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Reports the results of a UK company survey on the strategic and operational autonomy of team leaders working on new product development (NPD). The data are based on returns from 194 manufacturing companies and were completed by either the director of R&D or a member of the board with overall responsibility for the management of NPD project team leaders. The management of NPD project team leaders was classified into task variables (six strategic and seven operational) and a member of top management was asked to rate on a seven‐point Likert scale the extent to which each task was the autonomous responsibility of the team leader as opposed to the responsibility of other managers. Subdivides the sample into high technology and low‐to‐medium technology companies and analyses the strategic and operational management of NPD team leaders according to the company′s performance (measured by annual sales turnover) and its market environment, using four measures of the market environment: product life cycle, market growth rate, market share and R&D spending on new product development. Finds annual sales turnover to be the most important and closely associated variable with high amounts of autonomy granted to team leaders working on new product development. In medium‐to‐low technology companies, the market growth rate and R&D spending are additional, significantly associated variables. Concludes that UK companies reduce their top management controls in order to facilitate the autonomy of NPD team leaders when company sales turnover is high. Additionally, it is arguable from the evidence of the data that medium‐to‐low technology companies are more influenced by recent market performance than are high technology companies because, in addition to sales, they facilitate more autonomy according to market growth rate, market share and R&D spending.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues surrounding the enactment of a lesbian, gay or bisexual person's sexual identity and their role as an internal customer of mainstream service organisations.

This article is written from a critical marketing perspective, the prefix “critical” signifying adoption of what may be considered somewhat radical philosophies and theories, allowing questioning of not only generally accepted theories of marketing, but also the assumptions upon which they rest. The “radical” approaches, i.e. the lenses through which the critique is offered, are postmodernism and queer theory. The theoretical perspectives critiqued in this article are internal marketing and emotional labour, and the assumptions questioned are those surrounding the importance of the role of the internal customer's identity in consumption of the work role.

The findings suggest a link that needs to be made between an individual's status as an internal customer (particularly in a front‐line service job), their identity (as defined by the individual themselves), and its impact upon their consumption of work (which viewed through a postmodern lens can be seen to help create, maintain and communicate such identity).

For those charged with the management of people in organisations, this paper offers critical insights into the complex practical regulation of organisational diversity in service industries.

The paper has drawn together various perspectives in the literature that have not previously been linked. If an external customer consumes products and services in order to create or display an identity, and if we accept the argument that employees should be treated as internal customers then the logical conclusion of this perspective is that these internal customers also create their identity through the consumption of work, and not just through their consumption of goods and services. The complexities of this proposition have been considered, using sexual identity management as one example, but the principle could equally apply to other areas of diversity among internal customers within the workplace.

Fumes, grit, dust, dirt—all have long been recognized as occupational hazards, their seriousness depending on their nature and how they assail the human body, by ingestion, absorption, inhalation, the last being considered the most likely to cause permanent damage. It would not be an exaggeration to state that National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) provisions, now contained in the Social Security Act, 1975, with all the regulations made to implement the law, had their birth in compensating victims of lung disease from inhalation of dust. Over the years, the range of recognized dust disease, prescribed under regulations, has grown, but there are other recognized risks to human life and health from dusts of various kinds, produced not from the manufacturing, mining and quarrying, &c. industries; but from a number of areas where it can contaminate and constitute a hazard to vulnerable products and persons. An early intervention by legislation concerned exposed foods, e.g. uncovered meat on open shop fronts, to dust and in narrow streets, mud splashed from road surfaces. The composition of dust varies with its sources—external, atmospheric, seasonal or interior sources, uses and occupations, comings and goings, and in particular, the standards of cleaning and, where necessary, precautions to prevent dust accumulation. One area for long under constant scrutiny and a subject of considerable research is the interior of hospital wards, treatment rooms and operating theatres.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.