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This paper critically examines the Irish Government’s commitment to “Delivering better government”, in the context of achieving gender equality. The strategic management initiative (SMI) seeks highest quality of service delivery to customers in a modern flexible and professional manner. This necessitates the fullest development of human resources. To achieve this end a study was undertaken to investigate gender imbalance at managerial grades. The report highlighted continuing gender imbalance at all grades and a prevailing culture that is less than conducive to women and many men. The authors called for a new strategic approach to gender equality in which specific targets are set over a specific time frame. The Irish Civil Service is now faced with a combined need to address a new equality agenda in order to deliver its strategic vision of quality in serving the public, thereby underpinning the need to pursue quality, equality and diversity as core values in a fast‐growing Irish economy.

Employers of part‐time labour generally regard it as a means of overcoming scheduling problems either be‐cause of peak demands, staff shortages or when the work itself does not justify full‐time hours. For women, part‐time schedules provide a means of reconciling two, often conflicting, forms of work activity within and outside the home. “The presence of children and the age of the youngest child are, therefore, major determinants of whether women work full or part‐time. Part‐time work is for women a frequent means of re‐entry into the labour force”. (Daly 1986)

This article has a threefold purpose. First, it presents an overview of part‐time employment within the European Community in the context of current labour market trends. Second, it discusses the advantages and disadvantages associated with part‐time working and third, it outlines the factors supporting a future expansion of part‐time working.

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.

This paper aims to address workplace learning in terms of investigating school leadership development in an inter-professional team (the team) in which principals, administrators and researchers work together on a local school improvement project. The purpose is to provide an enriched understanding of how school leadership development evolves in a team during two years as the team works on different problem-spaces and the implications for leadership in schools.

The paper is based on a larger study with a qualitative research design with longitudinal, interventional, interactional and multiple-time level approaches. Empirically, the paper draws on tools, video and audio data from the teams’ work. By using cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT), school leadership development is examined as an object-oriented and tool-mediated activity. CHAT allows analyses of activities across timescales and workplaces. It examines leadership development by tracing objects in tool-mediated work and the ways in which they evolved. The object refers to what motivates and directs activity.

The findings suggest that the objects evolved both within and across episodes and the two-year trajectory of the team. Longitudinal trajectories of tools, schools and universities seem to intersect with episodes of leadership development. Some episodes seem to be conducive for changes in the principals’ schools during the collaboration.

There is a need for a broader study that includes more cases in other contexts, thus expanding the existing knowledge.

By switching lenses of zooming, it has been possible to examine leadership development in a way that is not possible through surveys and interviews.

Technology is only one of the factors influencing work and its place in society. It can serve as a catalyst or vehicle for change in how, when, where and by whom work is undertaken. The present day structuring of work is not an immutable socio‐economic fact but represents a response to the changes imposed by the Industrial Revolution over the preceding two centuries. Information and other new technologies are predicted to produce changes of a magnitude comparable with those due to the Industrial Revolution. These changes will inevitably include alterations in the structuring of work in the future. However, unlike the first Industrial Revolution, when such changes were essentially ad hoc, society is now in a position to take an active rather than a passive role in determining changes in work structures.

This paper seeks to examine the experience of, and attitudes towards, work/life balance (WLB) by female and male senior managers in a major Irish organisation for which WLB is now a strategic corporate objective.

Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using an electronic questionnaire survey designed to obtain the views of female and male managers on strategies that would contribute to a better gender balance, promote diversity and raise leadership capacity in the organisation. Work/life balance emerged as a major issue in impeding the career progression of female managers. All female managers and a sample of male managers were surveyed. This paper concentrates on the responses of the two senior management grades below Executive Director on the issue and strategies to promote work/life balance. Additional qualitative data were drawn from interviews (with eight women and five men) and three focus group sessions with all male, all female and mixed gender groups.

