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In this second cover story the author explores the pitfalls of not understanding the difference in corporate culture between merging parties. Highlights a number of examples of failure, and this compliments our first story perfectly.

Six Sigma has been part of our business lexicon for more than a decade. Debates on its emergence as a strategic initiative have created critics who consider it as an old wine in a new bottle. Is Six Sigma a management fad? This article presents some common myths and realities of Six Sigma business strategy. The paper provides an excellent resource for those people who would like to know whether Six Sigma is just a management fad or fact.

The paper discusses some common myths and realities of Six Sigma by critically reviewing the existing literature on Six Sigma and also provides a greater insight into the viewpoints of leading academics and practitioners.

Six Sigma is neither a fad nor just another quality initiative. It relies on factual data coupled with hard work and is a disciplined and structured problem‐solving methodology. The authors strongly argue its integration with other continuous/breakthrough improvement initiatives for sustaining the merits of Six Sigma in the twenty‐first century. The paper also elucidates the role of academia in further developing and establishing the best practices of Six Sigma management strategy. Six Sigma will evolve over time like many other initiatives – however, the key concepts, the principles of statistical thinking, tools and techniques of Six Sigma, will stay for many years, irrespective of whatever the “next big thing” will be.

In the authors' opinion, Six Sigma will continue to grow as a powerful management initiative for achieving and sustaining operational and service excellence. However, what will eventually determine whether Six Sigma is viewed by businesses as just a passing management fad or not, largely depends on the leadership and success of its execution. The authors believe that organisations developing and implementing Six Sigma should not view it as an advertising banner for promotional purposes.

The paper yields a great value to both researchers and practitioners of Six Sigma in dispelling the myths of Six Sigma, which have been quite prevalent in the business fraternity.

This study aims to evaluate the effect of Alpha-Stim Anxiety, Insomnia and Depression (AID) cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) on anxiety, depression and health-related quality of life for primary care social prescribing service patients with anxiety symptoms.

Open-label patient cohort design with no control group. A total of 33 adult patients (average age 42 years) completed six weeks of Alpha-Stim AID use. Pre- and post-intervention assessment with participant self-report measures: Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and European Quality of Life Five Dimension (EQ-5D-5L).

Reliable improvement and remission rates, respectively, were 53.39% and 33.3% for GAD-7; 46.7% and 29.5% for PHQ-9. There was a significant improvement in GAD-7 and PHQ-9 with large effect sizes. EQ-5D-5L results showed significant improvements in health-related quality of life. Perceived quality of life increased by 0.17 on the health index score, with the intervention adding 1.68 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

Alpha-Stim AID can be delivered through a primary health-care social prescribing service and most patients will use as prescribed and complete treatment course. Alpha-Stim AID CES may be an effective anxiety and depression treatment for people with anxiety symptoms. The widespread roll-out of Alpha-Stim AID in health-care systems should be considered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to respond to the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care (NICE) request for the collection of real-world data to understand better Alpha-Stim AID in relation to people’s treatment uptake, response rates and treatment completion rates (NICE, 2021).

Innovation has been considered necessary for solving every problem today. In any business meeting, conference or media innovation is discussed and desired. However, key challenges in realizing innovation are a well understood framework and an infrastructure for its successful deployment. Current frameworks including Open Innovation, Crowd Sourcing and many others do not address corporate needs in terms of credibility and for its body of knowledge for developing competency. Having established a credible and teachable framework for innovation, the author realized that organization leadership is unable to drive innovation due to misunderstanding of innovation principles and change management at the leadership level. Recognizing success of Prof. Kotter's Leading Change model, the author adapts the model to managing the innovation change [1]. This paper presents application of the Leading Change to innovation management and providing guidance to organization leadership for innovation deployment. Innovation deployment has become a necessity for organizations in knowledge age for achieving competitive edge and sustaining profitable growth.

The slogan “because you’re worth it”, used by the international cosmetics group L’Oréal, is instantly recognizable. It is a friendly phrase, which seeks to persuade people to buy the company’s hair or skin care products, not primarily because they need such treatments, but because they deserve them. Focusing on people’s self esteem to manipulate behavior is not exactly new; in fact it is tried and tested and certainly works for L’Oréal. So it is no surprise to learn that the company tells employees, and those thinking of applying for a job, that, because people are important and they are worth it, the corporate culture encourages learning on a daily basis, and that they will benefit from worldwide training networks which promote both personal and professional development.

Suggests that Motorola faces new challenges brought on by its explosive growth. Describes how the company has always had a people‐oriented culture and stresses three key principles: leadership of renewal, renewal of leadership and thinking the unthinkable. States that Motorola is willing and eager to change, realizing that success depends on adaptability, flexibility and speed.

Through adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability, this study aims to offer consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment.

This paper draws insight from the interview data of a wider two-year interpretive research study investigating access barriers to marketplaces for consumers living with impairment.

The overarching contribution offers to consumer research insight into how the marketplace internally oppresses and psycho-emotionally disables consumers living with impairment. Further contributions offered by this paper: unearth the emotion of fear to be central to manifestations of psycho-emotional disability; reveal a broader understanding of the marketplace practices, and core perpetrators, that psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment; and uncover psycho-emotional disability to extend beyond the context of impairment.

This study adopts a UK-only perspective. However, findings uncovered that the model of psycho-emotional disability has wider theoretical value to marketing and consumer research beyond the context of impairment.

The insight offered into the precise marketplace practices that disable consumers living with impairment leads this paper to call for a revising of disability training within marketplace and service contexts.

Extending current consumer research and consumer vulnerability research on disability, the empirical adoption of the psycho-emotional model of disability is a fruitful framework for extrapolating insight into marketplace practices that internally oppress and psycho-emotionally disable consumers living with impairment.