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The paper discusses the potential impact of videoconferencing on practices and processes within the construction industry, based on analyses carried out on its use and impact in the healthcare sector – which like construction involves technology‐intensive processes which are dependent upon cross‐professional and cross‐disciplinary relationships and communications, operate within an increasingly regulatory and litigious climate, and involve organizationally fluid, virtual, teams spanning several subindustries. Recently published research evidence from the healthcare sector suggests that whilst videoconferencing and other advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) have pervasive capabilities, successes in their application may be shortlived and modest in achievement. In use, their actual uptake and application have been found to be fundamentally affected by a range of social and operational issues, such as fears over a new formalization and trackability of previously informal conversations; a rebalancing of power relationships (between professionals using the ICTs as well as between doctor and patient); pressures on social/cultural and procedural alignment between participants; and personal and corporate attitudes to the technologies (including simply disliking the ICT). There is also evidence from the healthcare sector to suggest that ICTs increase the complexity of the delivering healthcare, and that the limitations of the technologies emphasise an existing dependency of communications and processes on tacit knowledge which is not readily formalized for communication via ICTs. However, the paper also notes an increasing pressure on the construction industry to respond to the globalizing potential that ICTs offer for the supply and delivery of knowledge‐based services, and discusses the implications of the issues found in the healthcare sector for the use and potential abuse of ICTs in the construction industry that will have to be successfully addressed in order to avoid ICTs being perceived as threatening and to allow their use to help organizations address the globalising marketplace.

This study examined te impact of the changing structural and regulatory environment on the process of biomedical innovation management within the NHS.

Essential parts of the R&D in virtually all UK biomedical innovations are executed within teaching hospitals, which are undergoing major organizational changes as part of the ongoing NHS reforms. Examines the impact of the changing structural and regulatory environment on the process of biomedical innovation management of two groups of technologically novel projects within the NHS. Finds that regulatory changes were tending to centralize and formalize innovation management, but that end users were playing an active role in directing the course of new treatment development. Problems of allocation of R&D resources within teaching hospitals were still unresolved, although some evidence from the London teaching hospitals suggested that hospital managers were able to deal with conflicting demands where they perceived that research excellence could be an asset rather than a cost.

The process by which technological innovations developed in one institution are discovered, acquired, and adapted for use by another institution.

This paper highlights the social context of common mental disorders in primary care and the paucity of evidence relating to effective social interventions. It introduces the ABC‐E Model of Emotion, which combines social interventions with psychological therapy, and discusses how the implementation of the new role of graduate primary care mental health worker (GPCMHW) provides an opportunity for holistic practice in helping individuals experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties in primary care. It provides a case example of the implementation of the ABC‐E model and makes recommendations for further research including the evaluation of the model and GPCMHW training programmes.

Not many weeks back, according to newspaper reports, three members of the library staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London were dismissed. All had refused to carry out issue desk duty. All, according to the newspaper account, were members of ASTMS. None, according to the Library Association yearbook, was a member of the appropriate professional organisation for librarians in Great Britain.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate to which extent partnering practices observed in earlier research focussing on the construction industry are applied in offshore development drilling projects.

The paper reviews earlier research on project partnering and the relationship-based procurement (RBP) taxonomy. The taxonomy is then empirically applied to describe partnering practices in an incentive-based drilling project in Norway.

Many elements of project partnering observed earlier in construction projects were found to characterize offshore development drilling projects. However, as assessed using the RBP framework, the authors found that partnering elements in observed context rated consistently lower than elements previously reported in the construction industry, indicating a lower maturity of partnering practices in the studied context.

The present study provides a multi-dimensional and systematic description of partnering practices in offshore drilling projects. Project owners can utilize this information to identify partnering elements requiring particular emphasis when initiating and managing drilling projects. Based on the findings, such elements include transparency and open-book auditing, integrated risk mitigation and insurance practices and establishment of authentic leadership. The findings further imply that partnering models cannot be directly applied across industry boundaries but must be tailored to fit the salient characteristics of each context.

The paper systematically describes to which extent specific partnering elements of the RBP taxonomy are applied in offshore drilling projects.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Nurses working in acute mental-health services are vulnerable to occupational stress. One stressor identified is the challenging behaviour of some service users (Jenkins and Elliott, 2004). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the discourses drawn on by nurses to understand challenging behaviour and talk about its management.

Nurses working on acute and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) wards were interviewed, and data were analysed using discourse analysis.

Biomedical and systemic discourses were found to be dominant. Alternative psychosocial and emotional discourses were drawn on by some participants but marginalised by the dominant biomedical construction of challenging behaviour.

Existing studies have not considered how discourses socially construct challenging behaviour and its management in inpatient mental-health services.