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The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of people management practices on the outcomes of organisational change projects through their contributions to organisational learning. The contributions to their outcomes of particular corporate and project-specific people management practices are considered.

Case studies of two organisational change projects undertaken by Arts Council England during 2006-2007 are used to examine how far and in what ways people management practices influence the outcomes of such projects. Organisational change is considered as an instance of organisational learning, which in turn is examined in relation to the twin activities of developing new ideas and internal sense-making.

Evidence is presented that certain people management practices, individually and in combination, influence the outcomes of organisational change projects significantly through their contributions to organisational learning.

Research into the influence of particular people management practices, and the contexts and processes through which it is exerted, is necessary to develop more generalisable conclusions. This influence is liable to be invisible to less granular research into people management as a general construct.

Research into the use of project management methods specifically to implement organisational change is sparse. The findings of this paper contradict findings from research into the influence of people management on project outcomes in general, which suggest that it does not have a significant effect.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay between the requirements for successful organisational change and the imperatives faced by management consultancy firms in running successful businesses, and how this interplay affects the ways in which management consultants influence organisational change projects.

The paper reviews literature on management consultancy and organisational change over the past 30 years to identify insights into this issue.

The paper shows that business imperatives faced by management consultancy firms affect the ways in which consultants influence organisational change projects. It shows how management consultants aspire to form strategic partnerships with their clients in order to win profitable business, and to plagiarise established organising practices and change management methods in defining their services in order to manage their costs. It illustrates how these aspirations give rise to a number of dualities that consultants face in undertaking organisational change projects.

Only limited research has been carried out into the ways in which the business imperatives of management consultancy firms interact with the requirements for successful organisational change in shaping the influence that management consultants have on organisational change projects. This paper demonstrates the significance of this issue and suggests directions for future research into it.

This paper aims to describe and analyse Swiss prisoners’ and experts’ views on collective punishment, the practice where a group is punished for one person’s transgression.

A series of qualitative interviews with prisoners and stakeholders are reported following thematic analysis.

Despite being forbidden by the Geneva Convention and other international instruments, participants from this study expressed the view that collective punishment continues to be practiced in some form in prisons in Switzerland, violating the rights of prisoners via unjust and arbitrary decision-making, unjust rules, inequalities in prison structures and continuation of incarceration based on the behaviour of others. Families can also be both victims and vectors of collective punishment, and prolonging the detention of prisoners who would otherwise have been released because of rare high-profile cases of reoffending can also be considered a form of collective punishment.

These significant findings suggest that collective punishment in various forms continues to be used in Swiss prisons.

Risk adjusted performance measurement can be a difficult and expensive goal to get right or improve even with everyone supportive within the institution. If this measurement is combined with existing profitability performance measurement and elements of traditional ALM, both hopefully already well established, the goal of simultaneously measurement and management of risk and profitability/performance can be achieved.

Service user involvement is called for at every level of NHS delivery in the United Kingdom (UK). This article describes a model of service user participation in the development of mental health nurse curricula in a UK university. Using a research model of participatory action research, the Participation In Nurse Education (PINE) project has now become mainstream in the mental health branches at the university. Service users led the design and implementation of the teaching sessions and led the data collection and analysis. Research participants were the service user trainers and the student nurses who were involved in being taught in the early stages of the project. The benefits of the work to both trainers and students are identified as well as some of the difficulties.

This contribution brings up‐to‐date an earlier article describing a computer‐based catalogue of early‐printed books in Canterbury Cathedral Library. New facilities described include an integrated authority file for proper names, an online catalogue available via the University campus network, and programs for producing type‐set output directly from the computer database. The use made of this software for other similar projects involving early‐printed books is described.

A project to provide a computer‐based MARC catalogue of the printed books in Canterbury Cathedral Library is described. Particular attention is given to the programs for online data entry and editing and to future plans involving microprocessors.

The mushrooming microcomputer industry is producing a vast array of ever cheaper, more sophisticated offerings. If correctly chosen the micro is an indispensable tool which can certainly help the small firm to prosper.