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Nurse navigators (NNs) coordinate patient care, improve care quality and potentially reduce healthcare resource use. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an evaluation of hospitalisation outcomes in a new NN programme in Queensland, Australia.

A matched case-control study was performed. Patients under the care of the NNs were randomly selected (n=100) and were matched to historical (n=300) and concurrent (n=300) comparison groups. The key outcomes of interest were the number and types of hospitalisations, length of hospital stay and number of intensive care unit days. Generalised linear and two-part models were used to determine significant differences in resources across groups.

The control and NN groups were well matched on socio-economic characteristics, however, groups differed by major disease type and number/type of comorbidities. NN patients had high healthcare needs with 53 per cent having two comorbidities. In adjusted analyses, compared with the control groups, NN patients showed higher proportions of preventable hospitalisations over 12 months, similar days in intensive care and a smaller proportion had overnight stays in hospital. However, the NN patients had significantly more hospitalisations (mean: 6.0 for NN cases, 3.4 for historical group and 3.2 for concurrent group); and emergency visits.

As many factors will affect hospitalisation rates beyond whether patients receive NN care, further research and longer follow-up is required.

A matched case-control study provides a reasonable but insufficient design to compare the NN and non-NN exposed patient outcomes.

To examine the experience of agency employment for workers and employers' use of agency workers in Britain to evaluate competing claims made about this form of work.

This paper draws on results from three recent representative surveys of employment in Britain to examine the current nature and experience of agency work: the Labour Force Survey; the Workplace Employment Relations Survey and the Working in Britain, 2000 Survey.

The findings indicate that there is little evidence of the purported association between agency work and the emergence of the “knowledge economy”, as suggested by some. Turning to employers' use of agency labour, it is found that this has been driven by pressures relating to labour costs, possibly reflecting short‐term considerations. As for workers' experience of agency employment, this paper reports their dissatisfaction with many aspects of agency work, resulting in low levels of commitment and high anxiety about their work situation.

Whilst the use of agency workers may provide short‐term benefits for organisations there is considerable evidence that, in the absence of remedial action, a number of challenges are likely to emerge for human resource practitioners. In particular, organisations may incur longer‐term costs through extensive utilisation of employment agency labour.

Agency work has grown rapidly but little is known about short‐term experiences or longer term implications. The paper fills a gap in knowledge about the current nature of agency work, and provides an empirical assessment of competing claims about this form of work

Considers management views on the operation of quality management (QM) strategies in two service sector organizations, financial services and hotel and catering – based on open‐ended interviews with managerial staff. Considers some of the soft/HRM aspects of quality management. Finds that there have been moves towards the more quantifiable measurement of outcomes and tighter management control. Employee empowerment is conceived of as the major defining feature of QM in the two organizations. Both companies have also sought greater flexibility through delayering and through efforts to break down demar‐ cations. QM does not necessarily involve these latter trends. However, a thoroughgoing management commitment to empowering employees to take greater responsibility for problem solving and decision making will tend to go together with at least some reduction in organizational hierarchy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which organizational learning is recognized through performance management systems as contributing to organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage.

It reviews several pieces of research, employing a wide range of methods, including: content analysis of managers’ reflections; questionnaires completed by managers and mentors; a large-scale survey involving ethnography, interviews and questionnaires; and analysis of documents from professional bodies and management delivery centres.

Genuine integration of individual and organizational goals or transfer of learning from the individual to the organization is not evident. Few qualitative measures of organizational performance are employed. The impact of metrics such as IIP or EFQM on organizational effectiveness is nor discernible. Management learning and development is rarely measured even when it is encouraged by the organization. There is a clear divide between research, teaching and learning and workplace practice. Performance management systems create perceptions of unreliability and inequity.

Espousing the value of learning and learning to learn, measuring them accurately and rewarding them with meaningful changes to working life can only improve organizational effectiveness. Research into the few organizations that have successfully embraced triple loop learning in their development of managers may offer a template for transformational learning to sustain competitive advantage.

Management development processes have been successful in developing individuals but less successful in achieving organizational development. This paper offers new insights into that gap and the omissions in the metrics by which performance is measured.

