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Design rationale is design information that explains why an entity is designed as it is. This paper investigates how the documentation process and the use of documents in service design projects influence the reuse of design information across projects.

This study analyzes two sets of data collected through interviews and field observation. It first applied Lund's (2004) four elements of documentation process to categorize the collected data. Then it used bottom-up data analysis approach to identify patterns of the documentation process.

The author speculates designers' focus on certain documents' social aspect instead of material aspect influences how they reuse design information across projects. Some documents are important because they represent a consensus, and some are important because of the document producers rather than its content. The author also found a similarity between economists and service designers by comparing the study results with Harper and Sellen's (1995) findings. Based on the comparison, the author concludes that detailed research reports are easily reusable across design projects. Finally, although the author observed that designers are using templates to explicate design rationale, the created content is not used across projects.

This study identifies six types of documents that are commonly created in service design projects, three types of producer involvement and three types of provisional design outcomes. It also provides two suggestions for designers to reuse design information across service design projects better and two implications for future study.

Raison d'Etre is a hypermedia design history application. It provides access to a database of video clips containing stories and personal perspectives of design team members recorded at various times during the course of a project. The system is intended to provide a simple frame‐work for recording and organizing the informal history and rationale that design teams create and share in the course of their collaboration. This article describes 1) the scenarios of use the authors are trying to support, 2) the methods they used collecting and organizing the database, and 3) the status of their prototype.

The re-use of good design solutions is a key source of evidence and knowledge in the design of healthcare buildings. However, due to the unique nature of healthcare built environments, the critical application of this evidence is of paramount importance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the features of such critical application and identify the aspects that need to be considered during the re-use of good designs.

Data from three case studies of hospital designs in the UK were used to explore the processes behind the adaption and re-use of design solutions during the design of healthcare buildings. Data were thematically analysed to distinguish the aspects that should be carefully compared and contrasted during design re-use.

Existing designs of healthcare buildings should be captured and evaluated along with: patient demographics, care models of the hospital, other local departmental needs and facility operational aspects in order to ensure the effectiveness of re-use. In addition, properly introducing the design to the users is also a part of successful design re-use.

The findings of this research were integrated into a framework to support healthcare designers on the effective re-use of good designs. This data-driven framework could be validated further with design practitioners. Further, this research relied on memory recall of the interviewees and the accuracy and completeness of documentary records.

This research provides details of how healthcare built environment designs are embedded in project-unique circumstances. The results could therefore be used to develop meaningful and informative evaluation mechanisms for new and re-used healthcare building design features.

This research extends the understanding of the critical application of healthcare design evidence, by explaining how healthcare design solutions should be evaluated during the design process.

Online calendar services (OCS) are primarily used for temporal orientation and reminding. Nonetheless, calendar work may also entail generic activities such as scheduling, tracking, archive and recall and retrieval which are not adequately supported by available systems. The purpose of the paper is to explore how online calendaring may be re-configured and re-aligned to alleviate these shortcomings, thus servicing accountability in team work and flexibility in organizational routines.

Following a design science research methodology, the authors review “justifiable failures” or deliberate non-use of OCS and establish the rationale for, design and evaluate a digital service that configures calendaring as an ecology of separate digital materials supporting file-, photo- and video-sharing services, online argumentation, project/task management and social bookmarking. The new service is a digital composite of materials that incrementally co-adapt and co-evolve to serve primary and secondary work-oriented activities. The authors assess the value of the digital composite in two empirical settings and discuss intrinsic features that create new possibilities for action.

The authors present the rationale, design, implementation and evaluation of a new digital composite calendaring service which is deployed in two empirical settings, namely group vacation planning and collective information management. Each case features different re-configurations of calendaring to serve human intentions. In vacation planning, the digital composite of the calendar operates as a mashup allowing peers to negotiate, schedule and track vacation options and archive, recall or retrieve digital memories of vacations. In the case of collective information management, the digital composite is further augmented so as to re-align performative and ostensive aspects of routines in a regional organic farming partnership.

Digital composites rely on the interdependent operation of different bounded systems and services to establish configured ecologies of (previously) separate digital artifacts. The practical implications of digital composites are that they can appropriate performative capacities which are already established and embedded across different settings. As a result, they enact complex digital assemblages which can re-align not only daily activities but also organizational routines. On the other hand, digital composites remain in flux, since their state, at any moment in time, is partly determined (even temporarily) by the state of their constituent parts.

Calendaring as presented in this paper defines a genre of digital artifacts that promote flexible and accountable collaborative work while exploiting material agency and resources distributed across digital settings. As such, it establishes a kind of meta-material that invokes collective social agency, thus re-aligning performative and ostensive aspects of organizational routines.

A framework for the optimum development and transfer of conflict‐handling skills via outdoor management development (OMD) programmes has already been presented (Part I, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 23 No. 7). A qualitative study with ten OMD providers confirmed the framework to be tenable insofar as the concepts represented within it were reportedly utilised as aspects of provision but, crucially, there was little evidence of an underlying rationale or set of principles to optimise effect. Hence, a questionnaire survey was conducted to ascertain perceived provision from the client's perspective and to provide a foundation for assessment of the framework to a wider managerial population. The results suggested that aspects of the framework were identifiable to participants as features of course design but, once again, there was an apparent lack of awareness about how these approaches were best utilised to optimise skills transfer. Results from both studies indicate a common lack of understanding on behalf of both providers and clients as to the pedagogical or philosophical principles underlying the application of particular methodologies to maximise efficacy.

