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As society becomes ever more reliant on Internet technology for everyday communications, this paper explores the use of instant messaging (IM) in qualitative research. Discussed within the context of sensitive topic research with potentially hidden and hard-to-reach groups, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the value of adaptive and contemporary research approaches which facilitate participation on the terms of the participant.

Reflecting on the data collection process from the primary authors’ PhD research, this paper critically considers some of the issues raised by IM-facilitated at semi-structured interviews.

This paper raises a number of issues, including how the perceived depth of participant response is influenced by their brevity, resultant of the space between parties which allows for considered and concise communication. This disconnect, created by the use of technology, also has implications for the power relations between researcher and participant and the ability to identify the non-verbal cues which communicate emotion and sentiment.

This paper highlights that whilst limited in some respects, an IM-facilitated interview provides a unique platform through which hidden and hard-to-reach groups may be empowered to participate in research, which they may usually avoid.

Argues that the discourse of “managing diversity”, emerging from the US management literature, cannot be simply mapped on to organisations in other cultural contexts. It uses the example of Aotearoa/New Zealand to show that a “diversity” based on the demographics and dominant cultural assumptions of the USA fails to address – and may in fact obscure – key local “diversity” issues. It argues that the dominant discourse of “managing diversity” has embedded in it cultural assumptions that are specific to the US management literature. It calls for a genuinely multi‐voiced “diversity” discourse that would focus attention on the local demographics, cultural and political differences that make the difference for specific organisations.

An evaluation of management development courses for senior officers in the Health Service has been sponsored by the DHSS at the Polytechnic of Central London.

In a recent issue of JEIT, Andy and Valerie Stewart drew attention to the possible effect of recent or impending legislation on Selection and Promotions. In this article, the authors take the point a little further.

Youth homelessness has been recognised as a significant social problem since the late 1980s, and local authority homelessness strategies now include preventative services as a key area of development. However, youth homelessness prevention services are a relatively recent innovation in the UK, and there is only a small literature on their effectiveness. Safe Moves, developed by the Foyer Federation and Connexions during 2002‐2004, represents the first national youth prevention model and offers young people support with life skills, peer mentoring and family mediation. An independent evaluation by the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York concluded that Safe Moves was preventing homelessness for some young people, although the challenges of establishing projects in a predominantly crisis‐orientated culture were significant.

This paper theorises how equal employment opportunities (EEO) practitioners (EPs) operate as change agents within organisations.

It takes a feminist and post‐structuralist perspective, in which EPs are seen as agents of positive social change, contesting existing discourses, but are also themselves subject to being changed by their engagement in those same discursive formations. The key example used is the way that EPs handle tensions between “business” and “social justice” agendas. A case study of EPs in New Zealand government organisations provides the empirical base.

It argues that agency is both produced and constrained by the discursive context of agents in specific situations. The case study showed EPs operating in an environment where the social justice discourse that had been central to introducing the concepts of EEO to the Public Service in the 1980s was in conflict with an increasingly powerful business agenda. This situation produced new “texts” and therefore new possibilities of agency. EPs struggled to define means and ends, and to handle the conflicts in ways that were coherent with their own concepts of ethics and politics. It argues that practitioners can act more effectively if they can find ways to reflect on their discursive locations. Research that draws out the contradictions in our positions, identities and language helps us do this.

The feminist post‐structuralist theoretical frame used in theorising this case can be used in any other empirical situations to understand how discursive practices operate to enable or constrain the work of change agents.Practical implications – It sets out to show how feminist and post‐structuralist approaches can be of practical value in supporting change agents by providing a framework for reflecting on their social and organisational context.

It combines a critical de‐naturalising stance, typical of writing in critical management studies, with the more action‐oriented agenda of most writing on equal opportunities.

Anti‐social behaviour remains high on local and national policy agendas, and is a major area of concern for policy makers, local authorities, housing providers and communities. The Shelter Inclusion Project was set up in Rochdale in 2002 to develop an innovative model of floating support for households that are having difficulty complying with their tenancy agreements because of reported anti‐social behaviour, or who are homeless as a result. The three‐year pilot project (October 2002 to October 2005) is being evaluated by the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York. Interim findings (at September 2004) suggest that the project has made a positive impact on addressing anti‐social behaviour for its service users; most people are still in their same tenancy and anti‐social behaviour actions have ceased for those leaving the service.

The authors use the debates instigated by Bernal's Black Athena to rethink the concepts of “race”, “culture” and “diversity” in organization and aim to examine their intersection with academic authority.

Drawing on the works of Derrida and Hegel, the authors question the pursuit of origins and illustrate its role in essentializing race, culture and diversity. The paper examines these through binaries including white/black, nature/culture, purity/diversity and diversity/university.

First, both the Black Athena debates and the organizational literature turn to origins to ground concepts of difference. This attests to the power of narratives of descent in defining current interests. Second, organization studies have relied on images of a clear past which had eliminated racialization and its implications. Whereas culture is considered progressive, as a user‐friendly term it has served as a “surrogate” or “homologue” for race. Diversity, in turn, has been deployed both to harbour and to control difference in organization.

The Black Athena debates alert people to the authority of scholars and practitioners in normalising identity categories in organization. They challenge people to develop theories and practices of organizational diversity that are open to ongoing difference rather than essence and origin.

Derrida's contribution has rarely been used in organizational history, particularly its implication with Hegel's legacy to the historical and cultural canon. The paper invites readers to rethink the notions of race, culture and diversity by examining their historical development and considering the history of their inclusion into the canons of management and organization. Historicising can unsettle entrenched assumptions, but the cautionary word is that it can also legitimate current practices by identifying their relevance since “the beginning”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore practitioner and post‐colonial perspectives on the implementation of learning organisation theory and practice in a non‐Western setting.

A qualitative interpretive study, using in‐depth interviews and participant observation, was conducted in two public organisations in Singapore. The study looked at relationships between the concepts of the learning organisation and of Singapore national culture, as the members of the organisations saw them. This study is presented and then discussed in commentaries from two different perspectives, i.e. the “insider” perspective of a Singaporean practitioner, and the “outsider” perspective of a New Zealand academic using a post‐colonial critique.

The findings indicate that Western LO practitioners need to pay specific attention to the cultural values expressed by non‐Western organisational members, and to their own cultural limitations and biases which may be embedded in the implementation of LO programmes. This process requires an active dialogue between both parties.

The findings indicate that practitioners need to pay specific attention to the cultural values of employees, and to the cultural assumptions of new management programmes, when adopting Western concepts of management to non‐Western organisations.

This is an empirical study that reveals the particular tensions experienced in two specific non‐Western organisations when LO practice was introduced without explicit exploration of its Western cultural underpinnings. The paper argues that the development of an LO discourse of organisational post‐colonialism can provide a valuable critical framework to examine the global mobilisation of LO concepts.

“Managing diversity” has emerged as a new and contested vocabulary for addressing issues of difference in organisations. This paper uses a New Zealand case study to exemplify a feminist post‐structuralist reading of managing diversity. The paper argues that a feminist post‐structuralist approach not only addresses feminist theoretical debates about identity, equality and difference, but also opens up new opportunities for practitioners in managing diversity and equal employment opportunities (EEO) to reflect on their own organisational change practice. The paper presents three readings of managing diversity: a discourse of exploitation which provides oppositional readings of managing diversity as a form of human resource management; a discourse of difference, drawing on refusals of managing diversity in accounts from minority group perspectives; and a discourse of equality where EEO practitioners have questioned managing diversity in the context of EEO.