The greatest obstacle to achieving WLB is seen as the “long hours” culture in which availing oneself of flexible options (e.g. working from home/reduced hours/flexitime) is incompatible with holding a senior management post. Many of the senior men have followed the “breadwinner” model by being able to delegate family and caring activities to their wives. This option has not been possible for the majority of women in senior posts. Hence, men seek WLB to resolve commuting/working time issues. Women want to avail themselves of more flexible arrangements for family/quality of life reasons. Both men and women in senior management recognise that their own careers would be seriously jeopardised by taking up WLB arrangements.

In the absence of role models willing to display any contrary behaviour there is a pragmatic need to align corporate policy and practice with prevailing and future family structures and demonstrate, by senior management example, how WLB can work and provide assistance for managers/staff who seek to avail themselves of it. WLB policies are not enough in themselves to ensure take‐up and acceptance. It will require trust, courage and a range of interventions to champion WLB, not just at management level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and critically analyse the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial motivations theories in an Irish context. The paper examines potential differences in motivational factors for entering entrepreneurship between men and women, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between push and pull factors, but also with respect to other social factors such as being a parent, marital status or age.

The paper draws upon data obtained from a national survey of 832 entrepreneurs undertaken in Ireland in 2003/2004. This survey is based on a sample of 3,498 Irish entrepreneurs, which was predominantly constructed using the Kompass Directory 2001 and the majority of the city and county enterprise boards throughout Ireland. The analysis relies on ordinal logistic modelling to examine the impact of gender and other social factors on entrepreneurial motivations.

The paper shows that there is a strong gender effect on some motivational factors, but that gender itself needs to be examined along with other social factors in order to understand differences in motivations. In particular, marital status, being a parent and/or age, as well as their interaction with gender, are useful in explaining differences in pathways into entrepreneurship for men and women.

Motivations and gender have been widely debated in the international literature on entrepreneurship, but relatively little is known about gender and entrepreneurship in an Irish context. This paper seeks to address this gap. The results will be useful to other researchers in the field of gender and entrepreneurship, as well as practitioners and business support agencies.

Quality is the major differentiator in an increasingly competitive and fast growing business environment in Ireland. This paper focuses on the degree to which quality initiatives have been developed in Irish organisations. Based on two major large scale national surveys of manufacturing and service organisations, the paper shows the scale of adoption of total quality concepts and the degree to which total quality management (TQM) is associated with standards, strategic planning, teamworking, employee and customer satisfaction, use of quality tools/techniques, benchmarking and relationships with suppliers. Some comparisons are made between the two surveys which suggest that service organisations have been slower than manufacturing companies to adopt total quality management in Ireland. However, the study points to a heightening of awareness about TQM among service,as well as manufacturing, organisations in Ireland.

The objectives of this study were to investigate the degree to which quality initiatives, including quality standards, have been adopted in Irish organisations and to provide comparisons with survey results of surveys in 1995/1996.

A national survey was conducted in 2002 of Irish employers in manufacturing/services within the private and public sectors. The questionnaire was sent to 2,487 organisations – 932 questionnaires were returned representing a 34 per cent response rate from the private sector organisations and 47 per cent in the public sector.

The survey illustrates the continuing importance of, and reliance upon, standards. Among organisations that had been awarded ISO 9000 certification, 93 per cent believed that it had improved their reputation and 90 per cent that it resulted in better products or services. Nearly two‐thirds of respondent organisations had adopted a total quality approach compared with less than one‐third in 1995/1996. The results demonstrate that total quality organisations did not differ significantly from non‐TQ organisations in relation to having been awarded ISO 9000. However, there were statistically significant differences between TQ and non‐TQM organisations in relation to: a commitment to quality, quality structures, measures to evaluate effectiveness in relation to customers, employees and suppliers, team working, quality assurance systems, use of quality tools and techniques and investment in training.

This study shows that interest and adoption of quality improvement in Irish organisations is growing rapidly, particularly since the mid‐1990s that has marked a distinct period of economic growth in the Irish economy.