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To keep pace with demand for its revolutionary Lynx composite main rotor blade, Westland Engineering's Composites Division installed a Wild TA10BL automatic cutting table which has enabled woven details to be cut out reliably and reproducibly in a greatly reduced timescale compared with manual cutting out.

Strong leadership has been shown to foster change, including loyalty, improved performance and decreased error rates, but there is a dearth of evidence on effectiveness of leadership development programs. To ensure a return on the huge investments made, evidence-based approaches are needed to assess the impact of leadership on health-care establishments. As a part of a pan-Canadian initiative to design an effective evaluative instrument, the purpose of this paper was to identify and summarize evidence on health-care outcomes/return on investment (ROI) indicators and metrics associated with leadership quality, leadership development programs and existing evaluative instruments.

The authors performed a scoping review using the Arksey and O’Malley framework, searching eight databases from 2006 through June 2016.

Of 11,868 citations screened, the authors included 223 studies reporting on health-care outcomes/ROI indicators and metrics associated with leadership quality (73 studies), leadership development programs (138 studies) and existing evaluative instruments (12 studies). The extracted ROI indicators and metrics have been summarized in detail.

This review provides a snapshot in time of the current evidence on ROI indicators and metrics associated with leadership. Summarized ROI indicators and metrics can be used to design an effective evaluative instrument to assess the impact of leadership on health-care organizations.

This paper aims to present an overview of the current state of evidence on the effect of housing circumstances, and housing‐related interventions, on adult mental health and well‐being. It covers the entire range of health from chronic illness to positive thriving, and both individual and community‐level/public health.

The paper is based upon a purposive review, commissioned originally for the UK Department of Health; and therefore is selective in giving priority to research relevant to public policy considerations, and to the UK context. Research with a variety of methodological foundations is considered, where robust enough by its own standards.

The available evidence gives conditional support to policies accentuating empowerment at individual and community levels; early intervention; locality or place‐based interventions; and integrated working practice. The complexity of methodological issues emerges as a key challenge for research in this field, and for the prospect of evidence‐based national policy. Meanwhile local knowledge and interpretation of data in context may be more reliable than context‐blind studies.

Where “hard evidence” is unavailable, reports of the lived experience of individuals and in communities remain a legitimate basis for policy and commissioning.

This appears to be the first attempt in print to cover such a wide canvas in one overview.

Discusses research carried out by the Advanced Manufacturing and Automation Research Centre [AMARC], University of Bristol into the automation of two areas of meat production, the butchery of half carcasses into main joints and the evisceration of whole carcasses. Describes how the robotic butchery process requires sensing, determination of cut‐paths and trajectories for the robot, mechanical cutting using appropriate tools and the ability to transport, manipulate and hold each carcass during cutting and how each of these areas bas been integrated into a practical system. Also describes the system developed for robotic evisceration. Concludes that this research work has led to two industrial demonstrator systems for processing meat carcasses which have had encouraging response from potential customers.

Many manufacturers have implemented a participative, team‐based approach to remain competitive in this global arena. Numerous studies have extolled the competitive advantages of implementing this approach. Few studies, however, have examined employees’ perceptions of participative management. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine issues of culture change from the employees’ point of view by investigating the transition from piece rate to team‐based production in a sewn‐products plant. Using the case study approach, 16 in‐depth interviews were conducted, observations were made, and written documents were analyzed. Employees’ perceptions of their work environment prior to the transition, the transition itself, and the resulting new corporate culture are discussed. The new corporate culture is described as an open, participative environment built on trust where employees feel empowered to make decisions for the betterment of their team and the plant as a whole. Negative outcomes of the participative approach are also addressed.

This paper aims to explore users' perceptions of whether the Leadership Development Impact Assessment (LDI) Toolkit is valid, reliable, simple to use and cost-effective as a guide to its quality improvement.

The Canadian Health Leadership Network codesigned and codeveloped the LDI Toolkit as a theory-driven and evidence-informed resource that aims to assist health-care organizational development practitioners to evaluate various programs at five levels of impact: reaction, learning, application, impact and return on investment (ROI) and intangible benefits. A comparative evaluative case study was conducted using online questionnaires and semistructured telephone interviews with three health organizations where robust leadership development programs were in place. A total of seven leadership consultants and specialists participated from three Canadian provinces. Data were analyzed sequentially in two stages involving descriptive statistical analysis augmented with a qualitative content analysis of key themes.

Users perceived the toolkit as cost-effective in terms of direct costs, indirect costs and intangibles; they found it easy-to-use in terms of clarity, logic and structure, ease of navigation with a coherent layout; and they assessed the sources of the evidence-informed tools and guides as appropriate. Users rated the toolkit highly on their perceptions of its validity and reliability. The analysis also informed the refinement of the toolkit.

The refined LDI Toolkit is a comprehensive online collection of various tools to support health organizations to evaluate the leadership development investments effectively and efficiently at five impact levels including ROI.

Recent studies in Japanese and American negotiating styles are reviewed, and it is found that bargaining behaviours are affected by culture from the beginning of the negotiation process. These differences can be viewed as a set of styles, habits, skills and expectations that might be understood through ethnographic analysis. Once the bases for the differences in negotiation styles are understood, negotiating across cultures may be a more efficient process.