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This chapter addresses the common assumption that research questions are fixed at the outset of a study and should remain stable thereafter. We consider field-based organizational research and ask whether and when research questions can legitimately change. We suggest that change can, does, and indeed should occur in response to changes in the context within which the research is being conducted. Using an illustrative example, we identify refinement and reframing as two distinct types of research question development. We conclude that greater transparency over research question evolution would be a healthy development for the field.

This paper aims to enable the operations management community to engage with concepts from the field of complexity theory and apply them to the issue of organisational transformation. It begins by reviewing existing work on strategic change, then provides an overview of complexity theory to show how the conditioned emergence model was developed. A brief statement on method follows, which describes our research process in terms of mode 2 knowledge production. An illustrative case study is then presented and is used to highlight aspects of the model and the overlaps and differences between conditioned emergence and other approaches. The paper concludes that organisational transformation can be viewed as an emergent process which can be accessed and influenced through three interacting gateways, i.e. order generating rules, disequilibrium and positive feedback. Finally, an appendix is included which focuses specifically on the issue of the research process. Here, it is argued that calls for managerially‐relevant research will be best met through more widespread adoption of mode 2 as an approach.

Describes the use of outdoor management development exercises in relation to the issue of personal competences. Presents findings of a pilot study by the University of Glasgow Business School, which is researching the relationship between traditional and vocational models of learning. Finds that in general, there are potential personal benefits for participants to explore their managerial skills through outdoor development exercises, but that research needs to continue to ensure a greater emphasis on self‐confidence, drive, personal learning and development.

WHEN A biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was returned to Kendal library by post from Oxford University with a stamp on the date label of 5 Feb 1916 no one considered this to be very startling news. There was a compliment slip inside apologising for the delay (‘It was lurking in one of our darker corners’). I sent them a brief note thanking them, and that I thought was that.

WHEN John Butcher, Parliamentary Under‐Secretary of State for Industry, said that it was ‘widely recognised’ that colleges were producing first‐rate designers with innovative skills, he underlined only part of the story. True, he went on to say that students were not trained enough in the ways and indeed the needs of industry and commerce. So he made a plea that they should be given planned works experience.

The island of Arran is situated in the Firth of Clyde astride the Highland Boundary fault zone. It is 19 miles long by 10 miles wide. Although similar in size to the Isle of Wight it has only a twenty‐fifth of that island's population. The number of inhabitants in 1981 (4743) is almost the same as in 1755 (4600). The island's population reached its highest level in 1821 (6541) and fell steadily for the rest of the century, reaching a figure similar to its present level in 1911.