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This article discusses the attempts by the National Health Service (NHS) to develop medical managers, following the introduction of general management in 1983. It suggests that problems have arisen because, so far, it has been organisational considerations and not those of individual career paths which have informed these developments. It is suggested that this new approach could lead to the development of the NHS as a learning organisation within the context of the original policy objectives.

To introduce the articles in this special issue, discussing emotion in the in health‐care organisations.

Discusses such topics as what makes health care different, editorial perspectives, how health care has explored emotion so far, and the impact of emotion on patients and the consequences for staff.

Health care provides a setting that juxtaposes emotion and rationality, the individual and the body corporate, the formal and the deeply personal, the public and the private, all of which must be understood better if changes in expectations and delivery are to remain coherent.

The papers indicate a shared international desire to understand meaning in emotion that is now spreading across organizational process and into all professional roles within health care.

In a recent research study of the effects of management training for doctors working in the UK National Health Service, it has become apparent that identifying the transition from doctor to manager does not involve just a change in skills, knowledge and attitudes to the differing roles of doctors and managers. Added validity is given to this change by an acceptance, on the part of the participating doctors, of the different research techniques required of management research, compared with the standard techniques used in the practice of medicine. Positivist versus phenomenological perspectives are compared in relation to the research process itself focusing on the triangulation of methods employed and their differing outcomes. The effectiveness of the various methods are then compared in relation to the research outcomes and the changes observed.

The market of bottled water is one of the largest in the world. Paradoxically, the consumption of water in plastic bottles is highest in countries rich in the potable tap water of excellent quality. This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the factors that foster or hinder the intention to use refillable water bottles by university students and to determine whether their study program played a moderating role.

Within the framework of Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (TPB), this paper conducted this cross-sectional study to understand the influence of attitudes, norms and perceived behavioral control (PBC) on the intention to drink tap water from reusable bottles. Italian university students (n = 540) majoring in the hard (42.4%) or the soft (57.6%) sciences completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire.

For both groups, there was a significant association between attitudes and intention to use a refillable water bottle. The intention to drink tap water was also influenced by PBC among the hard science students, whereas among the soft science students the descriptive norm exerted a significant influence.

This is the first application of TPB, a well-established theoretical and methodological framework, to understand the intention of university students to drink tap water from reusable bottles. Within the framework of TPB, this study is the first to address this specific pro-environmental behavior and explore the potential moderating role of university studies programs, which proved significant.

This paper looks at the current portrayal of emotion in healthcare as delivered within formal organisational settings, notably the UK National Health Service (NHS). Its purpose is to set out some examples of the problems and suggest new ways of conceptualising issues that will assist healthcare organisations in gaining a better understanding of the role of emotion and its impact, using appropriate examples. Developing understanding of the location of emotion and its differing constructions indicates that interdisciplinary and interpersonal boundaries differentiate interpretations of emotion, often for instrumental purpose as examples drawn particularly from the Public Inquiry into Paediatric Cardiology at Bristol Royal Infirmary (The Kennedy Report) demonstrate. The privileging of rationality over emotion as part of the dominant paradigm within the healthcare domain is shown to affect outcomes. However, the boundaries between organisations and individuals are changing, so are the location, access, technologies and timing of activities, and these are reconstructing healthcare organisation and the patient's experience of healthcare at both rational and emotional levels. It is suggested that in healthcare it is the patients’ journey through their lives (the macro context), as well as their individual encounters with the system at different times of need (the micro context), that iteratively constitute the construction of the emotional terrain. The conclusions drawn could have wider implications for the development of emotional understanding, across organisations that are subject to similar changes.

The need to understand chaos and complexity in organisations has particular importance for health which is bedevilled by the complexity of organisations and the sometimes chaotic nature of its core activities. This article seeks to explore these issues in the context of one of the key functions which is expected to hold together this diversity: Human Resource Management (HRM). An exploration of the nature of HRM in health care as it has evolved indicates that in order for it to have a pivotal role for the future it will need to rethink this role in the changing paradigm which is now emerging; in so doing it could develop as the organisational intelligence for health care in the future facilitating organisational learning and creativity.

Consumers’ trust in food systems is essential to their functioning and to consumers’ well-being. However, the literature exploring how food safety incidents impact consumer trust is theoretically underdeveloped. This study explores the relationship between consumers’ expectations of the food system and its actors (regulators, food industry and the media) and how these influence trust-related judgements that consumers make during a food safety incident.

In this study, two groups of purposefully sampled Australian participants (n = 15) spent one day engaged in qualitative public deliberation to discuss unfolding food incident scenarios. Group discussion was audio recorded and transcribed for the analysis. Facilitated group discussion included participants' expected behaviour in response to the scenario and their perceptions of actors' actions described within the scenario, particularly their trust responses (an increase, decrease or no change in their trust in the food system) and justification for these.

The findings of the study indicated that food incident features and unique consumer characteristics, particularly their expectations of the food system, interacted to form each participant's individual trust response to the scenario. Consumer expectations were delineated into “fundamental” and “anticipatory” expectations. Whether fundamental and anticipatory expectations were in alignment was central to the trust response. Experiences with the food system and its actors during business as usual contributed to forming anticipatory expectations.

To ensure that food incidents do not undermine consumer trust in food systems, food system actors must not only demonstrate competent management of the incident but also prioritise trustworthiness during business as usual to ensure that anticipatory expectations held by consumers are positive.

As our correspondent on another page suggests, the economic crisis may have reactions upon libraries. The most obvious one he mentions is the increased difficulty we shall experience in obtaining American books. Not all libraries, public or private, make any special collection of books published in the United States, although there has been an increasing tendency to buy more as the relations of the two countries have grown closer through their common struggle; in fact, we know libraries which have spent many hundreds of pounds in the course of the past year or two on the select lists of books which have been made for us by American librarians. It is most unfortunate that the manipulation of dollar currency should have brought about a situation in which even the exchange of ideas between the countries becomes more difficult. One suggestion might be made and that is that our American colleagues should continue to sift the literature of this time of famine for us, so that further select lists may be available in better days.