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The succession of the chief executive of any organisation is a critical event. In 1971 a study revealed that in the UK, management succession was almost equal to financial failure as the major cause of firms ceasing to exist as independent organisations. Dun and Bradstreet calculated that in the USA, 45% of all business failures are caused through the appointment of incompetent managers to chief executive positions.

In our previous articles we have described what we have learned about applying the discovery approach to training in social skill areas. We have spent some time discussing what and how we have learned and the significance of our discoveries in terms of the role of the trainer. We have questioned and discarded many traditional beliefs and assumptions about training and trainers — beliefs and assumptions which may be inviolable to many readers. We can only hope that we have some converts too! In this article we plan to look at what we have learned so far and examine it in the context of management training and development. It is in this area that we feel the greatest payoff will come and it is in the management training field that we are currently developing the approach.

In our writings so far, we've dealt in some detail with the development of managers, and the functioning of problem‐solving groups. We have paid close attention to the similar roles of manager and trainer, and to their relationship. In illustration we have given many practical examples. What we haven't done is put all this in the context of people at work today.

This request for advice came from our prospective client at our first meeting with him. He was the managing director of a small, 150‐employee manufacturing firm. This article is about the project (he and his managers christened it “The Change Programme”) which we carried out with them over a period of 18 months. This article is mainly concerned to describe what happened, what we did and why. It is also concerned with the implications for management and OD practitioners. It highlights some of the intervention problems we had both in terms of personal competence and the strategies used during the project.

Last month we looked at group discovery learning in action on trainers. We found that our trainers learned most, developed insight and skill most rapidly, made the most exciting leaps forward, when: • information input was restricted, provided only in response to expressed need • interference and imposition were at a minimum • work was based on real situations, or, failing this, detailed simulations of real situations • problems increased in difficulty and used the learning obtained in solving preceding problems. Our students were usually able to identify why our approach had worked for them, and were able to apply similar principles to management training problems they encountered. From a somewhat mechanistic system came the idea of using only those specific techniques appropriate to your need — instead of slavish duplication of the whole package — and of developing and using an approach which can be transferred to a wide variety of working situations. The importance of changing behaviour through developing attitudes became clear. The key to this is involvement: trainers have to involve management, managers have to involve staff if they want their ideas to lead to action. We want to look now at some of the interactions involved in the development process; at what is required from the trainer or manager in getting improved performance in group situations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse role transition for professionals moving towards hybrid managerial roles. Specifically, the authors examine reforms to the national tax agency in the UK, focusing on attempts to shift hybrid managers away from a focus on tax compliance, to a greater customer focus. This extends understanding of the relationship between New Public Management (NPM) and the public professions, by offering greater insight into the dynamic between regulators and regulatees, as professionals are co-opted into management roles that encompass greater customer orientation.

The authors draw on documentary data relating to reform from 2003 to 2012 and 43 semi-structured interviews with senior tax inspectors co-opted into hybrid manager roles.

The findings support established accounts of the effect of NPM reform to public professions, as these professionals are co-opted into hybrid management roles. Some hybrid managers resist, others embrace the demands of the new role. Linked to a hitherto neglected aspect of analysis (the extent to which hybrid managers embrace a greater customer orientation) the findings also show a more novel third response: some hybrid managers leave the national tax agency for opportunities in the private sector. These public-to-private professionals the authors call “canny customers”. Canny customers are ideally placed to exploit aspects of NPM reform, and thereby accelerate changes in the governance of public agencies, but in a way that might undermine the function of the tax agency and tax professions.

In regulatory settings, policy reform to co-opt professionals into hybrid managerial roles may have mixed effects. In settings where a focal dynamic is the regulator-regulatee relationship, effective governance will require understanding of the labour market to temper excess influence by those hybrid managers who become canny customers, otherwise, in settings where it is easy for individuals to move from regulator to regulatee, the pace and consequences of reform will be harder to govern. This runs the danger of eroding professional values. The specific case of tax professionals reflects themes in the literature examining hybridisation for accountants, and provides novel insight into the dynamics of professionalism that extend to the case of accountants.

The contribution is to extend the literature on role transition of professionals. The authors focus on hybrid managers in the context of a regulatory agency: the UK national tax agency. Policy reforms associated with hybridisation emphasised customer orientation. The authors highlight labour market characteristics impacting the regulator-regulatee dynamic, and an as yet unexplored, unintended consequence of reform. The public professional who leaves for the private sector becomes a “canny customer” who can exploit and accelerate reform.

The purpose of this paper is to build on the resource-based view to analyze the influence of location effects on a firm's ability to develop export-related resources and capabilities which then impacts on export performance.

To test the proposed hypotheses, a sample of small-to-medium exporting firms located in Australia is analyzed using partial least squared modeling.

The findings show that access to location specific advantages (i.e. access to sources of supply, government agencies, export-related services and infrastructure, managerial labor skills, and network opportunities) are essential antecedents for the firm's ability to develop export-related resources and capabilities which in turn drives export performance outcomes.

Results from this study are from one state in Australia, and caution should be exercised when generalizing findings to other geographic regions.

These findings suggest that location effects do indeed present challenges to regional SME firms. Indeed the substantial impacts of sourcing experienced managerial staff with export-related skills affirm the critical role of human resources. This offers insights concerning the recruitment and reward policies for remote firms having to compete with firms in more attractive or sort after metropolitan locations. Also the findings suggest that managers should give serious thought to the appropriateness of the resources and capabilities needed to increase their export performance.

Even though the role and importance of firm location has been highlighted in the export literature, previous export studies have not focussed on dimensions of location as antecedents to firm resources and capability development.