Uses evidence from both quantitative and qualitative research carried out across Europe to show that, while the profile of high and low users of part‐time and short‐term employment is country specific, is concentrated in the service and public sectors and is correlated with growth and unionization, there is a link between these forms of flexibility and a strategic approach to human resources management. Proposes that previous commentators, who have argued that there is no such link, have often used unrealistically restrictive models of strategy formulation and that a more comprehensive view indicates that flexibility is being used strategically.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of cities develop strategies. The discourse of strategic management has become an obligatory point of passage for many city managers. This paper starts by posing an ostensibly simple question: why do cities need strategies? The commonsensical answer to the question is: because cities compete with each other. This paper aims to problematise the seemingly natural link between cities, competition and strategy. It also aims to explore the role that calculative practices play in creating city league tables that, in turn, function as the a priori condition that generates competition between cities.

This paper is interdisciplinary and draws on the related disciplines of accounting, organization theory and strategy. The argument unfolds in four steps: first, it briefly provides some theoretical background for analysis and relates it back to strategizing and accounting as a calculative practice; second, it scrutinizes league tables as an a priori of competition; third, it discusses the implications of the argument for city management and critical accounting; finally, it concludes with a discussion of the power effects of those calculative practices that shape strategizing in cities through the production of competition.

This paper argues that city strategizing is best understood as a set of complex responses to a new competitive arena, one rendered visible through calculative practices, manifested through city rankings. The paper makes five key contributions: one, league tables reduce qualities to a quantifiable form; two, league tables create an order amongst an heterogeneous ensemble of entities; three, league tables stimulate the very competition they claim to reflect; four, once competition is accepted, individual players need a strategy to play the game; and five, league tables have important power effects that may result in unintended consequences.

The paper contributes to understanding how calculative practices relate to strategy; it explores the organizational environment in which city managers strategize; in addition, it discusses the problem of civic schizophrenia.

The paper seeks to open up an agenda for studying city management, strategy and accounting.

This article reports employee attitudes towards quality management (QM) at two organisations in the private services sector. It examines the nature and extent of employee involvement in QM through teamworking, describes the methods which managements use to encourage teamworking, and assesses the levels of responsibility and autonomy that teams have. Actual levels of discretion and responsibility afforded to teams are found to be low, and yet employees consistently report feeling a strong “sense of teamwork”. Managers are using various mechanisms to increasingly control or limit the extent of employee “‘empowerment”. At the same time, however, there is strong employee support for teams, and employees feel that teamworking allows them to have more input into problem‐solving and decision‐making. This article argues that what has occurred in each case is a “re‐organisation of control”, such that there has been a general increase in the level of employee involvement, but within increasingly defined and measurable limits.

This bibliographic essay examines the scope and variety of nonfiction works in comics form with the intent of expanding librarians’ awareness of the diversity of such materials and serving as a resource for librarians.

It provides some theoretical background for understanding what constitutes nonfiction in graphic form and an overview of works available in print.

The article provides a representative (but not comprehensive) survey of graphic nonfiction works in the genres of memoir, travel, journalism, history, biography, science, essays and educational materials.

The essay focuses on materials published in books in English; the library world would benefit from subsequent research exploring the richness of materials available in other formats and other languages.

The field of graphic nonfiction is expanding, and this article serves as a guide for libraries interested in building or expanding collections in this format.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic compelled people to spend most of their time at home to avoid spreading the virus, signifying staying away from offices, schools and marketplaces and where many people congregate. This situation put enormous pressure on residential buildings, which functioned as alternative spaces to schools and offices. This paper aims to investigate the impacts of home-based online classes because of the COVID-19 outbreak on residential buildings in Saudi Arabia.

This study collected population-representative survey data from 324 eligible respondents using an online questionnaire and conducts descriptive and Spearman's correlation analysis using the SPSS 28.0 program.

This study found that the use of space during COVID-19, home-based learning space comfort and home-based online learning perception affected home-based online space requirements during the school lockdowns. Higher school levels, learning space comfort levels, types of education and number of school-aged children in a house were correlated with various types of discomfort experienced during home-based online learning. Lastly, the parents' preference for their children to continue online studies was correlated with the adverse effects of online learning and the possible advantages of online learning.

Lack of studies about the impact of home-based online classes on residential space requirement and use resulted in insufficient investigation and documentation of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on home-based learning environments. This research contributes to the literature on the factors affecting spatial requirement during emergencies and how significant this relationship is.