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Using the lens of mentoring theory the authors test the extent to which public buyers informally support suppliers and the influence of organisational context on mentoring support. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Principal component analysis was used to analyse questionnaire responses from over 300 public buyers in Ireland. Cluster analysis produced three mentor profiles.

The findings show a positive relationship between organisations that take a strategic approach to suppliers and buyers who offer career and psychosocial support to suppliers. However, those organisations that lack a strategic perspective of suppliers saw buyers offer political support and coaching.

The implications are that coaching and political support may compensate for deficits in organisational support for suppliers generally. The findings contribute to a growing literature on informal interaction opportunities in public procurement.

To date research of supplier development is limited to formal developmental activities and in the context of private sector buyer-supplier relationships.

The aim of this paper is to explore the factors that influence buyer decision-making in public procurement. The objective is to better understand the processes and conditions that support different supply arrangements, which maximise SME participation.

The paper uses case study evidence of contract awards across multiple organisational contexts including: a local authority, commercial semi-state, police force, and a tourist agency.

National policy and the role of procurement exerted mixed effects upon the cases. The procurement processes were broadly similar and included cross-functional teams, consideration of trade-offs and market research.

The paper highlights the transition of public organisations toward strategic procurement including supplier engagement.

This offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are also outlined. The concept of practical rationality is used to support the framework.

A normative framework of public procurement decision-making is generated from the cases. Buying complexity and supplier engagement are two conditions that support a 2×2 decision framework. The framework extends efficient and central-buying decisions to include adapted and balanced decisions. This range offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are discussed.

There is currently much debate about the meaning of competency and its importance to professionalization. This article explores the personal meaning and importance of competency from the perspective of public buyers and managers in Ireland and the UK. Using an in-depth mixed method research design, we propose a typology of public procurement competency and discuss the implications of the framework for professionalization of public procurement.

Universities are large, complex and highly hierarchical organisations with deeply engrained gendered values, norms and practices. This chapter reflects on the experiences of two universities in initiating structural change towards gender equality as supported by the TARGET project. A common aspect thereby is the lack of a national policy in higher education and research providing specific support for implementing gender equality policies. The process of audit, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the first gender equality plan (GEP) in each of these universities was conceived as a first step in a long journey, providing a framework for engaging different institutional actors and fostering reflexive, evidence-based policy making. The analysis deals with reflexivity and resistance and seeks to draw lessons from bottom-up and top-down experiences of GEP implementation. It is the result of shared reflection between the GEP ‘implementers’ in the two universities and the team who provided support and acted as ‘critical friends’.

This article focuses on researching quality of life in old age. Based on a review of the relevant literature, it argues that research has not reflected sufficiently the multifaceted nature of quality of life and has relied too much on the judgements of professionals rather than older people. It concludes that quality of life research in general has under‐emphasised the importance of material factors in people's lives. With regard to older people, research shows that relatively poor quality of life, as reported by older people themselves, is associated with only a minority and, among this minority, twice the proportion of older women to men. The article ends with an outline of the new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Growing Older Research Programme on Extending Quality Life, which in three years time promises to provide usable information for policy makers and practitioners about the determinants of quality of life in old age.

The purpose of this paper is to examine where and how coaching and mentoring disciplines overlap or differ in approach. Coaching and mentoring have emerged as important interventions as the role of helping relationships have gained prominence in human resource development. However, there appear to be contexts where one or other is preeminent, without consistent explanation of their suitability. Such inconsistency arguably creates confusion and doubt about these interventions and their efficacy notably amongst those who commission such interventions and their potential beneficiaries. This study focuses on this inconsistency of coaching or mentoring by exploring practitioners’ approaches within six disciplines: executive coaches, coaching psychologists, sports coaches, mentors of leaders, mentors of newly qualified teachers and mentors of young people, with the aim of assisting those seeking support with development.

This exploratory study was undertaken using a qualitative methodology, where in-depth interviews were completed with experienced practitioners to elucidate their approaches and practice.

The findings show that approaches may be discipline-specific, where practitioners specialise in a particular type of coaching or mentoring requiring distinctive knowledge and/or skills. However, the sharing of good practice across disciplines and the value of understanding the common dimensions which emerged is also evident, providing clients and those who commission coaching and mentoring with reassurances regarding the nature of these helping relationships.

As the research focused only on the practitioners’ experiences of their work in these disciplines, it is vital that the mentees’ and coachees’ experiences are captured in future research. There is also value in further exploration of the model developed.

By deploying the model concerned with the future development of these interventions suggests practitioners can expand their capacity and scope by adopting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.

By directly exploring the shared and distinctive approaches of coaching and mentoring practitioners in six contexts, this study provides opportunities to understand where practitioners can benefit from imparting best practice across these interventions and highlighting specific aspects for their context.

This paper examines the issues of front‐line workers within residential childcare, giving their feelings on how recent government sponsored quality enhancement initiatives have impacted on service delivery. Residential childcare has been at the forefront of government sponsored quality developments since the early 1990s. It reflects many of the problems and dilemmas faced by the wider personal social services sector when applying performance enhancement techniques. It has low status, is poorly resourced, and provides a service for “customers” who have multiple needs, but have little say in relation to their referral for provision. The findings from this study give support to the contention that for front‐line workers, many of the government's quality initiatives are limited or irrelevant to the “real” task of providing a service to residents – continuous improvement requires the practical benefits of a structured and planned performance enhancement culture, and the appropriate resources to achieve that goal.