the issues involved in continuous improvement, can all of the attendant benefits be gained.

The paper proposes a link between a given organisation's favoured leadership style and the applicability of a particular continuous improvement strategy. The implications for the medical device and healthcare technologies sector are specifically addressed.

The aim of this paper is to generate a debate regarding the value of incident reporting in the UK.

This paper critiques the dominant approach to patients in the UK.

It is suggested that the reliability of health care processes would need to substantially improve before an incident reporting system can have a meaningful impact on patient safety.

Greater benefits in patient safety will be accrued by focusing resources on designing reliable processes rather than the extension of incident reporting.

This paper offers a local perspective on a potentially flawed national strategy.