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This paper aims to present and test a model of how the autonomy of an organization’s representative alters the effects of customer experiences on customer emotions and repurchasing intentions toward the organization. Specifically, this paper offers a moderated mediation model whereby representative autonomy alters attributions of organizational responsibility, which moderate the effect of service experience on emotion and emotion mediates the effects of service experiences on repurchasing intentions.

Study 1 is a laboratory experiment (N = 115), where participants engaged in a multi-round product purchasing task through an online representative of a company. Study 2 is a vignette experiment (N = 393), where participants responded to situations of purchasing either a car, furniture, haircut or vacation package from a representative of a company. In both studies, manipulated representative autonomy information was either low or high and manipulated customer experience was either positive or negative. Measures included responsibility, emotion toward the organization and repurchase intention.

Structural equation models support the proposed model. In the presence of information about representative autonomy, the link between customer experience and repurchasing intent is amplified and mediated by emotion toward the organization.

Because of the experimental approach, the findings may not be generalizable, but the experimental method allows for a controlled test of the process, ordering and relationship among variables.

Understanding how representatives’ autonomy ultimately alters repurchasing and how this process involves responsibility attributions contributes to both practice and theory.

One of the tasks of the special librarian is to facilitate current awareness: services are set up to encourage user groups to keep up‐to‐date with developments in their own and related subject areas. The librarian advocates current awareness as an essential prerequisite for members of that user group to remain effective practitioners, researchers or teachers within their subject area. The librarian encourages and advocates because unfortunately some of those practitioners, researchers and teachers are either unconvinced of the need for current awareness or haven't the time/are not interested/cannot be bothered.

Increasing the ethicality of a project and the usefulness of the data enhances the probability that social good will result from the research; a combination of ethical and methodological soundness is therefore crucial. From 1999‐2002 I conducted a qualitative study of women’s, men’s, and mixed Internet chat room conversations. In this article, I discuss the particular ethical issues that arose, outlining my ethical decision‐making process within the context of current debates. I also describe the methodological concerns, demonstrating why a synthesized method responsive to the advantages and disadvantages of cyberspace was necessary, and how the data were enhanced by this choice of method and by certain characteristics of cyberspace. In discussing the details of my study, my overall goal is to provide an assessment of the social good of the project with a view to increasing the probability of more ethical and useful Internet‐based research outcomes more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to examine prisoner experience of an equine assisted psychotherapy (EAP). This paper explores the use of therapeutic interventions; specifically focussing on EAP, within this paper EAP constitutes the use of horses in therapy and involves a team approach from equine and mental health experts.

This paper took a qualitative approach; due to the exploratory nature of this study a phenomenological approach was adopted. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was deemed appropriate; the intervention took place in an adult, male, open condition prison in England (Category D) however participants who engaged in the equine intervention were from both the open prison and a nearby closed Category C prison. The equine intervention was delivered by qualified therapists who worked to help improve emotional regulation among participants with a history of drug and alcohol abuse.

The findings within this paper identify a strong correlation between EAP and positive experiences expressed by participants. Alternative approaches such as animal assisted therapies are worthy of consideration when attempting to support the rehabilitation and treatment needs of incarcerated clients. Participants achieved a number of goals and their confidence improved as they felt a sense of achievement.

This paper demonstrates the complexities of therapeutic interventions. Research relating to EAP in the UK is few and far between, consequently understanding is limited. This paper seeks to offer an insight into this topic and build upon this research in the future.

Access to prison for research purposes is challenging. Due to the nature of this study and the resources required sometimes EAP therapy cannot be implemented in or near many prisons in England and Wales. Therefore gaining access to this prison and exploring the data is the first phase of further research in this area.

Researching the way individuals experience therapeutic interventions is a “growing phenomenon”. This paper aimed to explore EAP interventions, however due to the sample size it was imperative that the role of EAP was not misrepresented. Therefore this papers intention is to raise awareness of EAP interventions and therapeutic interventions in prisons in England and Wales.

To the authors knowledge no previous study has examined such an intervention using this method and as such the findings of this evaluation are important. Moreover this paper enhances and develops our knowledge about how best to support and treat people with histories of substance use and/or mental health problems and anxiety while in prison, and the vital role such therapies may play.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

SEPTEMBER sees most librarians again at the daily round, although some, including those of the universities and schools, are still scattered on mountains, golf‐courses, beaches and oceans for a short while yet. To older men there is a curious feeling aroused by the knowledge that there is no Library Association Conference this month. They may, in a measure, find compensation in attending the annual meeting of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Association, which will be at St. Albans, or that of A.S.L.I.B., which has Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as its venue. Both, by some lack of care which might have been avoided, occur on the same week‐end, September 24–26. Quite clearly the special problems of librarianship technique, such as processes, book‐selection and purchase, classification, catalogues, fines, publicity, salaries, hours, and so on almost infinitely, can no longer be discussed profitably at the Annual Meeting of the Library Association; smaller gatherings, such as these, are their fitting place. We make a suggestion to the L.A. Council, for what it is worth and without pretence to being original. It is that it should indicate to all its branches and sections the main questions to which they should devote attention, and that in due course they should produce their conclusions on them. These, being pooled, would form the basis of the L.A. Annual Meeting. This would make a purposeful programme for all, and the results of the Conference might then be considered definite and practical.

The objective of this study is to analyze the framework within which microfinance institutions (MFIs) deliver their services and provide an assessment of their operations and financial management. These institutions are examined because of their current importance to a special group of consumers, primarily the poor and disenfranchised in the developing world, and of their future promise as an economic development solution. Since the objective of these institutions is somewhat unique, the manner of their assessment must also differ from that used to assess the performance of traditional financial intermediaries. In particular, assessment of MFIs must recognize their dual (bank and development instrument) status. Their efficiency, then, must be analyzed in terms of its economic (or financial) dimension as well as its social dimension. The first dimension may be examined with traditional measures, while examination of the second requires measures that reflect the MFI’s social objectives. In order to accommodate the special nature of MFIs, this study proposes the use of a Balanced Scorecard approach. It contributes to the study of financial institution performance by examining a non‐traditional group of institutions using a variety of assessment measures. The findings should be of value to those interested in the financial sector as well as those involved in public policy decision making.

The healthcare system in the USA is undergoing unprecedented change and its share of unintended consequences. This paper explores the leadership role of the physician in transforming the present culture of healthcare to restore, refine and preserve its traditional care components.

The literature on change, organizational culture and leadership is leveraged to describe the structural interdependencies and dynamic complexity of the present healthcare system and to suggest how physicians can strengthen the care components of the healthcare culture.

When an organization’s culture does not support internal integration and external adaptation, it is the responsibility of leadership to transform it. Leaders can influence culture to strengthen the care components of the healthcare system. The centrality of professionalism in the delivery of patient services places a moral, societal and ethical responsibility on physicians to lead a revitalization of the care culture.

This paper focuses on cultural issues in healthcare and provides options and guidance for physicians as they attempt to lead and manage the context in which services are delivered.

The Competing Values Framework, the major interdependent domains and five principal mechanisms for leaders to embed and fine tune culture serve as the main tenets for describing the ongoing changes in healthcare and defining the role of the physician as leaders and advocates for the Patient Care Culture.

THE new library building has been open for six months now. It is pleasantly situated in an area of new buildings, and occupies a prominent island site just on the edge of the shopping centre. The old library was in the middle of a shopping area, and it has been interesting to note that our removal from that site has had a more considerable effect on the traffic pattern than one would have thought.