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The process and uses in implementing a formalised total quality assurance programme into the Cambridgeshire Ambulance Service are investigated. Service and individual performance standards are discussed. Key benefits of QA in terms of “employee resourcing” and “employee relations” are identified and the crucial role of training for quality is emphasised.

The application of BS 5750: Part 2 to the wide range of Ambulance Service activities demonstrates service‐wide commitment to quality assurance and should lead to “customer” confidence and an improvement in competitiveness. Cambridgeshire′s Ambulance Service makes significant strides towards accreditation.

The pupose of this paper is to explore the power of narrative in management and enterprise research. It is inspired by Paul Ricoeur's philosophical understanding of the relationship between life and narrative. He draws on Aristotle's Poetics and the notion of emplotment (muthos in Greek), which embodies both imaginary story (fable) and well‐constructed story (plot). This study identifies aspects of narratives of enterprise, which resonate with Aristotle's key elements of emplotment in tragedy.

This qualitative, interpretive study relies on narrative as a way of knowing and as a form of communication. The stories as told by 16 participants in in‐depth interviews, are analysed and interpreted in terms of the key elements set out in Aristotle's Poetics – reversals, recognition and suffering.

This form of literary interpretation throws into relief aspects of the founding of a family business across the generations. The dynamics of the “family” in the business, the nature and extent of the family engagement in the business is revealed.

This paper contributes to understanding the intergenerational dynamics of family and business. It illustrates, therefore, that study of the family is central to understanding family business. This calls into question the common assumption that the individual owner manager, or entrepreneur, is synonymous with the business, and therefore necessarily the most appropriate focus for research.

The narrative approach has remained, to date, under‐utilised in family business research. In adopting Aristotlean principles as a framework this study links enterprise activity with the central traditions of Western literature and provides a fresh understanding of enterprise as epic plot.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the British public may be congratulated on the salutary, if rude, awakening which the gale raised in Chicago has given them. Peacefully slumbering, and content for years to accept as gospel truths the asseverations of all sorts and conditions of food‐fakers, both of home and foreign growth, the “Britisher” has suddenly received a shock from which it will take him a long time to recover. The abominable crime of milk‐adulteration—striking as it does at helpless infancy and at the vitality of the infirm and the weak; the “doctoring” of food products with a variety of pernicious drugs on the pleas of “preservation” and of meeting “public wants,” but in reality done for the sake of sordid gain; the gigantic meat and butter frauds, whereby largely the agricultural interest of this country has been brought to its present pass; the faking of beer and the wholesale arsenical poisoning which was one of its direct consequences; the denaturing of other foods by abstraction, substitution, and sophistication—all these things have been regarded by the “man in the street” with a sort of languid interest; have, at most, called forth passing comment from the lay press, and cheap sneers about faddery and faddists from various ignorant scribblers; while a succession of lethargic and feeble administrations have shelved the reports of their own Committees and Commissions, and, except under rare and abnormal pressure, have been content to adopt a policy of laissez faire.

The basic thesis espoused in this chapter is that a discourse analytic approach, that explores managers’ stories, is equally valid as a more typical case study approach that seeks confirmatory data. Depth interviews with industrial network participants are conducted and described; interviews where managers are encouraged to talk of their lived experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. Specifically, this case study presents a qualitative exploration of identity processes in industrial networks, in particular social constructions of Indian modernity. The analysis suggests what these constructions mean for the management of buyer–seller relationships (cf. Bagozzi, 1995). The study also reflects calls for more empirical research to be undertaken to improve understanding of contemporary marketing practices, especially in large emerging market economies such as India and Brazil (Dadzie, Johnston, & Pels, 2008). Discursive data were collected in the form of transcripts from semi-structured interviews with a variety of managerial participants involved in trade between New Zealand (NZ) and India. All the participants are Indian, with interviews taking place in 2006 in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai. Interviews were conducted in English; with 23 individuals representing organizations operating in the lumber, wool, horticulture, dairy, engineering, IT, tourism, and education industries, they lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, and were recorded on audio and video media. The study goes some way toward addressing the dominant Western perspective prevalent in most studies of business relationships, and shows how discourse analysis can provide a rich analytical perspective on business-to-business relationships.

In this paper, we provide a practical example of how ethnographic insight is obtained in the field. In so doing, we demonstrate multiple ways in which ethnographic approaches can be adapted during on-going research processes to develop rich and multiple emic/etic perspectives.

This paper is based upon the first author’s reflective experience of undertaking ethnographic field work. The discussion draws from a multi-method, longitudinal and adaptive ethnographic research design, which aimed to capture the process of new family identity formation in Sri Lanka.

Existing research gives us excellent insight into various methods used in contemporary ethnographic research and the kinds of insight generated by these methods. With few exceptions, these studies do not give significant insight into the specifics of the ethnographic research process and the adaption practice. Thus, we provide a practical example of how ethnographic insight is obtained in the research field.

Our discussion elaborates the ways in which we integrated multiple research methods such as participant observations, semi-structured in-depth interviews, informal sessions, Facebook interactions, adaptations of performative exercises and elicitation methods to overcome complexities in cultural, mundane and personal consumption meanings. We also discuss how closer friendships with informants emerged as a consequence of the ethnographic research adaption practice and how this influenced trust and confidence in researcher-informant relationship, presenting us with a privileged access to their everyday and personal lives.

The revelations that have been made concerning the insanitary conditions under which large quantities of important food products are prepared in the United States for consumption in this country have attracted, for the time being, the attention that the subject deserves.

The discussion about public sector performance is still present today, despite the profound research that has already tried to address this subject. Furthermore, theory links negative effects on organizational performance with increased levels of organizational complexity. However, literature thus far did not succeed to put forward a successful theory that explains why and how public organizations became increasingly complex. To answer this question, we argue that increased organizational complexity can be explained by viewing public organizations as the hybrid result of different institutional logics, which are shaped by various management views. However, former research mainly concentrated on the separate study of management views such as traditional public management (TPM), NPM, and post-NPM. Although appealing, research that approaches hybridity from this perspective is fairly limited.

We conducted a literature review in which we studied 80 articles about traditional public management, NPM, and post-NPM.

We found that these management views essentially differ on the base of three fault lines, depending on the level of the organizational culture. These fault lines, according to the management view, together result in nine dimensions. By combing dimensions of the different management views, we argue that a public organization becomes hybrid. Furthermore, in line with findings of contingency theory, we explain the level of hybridity might depend on the level of tight coupling for a given organization. Finally, we developed propositions that explain hybridity as the result of isomorphic forces, organizational change, and organizational resistance to change and that link hybridization with processes of selective coupling.

The value of this chapter lies in its real-life applicability.

HAVING outlined the scheme for monotyped catalogues, it only remains to consider it in its financial aspects. At Hampstead tenders were obtained for the same catalogue by monotype, linotype, and by ordinary setting up. It may be mentioned that the catalogue is of royal‐octavo size, in double columns, each being fifteen ems wide and fifty deep. Main entries are in bourgeois; subject‐headings are set (by hand) in clarendon, and the entries under such headings are put in brevier. Notes and contents were specified for either minion or nonpareil, and many lines break into part‐italics. The monotype machine provided all these founts except the two already mentioned—italic numerals and clarendon. We had to do without the former type, but the latter not being numerous are easily carried in as wanted from an ordinary case. Naturally, I cannot give the exact figures of the accepted tender, but it may be stated that in our particular case the cheapest quotation was for linotype work, although there was not much difference between that and monotyping; whilst for both these methods worked out at appreciably less than the quotations for ordinary hand‐work.