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Explores the evolution of career management systems for industrial researchers. Based on case studies of experimental career development systems for industrial researchers, combined with a survey of 151 researchers and engineers employed at a large public research institution, alternative approaches toward managing professional careers are discussed. The results indicate that the researchers’ personal career orientations, as measured by Schein’s Career Anchors Inventory, may serve as a useful predictor of their career preferences. In addition, the research enables an evaluation of alternative modes of career development for industrial R&D to be developed.

Clarifies a confusion existing in the field of consultation and organization development between formal research and data‐driven inquiry on the one hand and clinical research and client‐driven inquiry on the other. Illustrates the difference between the two approaches by showing the effects of particular approaches to data gathering. Shows how the clinical approach is synonymous with process consultation by being driven by the client′s agenda and argues that the clinical approach is more appropriate for consultation and organization development projects.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a holistic understanding of quality in higher education which reveals the current debates about accreditation or quality process standards as insufficient, and to propose an enhanced model for quality culture in educational organisations.

The conceptual framework is based on relevant research in the field of quality development for education, and integrates it with a series of previously published works related to quality methodologies, quality literacy and quality as a multidimensional concept. Quality is approached from an educational science perspective, and is understood as a relationship among all the participants and resources of an educational scenario.

The paper establishes the foundation for a comprehensive understanding and analysis of quality culture in organisations, focussing on higher education. While this understanding of quality as part of the organisational culture seems to gain more importance there is still a lack of fundamental research and conceptual understanding of the phenomenon in itself. Quality development in higher education is often limited to bureaucratic documentation, and disregards the development of quality as an organisation's holistic culture. However, there is a need to focus on promoting a quality culture which is enabling individual actors to continuously improve their educational practice.

The original value of the paper is to approach quality development in higher education from an organisation's cultural perspective. When the conceptual foundations for empirical research are worked out, the professionals can benefit by understanding the interrelated nature of educational quality and organisational culture in higher education institutions.

However, after Singapore's independence and separation from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, the PAP leaders were forced to change their vision of Singapore as part of Malaysia to Singapore as an independent nation, which they had earlier rejected. In other words, the PAP leaders had to “reinvent” Singapore to ensure its survival.

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.

There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.

This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.

The American Medical Association Council has been considering the role of the physician in the management of medical care. Arising from collaboration with its Advisory Committee on Undergraduate Medical Education, a number of recommendations have been forthcoming. These include a recognition that:

Organizational learning and unlearning are often viewed as different and distinct concepts in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the unlearning concept and reassess its position vis-à-vis learning, in particular second-order and double-loop learning.

The paper entails a conceptual analysis.

It is found that there are two conceptual problems with unlearning, and that it is best embedded in the dynamics of the learning process, where it appears to fit well in the “interruption” phase.

The research scope of the paper is limited to a theoretical analysis of organizational learning and unlearning. Implications for theory reside in the importance of unlearning and its relation to learning in current organizations.

The paper has practical implications for organizations wishing to become more adept at learning and unlearning.

The paper is among the first organizational papers to analyze unlearning in direct relation to different phases in the learning dynamics.

The phrase, “corporate culture”, refers to a company's values, beliefs, business principles, traditions, ways of operating, and internal work environment. In the perspective of corporate culture, the paper attempts to trace the changes in some libraries round the world.

The paper provides a conjectural approach to corporate culture and how the same could be applied to contemporary libraries and information centers and to show how the five laws of Library Science coupled with the evolution of IT have not only made the library services more competitive, but also profoundly influenced the ethics of twenty‐first century librarianship.

The paper finds that contemporary libraries will have to adapt corporate culture to promote knowledge‐based business so as to make their services customer‐friendly.

The paper portrays the different aspects of corporate culture and cites the contributions of well‐known authors on “organization culture”.

The relationship between corporate culture and inbound open innovation (OI) has been limited to two sub-constructs: a culture for openness and an innovation culture, but until now a richer conceptualization of corporate culture is missing.

The authors apply Quinn and Rohrbaugh's (1983) competing values framework and regress these together with company internal and external control variables on five measures of inbound OI, reflecting product innovation, process innovation and the sourcing of innovation activities. The authors use data from a survey of more than 250 Swiss companies, primarily SMEs.

The importance of the firms' market environments suggests that the results are affected by the specific situation in which the firms found themselves at the time of the survey: after a strong currency shock, inbound OI activities seem to be a reaction to external pressure that favored planning and rule-oriented (formal) cultures to implement cost-cutting process innovations.

Companies should develop a vision and a strategy, ensure open and transparent communication, have suitable reward and support mechanisms in place, adjust structures and processes, and institutionalize and formalize any change whenever they are confronted with a situation that requires a quick reaction and an adjustment to their degree of openness.

The paper clarifies the relationship between cultural traits and inbound OI, using a well-established understanding of corporate culture and differentiating between innovation types. It points to the importance of the external environment in order to understand the role of culture.