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In 1989, the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre initiated a model of budget participation known internationally as "participatory budgeting." In this process of diagnosis, deliberation and decision-making, city residents directly decide how to allocate part of a public budget, typically at the level of municipal government. During the past two decades, hundreds of cities in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa have adapted this model of participatory democracy to their own contexts. In this article, we explore one of the first Canadian experiments of participatory budgeting. In Guelph, Ontario, a civil society organization called the Neighbourhood Support Coalition uses participatory budgeting to allocate of public and private funds. We discuss the Canadian context for this experiment, as well as the history and evolution of participatory budgeting in Guelph. Based on four years of interviews, ethnographic observation, and primary and secondary literature, we identify several lessons learned through the Guelph process, as well as the conditions that have enabled its development and posed challenges for its success.

This paper aims to determine the dimensions of service quality of advertising agencies and their effects on relationship quality between an advertising agency and their clients through the social and economic exchange.

The intention was to target firms which use the services of an advertising or marketing solutions agency; hence, participants were recruited from a business database service providing details for key decision makers in Australia and New Zealand. An online survey was used in this study.

Creative competence, project management processes and project outcome influenced relationship quality through value and interpersonal relationships. However, only creativity had a significant direct relationship with relationship quality.

Although creativity plays a major role in relationship development, agencies must have efficient and effective project management processes in place to ensure successful project completion within timeline and budget to be able to maintain ongoing relationships with their clients.

The research draws upon literature from three key disciplines, service quality, relationship marketing and project management, to address the gaps in the current literature related to customer relationship management in the B2B client–agency context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the appropriation of control rooms based on value-based integrated performance management tools implemented in all publicly funded health organizations in Quebec (Canada) as a form of legitimate sociomaterial work.

Multi-site organizational ethnographic case studies in two Integrated health and social services centers, with narrative process analysis of triangulated qualitative data collected through non-participant observation (163 h), individual semi-structured interviews (N = 34), and document review (N = 143).

Three types of legitimate sociomaterial work are accomplished when actors appropriate control rooms: 1) reformulating performance management work; 2) disrupting accountability work and; 3) effecting value-based integrated performance management. Each actor (tools, institutions and people) follows recurrent institutional work-paths: tools consistently engage in disruptive work; institutions consistently engage in maintaining work, and people consistently engage in creation work. The study reveals the potential of performance management tools as “effective integrators” of the technological, managerial, policy and delivery levels of data-driven health system performance and improvement.

This paper draws on theoretically informed empirical insights to develop actionable knowledge around how to better design, implement and adapt tool-driven health system change: 1) Packaging the three agents of data-driven system change in health care: tools, institutions, people; 2) Redefining the search for performance in health care in the context of value creation, and; 3) Strengthening clinical and managerial relevance in health performance management practice.

The authors aim to stimulate new and original scholarship around the under-theorized concept of sociomaterial work, challenging theoretical, ontological and practical conceptions of work in healthcare organizations and beyond.

This paper aims to identify what international management challenges professional service firms (PSFs) face and why they face them.

This study carries a focussed thematic literature review of 102 empirical articles. This paper uses content analysis to extract and aggregate challenges identified by researchers in their fieldwork and then analysed this data using qualitative and quantitative methods.

This study identifies 10 international management challenges that PSFs face and a number of causes for these challenges. The analysis also suggests that the distinctive characteristics of PSFs generate some of the international management challenges for PSFs.

This study helps PSF managers understand the international management challenges they may face depending on the specifics of their company, thus helping them better prepare their internationalisation.

This study contributes to providing a greater understanding of what is holding PSFs back in their internationalisation and why. It demonstrates that distinctive characteristics of PSFs may predict the challenges that PSFs will face, thus paving the way for further research on international management in PSFs and for the development of the diagnostic tool for practitioners that could help them to identify which challenges they should prepare for most.

The Great Benchmarking Scam? Time was, in management circles, that the term “benchmarking” would induce none‐too‐disguised yawns in recognition of it “being something to do with computers or job evaluation”. Not today; those yawns have been replaced with the excited management‐blabber of a new fad. You can benchmark anything these days; I encountered recently a guide to benchmarking employee attitudes.

Whereas most societal commentators continue to review the historical patterns of men’s leadership in search of models for 21st-century success, few have begun to recognize, let alone appreciate, the equivalent patterns of women’s leadership and the future contributions that women could potentially make as leaders. What could and are women bringing to society as global leaders? Why at this moment in history is there such a marked increase in the number of women leaders? Are we entering an era in which both male and female leaders will shape history, both symbolically and in reality? And if so, will we discover that women, on average, lead in different ways than men, or will we learn that role (global leader) explains more than gender? This chapter reveals the accelerating trends of women joining men in senior leadership positions, establishes the relationship of women leaders to our overall understanding of global leadership, and sets forth an agenda to accomplish much needed research and understanding.

The development of the British restaurant sector is described and the ages of those involved are investigated. The progress of a prospective entrant to the industry is traced. The high drop‐out rates are examined to see if any solutions can be offered. A college offering catering courses was visited, and staff interviewed. A total of ten restaurants, all mentioned in the Good Food Guide, were approached and asked about their staff. Whenever possible, the staff were interviewed, and their views noted. They were asked about colleagues who had left, their destinations, and the reasons for going. Some of these were met, and their opinions recorded. The results are often anecdotal, and figures have not been produced, as they may be misleading. However, there is a clear picture of grievances felt. Contemporary newspaper articles are used when they can augment the picture. Ideas about different types of training to develop inter‐personal and administrative skills are discussed, in the hope that they may assist the sector in retaining some of its departing staff.