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During the downturn in the economy, EILEEN FISHER Inc., which had been experiencing significant growth in the years leading up to 2008, had to take some widespread organizational strategic action or potentially lose $11 million. Eileen Fisher and the Facilitating Leadership Team (FLT) met to reflect on the actions that were taken in the last 18 months in order to reshape their organization. From the beginning, the FLT had been transparent with the 800 employees in the organization, informing them that they were facing serious losses. They shared not only identified issues, but their deep faith in the EILEEN FISHER collaborative culture a faith that was reflected in their first step to planning. Turning to the employees, they had asked, What should we do? Teams throughout the company figured out new ways of working and recaptured EILEEN FISHER's profit. Reflecting on the reshaping of EILEEN FISHER and the many actions taken, the FLT team wondered if the creation of the new normal was sound and sustainable for the future. Students must evaluate the effectiveness of EILEEN FISHER's leadership system and determine whether the company can survive the economic downturn while remaining true to the company's core values.

The case is a field-research case and was funded as part of a sabbatical to study leadership at EILEEN FISHER Inc. The primary goal of the long-term project was to research and write cases on socially minded women leaders through an inclusive conceptual lens. Extensive planning with the Chief Culture Officer at EILEEN FISHER resulted in an 18-month deep dive with over 40 in-depth interviews, extensive observation of many different teams and meetings particularly the monthly Leadership Forums, thorough review of internal communications as well as review of other secondary research.

This case was written for advanced undergraduate or graduate organizational management, retail management and strategic change students. The case is best taught later in the course where students are asked to connect various leadership or strategic change theories with organizations and outcomes. The theoretical readings are more suited for advanced leadership students and are a springboard for in-depth analysis and further assignments. The case demonstrates the power of a values-based organization and how this values-based leadership style can be used to reshape an organization. This case can also be used for a retail management course to look at a values-based organization in the retailing industry. Most retailers in the industry have traditional hierarchical organizations; this case shows that there are alternative business models and newer leadership frameworks that explain EILEEN FISHER's management. Retailers are also impacted by every downturn in the economy and challenge to consumer confidence. This case shows how a retail organization can reshape itself with a new value proposition as a result of a downturn in the economy. It also demonstrates how employees can take action and redefine an organization.

This paper is an exploratory study of one approach to incorporating situational information into information retrieval systems, drawing on principles and methods of discourse linguistics. A tenet of discourse linguistics is that texts of a specific type possess a structure above the syntactic level, which follows conventions known to the people using such texts to communicate. In some cases, such as literature describing work done, the structure is closely related to situations, and may therefore be a useful representational vehicle for the present purpose. Abstracts of empirical research papers exhibit a well‐defined discourse‐level structure, which is revealed by lexical clues. Two methods of detecting the structure automatically are presented: (i) a Bayesian probabilistic analysis; and (ii) a neural network model. Both methods show promise in preliminary implementations. A study of users' oral problem statements indicates that they are not amenable to the same kind of processing. However, from in‐depth interviews with users and search intermediaries, the following conclusions are drawn: (i) the notion of a generic research script is meaningful to both users and intermediaries as a high‐level description of situation; (ii) a researcher's position in the script is a predictor of the relevance of documents; and (iii) currently, intermediaries can make very little use of situational information. The implications of these findings for system design are discussed, and a system structure presented to serve as a framework for future experimental work on the factors identified in this paper. The design calls for a dialogue with the user on his or her position in a research script and incorporates features permitting discourse‐level components of abstracts to be specified in search strategies.

While web logs often are taken to be “Internet diaries,” unlike diaries that are private and serve only the needs of their authors, public blogs serve as a technological tool, allowing for the formation of Internet communities and challenges to institutional and/or cultural narratives.

I analyzed narratives constructed in two years of blog posts for each of five individuals with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). I sought to understand the relationship between personal stories of contested illness and broader illness narratives.

My findings suggest these personal illness stories operate within the artificial confines of the dominant models of a given society. Blogs are used not only as a chronicle of day-to-day happenings, but as a means of engaging with traditional illness narratives, challenging cultural narratives about CFS, and of resisting institutional narratives concerning the illness process.

