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Caravan parks in Australian capital cities have provided a source of housing at the lower end of the market for many years. This includes opportunities for both private rental and home ownership. However, emerging trends in the property market have threatened the viability of caravan parks. In order to maintain or increase income levels, some caravan parks have focused on more profitable short‐term tourist opportunities rather than traditional long‐term housing. While the closure and conversion of caravan parks raise crucial questions for Australian social and housing policy, there are also implications for the broader property market. This paper examines the changing role of the operation of caravan parks, with the emphasis placed on their economic feasibility. The research is based on a survey of 30 caravan park operators in Queensland, Australia. The factors influencing caravan parks are identified, and suggestions to address the changing role of caravan parks as a provider in the affordable housing market are canvassed.

Traditional innovation typologies within the extant literature are not compatible with the innovation levels found within the Australian outdoor hospitality parks (OHP) sector, given its tourism and small business characteristics. This paper seeks to introduce an innovation typology specific to the Australian OHP sector.

A two‐phase qualitative research method was employed, whereby 30 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with OHP operators/administrators who were identified as being “innovative” by four industry executives. Based on the 30 interviews carried out in Phase 1, six industry individuals who demonstrated a wider and deeper approach to innovation than the others were further interviewed in Phase 2.

A small percentage of Australian OHP industry operators and executive officers showcase a level of innovation that is beyond incremental in character, but is not radical, revolutionary or disruptive. This group of “strategic innovators” are the first to adopt ideas from other sources and adapt them to fit within the Australian context. These new ideas are introduced in three‐ to four‐year increments, providing the individuals with sufficient time to assess the market's reaction to the changes, and to measure increased value to their situation. The three‐ to four‐year time span dovetails with the length of time taken by the majority of competitors to imitate the new concepts.

The paper introduces an innovation typology applicable to the Australian outdoor hospitality parks sector.

This study aims to make an assessment of the status of various management practices/cultural attributes in local government and investigates their relationship with organisational performance. The local government organisation concerned is going through the process of cultural change in an effort to becoming a learning organisation.

The results of this study are based on employees' perceptions of management practices and organisational performance collected using a survey approach. The Denison Organisational Culture Survey (DOCS) was used for collecting the data.

Of the various management practices considered, the study found that team orientation has received top emphasis followed by dissemination of the core values and organisational capability development. In terms of performance measures, the offering of new services to their clients ranks number one followed by brainstorming practices in problems solving. Employee empowerment has not received much emphasis from the management despite being associated with various measures of performance such as client satisfaction, job satisfaction, quality of services, revenue growth, improved skills of employees in evaluating organisational success or failures, and successful implementation of organisational programs. Although creating change, organisational learning, and team orientation indicate positive correlations with the majority of performance measures considered in this study; there is no evidence of their relationship with financial measure of performance like revenue growth.

The organisational managers may find the outcomes of such investigations helpful as they provide useful information on the organisation's cultural strengths and weaknesses. Such studies would also assist managers to systematically assess their change initiatives and develop a better strategy for successful implementation of managements' tactics and business processes.

In 1951 23 ½ million Britons took 25 million holidays in Britain. In 1960 this had increased to 26 million Britons taking 31½ million holidays in Britain. Since 1960 there has been no appreciable increase either in the number of holiday makers or the number of holidays taken, thus in 1966 some 25 million holiday makers took 31 million holidays in Britain.

Examines the new system for rate valuation and procedure for challenging rateable values, including a resume of aspects that remain unchanged. Considers the particular differences of practical concern to be: the rateable values themselves, the phasing in of changes, the procedure for challenging ratings, and the borderline cases between domestic and non‐domestic property. Surmises that practical action should involve obtaining procedural information before the new system takes effect, to avoid the rush on surveyor′s services.

The disclosure of information on organisational knowledge resources and related knowledge management (KM) activities in annual reports has become a much debated issue within the intellectual capital (IC) discourse. This paper discusses the disclosure of IC information, and in particularly human capital information, in an Australian public sector organisation's annual reports. It contrasts and compares the case study organisation's internal IC management issues and practices with its external IC reporting practices. The empirical analysis demonstrates inconsistency between the organisation's internal IC management issues and practices and its external IC reporting practices. It shows that strategically important information about the organisation's management challenges, knowledge resources, KM activities and IC indicators was not disclosed to external stakeholders in the organisation's annual reports. The study exemplifies to external stakeholders the significance of the provision of information on IC and, in particular human capital, and highlights to public policy makers the relevance of extending existing reporting policies to incorporate disclosure requirements for organisations to include information on IC in annual reports.

This paper offers an introduction to understanding some of the issues that health and care practitioners might like to consider when supporting the health and well‐being of gypsy elders. The significance of nomadic life and the implications of planning laws on the reported quality of life experienced by gypsy elders is essential to understanding their health needs. The paper also offers an introduction to understanding some of the aspects of health and social care provision that currently impact on the take up of health and care services by gypsy elders. It then makes suggestions about ways of offering services and working with gypsy elders in ways that are culturally appropriate and respectful of their traditions. The authors had the privilege of working with the Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group as part of a larger national project on working with black and minority ethnic elders to help improve their mental health. The authors do not claim to be experts on gypsy health but are offering to share their learning as an introduction to understanding and meeting some of the cultural needs of gypsy elders when providing health and social care.

I would like to be able to report that the film Salmer fra kjokkenet (Kitchen Stories) (dir. Bente Hamer, 2003) was a direct consequence of the powerful arguments I made for the use of ethnography in housing studies almost 20 years ago (Franklin, 1990). Sadly, I cannot! In this touching comedy drama from Norway, a team of Swedish ethnographers working from the Swedish Home Research Institute descend on a remote rural locality in Norway during the 1950s in order to study the kitchen habits and cultures of single living men. It is an improbable quest, until one learns that the same team discovered how Swedish housewives needlessly walk the equivalent distance between Stockholm and the Congo every year as they go about their routine kitchen business; a finding that successfully paved the way for more efficient kitchen design and culture. So it was that the team descended on the very perplexed and uncooperative Norwegian bachelors (the last sub-group in their programme) in order to map out their domestic inefficiencies. Comic tension is built both through their ethnographic props (the researchers were to sit on giant stools in the kitchens, giving them panoptic vision), rules (they were not to talk to respondents, although that proves awkward when lights are turned out by thrifty Norwegians) and living spaces (they were to live in specially designed, round caravans parked outside their respondent's homes). The film would have been a vindication of my arguments not so much because it demonstrates the truth that practical housing outcomes can arise from spending sufficient periods of time studying cultural milleux, but because it also demonstrates that the relationship between researchers and respondents become more productive over time, resulting in more reliable data, better understandings of that millieux and what their problems (and therefore often ‘ours’) actually consist of.

A WIDE variety of attractive, colourful, and informative literature published by the Scottish Tourist Board and the Wales Tourist Board is available to prospective tourists and holiday‐makers. This year bigger and better than ever, Enjoy Scotland contains an outline travel map showing rail, ferry, and air facilities; features on places to stay and things to eat; double pages on suggested touring centres, public transport, the places to see and things to do; on events; and sources of information, in each of the nine tourist regions. Also featured are spring, autumn and winter holidays, festivals, details of companies offering coach tours from England and Wales, and special interest holidays.