The early stages of projects are often characterised by ambiguity arising from differences in stakeholder views regarding project rationale and objectives. The purpose of this paper is to present a viewpoint on how to build a shared understanding of project goals and thus reach a shared commitment to achieving them. One of the ways to achieve shared understanding is through open dialogue, free from political and other constraints. The authors call an environment that fosters such dialogue a holding environment. The main aim is to illustrate, via a case study: how an alliance‐based approach to projects can foster a holding environment; and how argument visualisation tools such as IBIS (Issue‐Based Information System) can be used to clarify different points of view and options within such an environment.

Following a discussion of theoretical background and literature review, an alliancing case study is used to illustrate the development of a holding environment and demonstrate the utility of IBIS in the creation of such an environment.

It is seen that an alliance‐based approach to projects can provide the foundation for a holding environment. IBIS is seen to facilitate the building of shared understanding by making arguments explicit and capturing decision rationale.

The paper outlines a practical framework for improving the quality of dialogue and achieving stakeholder commitment on projects.

Achieving shared understanding and commitment to action is difficult, particularly in the early stages of projects. The paper outlines the conditions and techniques needed to facilitate this via a non‐trivial case study.

This paper aims to explore the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of the new generation of engineering designers. A survey study is used to approach what their information needs are, how these needs change during an engineering design project and how their information-seeking behaviours have been influenced by the newly developed information technologies (ITs). Through an in-depth analysis of the survey results, the key functions have been identified for the next-generation management systems.

The paper first proposed four hypotheses on the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of young engineers. Then, a survey study was undertaken to understand their information usage in terms of the information needs and information-seeking behaviours during a complete engineering design process. Through analysing the survey results, several findings were obtained and on this basis, further comparisons were made to discuss and evaluate the hypotheses.

The paper has revealed that the engineering designers' information needs will evolve throughout the engineering design project; thus, they should be assisted at several different levels. Although they intend to search information and knowledge on know-what and know-how, what they really require is the know-why knowledge in order to help them complete design tasks. Also, the paper has shown how the newly developed ITs and web-based applications have influenced the engineers' information-seeking practices.

The research subjects chosen in this study are engineering students in universities who, although not as experienced as engineers in companies, do go through a complete design process with the tasks similar to industrial scenarios. In addition, the focus of this study is to understand the information-seeking behaviours of a new generation of design engineers, so that the development of next-generation information and knowledge management systems can be well informed. In this sense, the results obtained do reveal some new knowledge about the information-seeking behaviours during a general design process.

This paper first identifies the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of the new generation of engineering designers. On this basis, the varied ways to meet these needs and behaviours are discussed and elaborated. This intends to provide the key characteristics for the development of the next-generation knowledge management system for engineering design projects.

This paper proposes a novel means of exploring the future engineers' information needs and information-seeking behaviours in a collaborative working environment. It also characterises the key features and functions for the next generation of knowledge management systems for engineering design.

Mixed methods research (MMR) represents an alternative methodological approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research styles, and enabling researchers to explore complex phenomena in detail. This chapter provides a critical view of mixed methods research and its application in social science research, with examples from tourism and hospitality used to guide those aiming to undertake mixed-methods research projects. The chapter provides insight into the characteristics of MMR, distinguishing it from a multi-method approach. It also provides a detailed explanation of different MMR designs and highlights the advantages and challenges of adopting a mixed-methods approach. Moreover, the chapter discusses approaches to analysis which are pivotal to MMR design. Finally, the chapter concludes with recommendations for researchers hoping to adopt a mixed-methods approach.

Benchmarks are the vital tools in the performance measurement and evaluation of database management systems (DBMS), including the relational database management systems (RDBMS) and the object‐oriented/object‐relational database management systems (OODBMS/ORDBMS). Standard synthetic benchmarks have been used to assess the performance of RDBMS software. Other benchmarks have been utilized to appraise the performance of OODBMS/ORDBMS products. In this paper, an analytical framework of workload characterization to extensively and expansively examine the rationale and design of the industry standard and synthetic standard benchmarks is presented. This analytical framework of workload analysis is made up of four main components: the schema analysis, the operation analysis, the control analysis, and the system analysis. These analysis results are compiled and new concepts and perspectives of benchmark design are collated. Each analysis aspect is described and each managerial implication is discussed in detail.

Embedding citizenship and sustainability into higher education curricula is vital for ensuring that curricula remain up-to-date and support students with the skills and knowledge they need for our ever-changing world. But the conceptualisation of the term “sustainability” radically affects its perceived relevance for curriculum design, and hence the recognition of where education for sustainability is already embedded within a curriculum. Here we present a student-designed, freely accessible workshop, which can be used by colleagues off-the-shelf to challenge workshop participants to reconsider their understanding of sustainability and recognise its vast scope. The workshop is provocative yet encourages collaboration, drawing on participants' prior experiences to identify sustainability concepts already embedded within their course, and opportunities to further enhance the inclusion of sustainability in the curriculum. The workshop is also fully supportive of the increasing recognition of the value of engaging students, and others, as partners in curriculum development.