This study brings voices of people with contested illnesses into the discourse on disability, where their perspectives have historically been poorly represented. The study also suggests that blogs can become sites of resistance and social change by providing a space in which counternarratives can be constructed and circulated.

The case includes theoretical references to family business, organizational culture, resource-based value and leadership.

The case combines primary and secondary data. There is ample public information about Martin Guitar including histories of the company and its instruments. These were used for background. Primary data were provided by the company in the form of customized data and interviews.. The case writer has served Martin Guitar as a consultant and also plays Martin instruments. The case writer had numerous opportunities to interview Chris and his key lieutenants.

In 2019, C.F. Martin IV (Chris) was in his fourth decade leading one of the America’s oldest family-owned companies, C.F. Martin & Co., Inc. Martin Guitar is a globally known maker of fine guitars that are prized by collectors, working musicians and amateur musicians. Chris was raised in the family business and took on the CEO’s position at the age of 30. The case describes the company’s management practices and the culture that has emerged from them. In 2019, at age 64, Chris confronted issues faced by his predecessors over multiple generations: how to prepare the company for succession, and maintain its strong performance as a family-owned company in a dynamic industry environment.

The case is designed for a management course for upper-level undergraduates.

Explores women’s under‐representation from sports coaching roles in general and from high status roles in particular. In‐depth interviews were carried out with 20 women who coached one of the following sports: cricket, gymnastics, netball, squash or swimming. A purposive sample ensured that the coaches reflected different levels of commitment to coaching. Witz’s model of occupational closure, used by her to analyse the medical profession, provided the basis for analysing the women’s experiences as coaches. Analysis of the interview data revealed that exclusionary and demarcationary strategies operated to limit women’s access to coaching roles. Such strategies included gendering the coaching role as a masculine role and closing access to networks of coaches. Women challenged such strategies through inclusionary and dual closure strategies by drawing on their coaching qualifications, their experiences as competitive athletes and the successes of the athletes whom they coached.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

The aim of this paper is to synthesize and assess the published literature relating to critical success factors for continuous improvement projects (CIPs).

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to obtain the most relevant papers from four platforms: EBSCOhost, Engineering Village, ProQuest and Web of Science. The literature was assessed and synthesized based on analysis of characteristics relating to publications, authors and the content of publications.

From the SLR, 98 publications were identified and analyzed. One primary finding is that this research area appears to demonstrate characteristics of an emerging field, not yet well established across all relevant aspects. Second, a comprehensive set of 53 factors were extracted from the publications identified. These factors were analyzed according to frequency in the published literature. This set of factors can be used in future empirical research to develop a more complete understanding of the relative contribution of each to influencing CIP success.

The SLR methodology does not guarantee that all of the publications related to a given research area will be identified; however, the researchers took different actions to mitigate this limitation. Further, not all relevant information from the publication set could be included in this work because of space constraints.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper presents the most comprehensive list of factors, and associated definitions, relevant to CIP success.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Following a high‐profile publicity campaign across South Tyneside aimed at professionals and patients, 52.4 per cent of all patients admitted with suspected myocardial infarction during a six‐month period received 300mg of aspirin. Twelve months later GPs’ performance had improved from 25 per cent to 52.9 per cent of patients directly admitted by GPs being prescribed aspirin when first seen. Following a definite myocardial infarction 78.4 per cent of patients were discharged taking 75mg of aspirin, with no valid reason for omission in 6.6 per cent of patients. Six months after discharge 71.8 per cent of patients were still taking aspirin. Twelve months later 90 per cent of discharged patients were taking aspirin. GP PACT data showed a marked increase in prescribing 75mg aspirin during the period. The use of a publicity campaign to disseminate the message to both professionals and patients has resulted in a beneficial increase in aspirin prescribing for myocardial infarction across the district.

Respite care is one of the services most frequently requested by family carers, but places are often not taken up because of carers' concerns about the quality of the respite experience. This paper describes the formation of a new respite unit at St Ita's Hospital in Western Ireland and staff's efforts to create a respite experience that more closely reflects the older person's home environment. The initial focus was on providing more choice in terms of the food served and the times of meals. The challenges of introducing even small changes to the delivery of care are considered, and the need for a more widespread and sustained approach to culture change is promoted.