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This paper aims to investigate nurses’ experiences of leadership within health care in the Republic of Ireland.

This mainly qualitative study made use of a mail survey sent to a random national selection of registered nurses. Participants were asked to provide narrative descriptors of good nursing leadership and identify obstacles to such leadership.

Participants mainly provided examples of nursing leadership within a hierarchical context (concentrated leadership), such as meeting organisational goals and decision-making. While elements of distributed leadership were mentioned (good communication, providing help and support), they were mainly described as part of formal management roles, rather than leadership. Observed obstacles to developing nursing leadership included high workload, lack of support from management and peers, limited opportunities to gain experience, lack of education/training and poor work environments.

The small sample (n = 72) limits generalisation. A wider interdisciplinary effort to address experiences with nursing leadership in Ireland may be needed to inform health services of the issues from a broader perspective.

The findings suggest that development of nursing leadership in Ireland may still be in its infancy, and that several obstacles need to be overcome.

Very few studies have addressed narratives from nurses regarding personal experiences with nursing leadership. The examples provided by participants have yielded significant insight into the issues they encounter, which are reflective of health care elsewhere.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present an Australian mentor preparation program designed to prepare experienced teachers to mentor beginning teachers and second, to identify and discuss mentor teachers’ personal and professional outcomes and the wider contextual implications emerging from the Mentoring Beginning Teachers (MBT) mentor preparation program.

This case study, situated within Queensland, Australia, draws on qualitative data collected via interviews and focus groups with mentor teachers who participated in a large-scale systemic mentor preparation program. The program positions mentoring as supportive, based on a process of collaborative inquiry and encouraging critically reflexive praxis with the mentor professional learning focusing on reflection, dialog and criticality.

Initial findings show the outcomes of the mentor preparation program include building a common language and shared understanding around the role of mentor, consolidating a collaborative inquiry approach to mentoring and providing opportunity for self-reflection and critique around mentoring approaches and practices. Some findings, such as a greater self-awareness and validation of mentors’ own teaching performance, have confirmed previous research. However, the originality of this research lies in the personal and professional impacts for mentor teachers and the wider contextual impacts that have emerged from the study.

The study highlights the impact of the mentor preparation program on the professional learning of teacher-mentors and contributes to the current lack of empirical research that identifies the personal and professional impacts for mentors and the wider contextual factors that impact effective mentoring in schools.

The originality of this research lies in the personal and professional impacts for mentor teachers and the wider contextual impacts more broadly that have emerged from the study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between perceived distributed leadership and job satisfaction among nurses. Leadership is central to improving quality care. Reports following investigations of poor care standards, identified inadequate leadership as a contributory factor and called for a new kind of leadership. One alternative is distributed leadership. Evidence suggests associations between leadership and job satisfaction but, there is a paucity of research examining associations between distributed leadership and job satisfaction: the purpose of this study was to address this gap.

A cross-sectional survey design was used and data collected via questionnaires. Using census sampling, 350 nurses in a hospital in Malta were selected. A response rate of 50% (n = 176) was achieved. Data were analysed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient and multiple regression. Ethical approval was obtained from relevant committees/individuals.

Results indicated a moderate application of perceived distributed leadership and application of all components of distributed leadership could be improved. Nurses were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with their jobs. Correlation analysis showed a positive relationship between distributed leadership and job satisfaction. Multiple regression showed that commitment and participative decision-making were major predictors of job satisfaction while supervision by managers had a negative effect.

Improving distributed leadership is a priority in the nursing profession.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to show that distributed leadership has a positive effect on job satisfaction among nurses. Supervision, a constituent of distributed leadership, was associated with reduced job satisfaction, therefore reducing this is paramount.

There can be little doubt about the importance and relevance of quality for any service industry. One of the most influential contributors to service quality developments was W. Edwards Deming (1900‐1993). An important component of Deming's philosophy is reflected in his 14‐principles for transforming a service as they indicate what management needs to do to ensure that they and their employees are able to deliver good service quality. The purpose of this paper is first, to select and describe six of the 14 principles and their implications for organisational management; and second, to hightlight the relevance of these principles within higher education.

Six of Deming's principles for transforming organisational management and the application of these to management within the area of higher education are discussed. The selection of these six principles, for discussion is not that they are more important for quality, but because they are among the most important for management in higher education.

Deming's principle on teamwork is not only about problem solving and decision making but more fundamentally it is about breaking down organisational and professional barriers. This is necessary for creating opportunities for people to generate new insights and ideas for improving quality of the service provided by the organisation.

This general review paper discusses six of Deming's principles seen as being important in managing education and considers that organisational management needs to embrace these particular principles if they are to be successful in pursuing their quality initiatives.

The advances and continuous development of technology have been identified as significant influences on the accounting profession (AICPA, 1998). In the last twenty years, both academia and the accounting profession have been giving much attention to the demand and opportunity for audits to be performed automatically, continuously and in nearly real time. This paper presents a comprehensive review of continuous auditing research by providing an overview of the emergence and growth of the continuous auditing literature and classifying the extant continuous auditing research on the basis of four research characteristics indicated by a newly developed research taxonomy.

Avant‐propos sous les auspices de l'Institut international de Coopération intellectuelle, paraissait en 1934 le t. I, consacré à l'Europe, du Guide international des Archives. Le questionnaire envoyé à tous les États européens comportait sous les points 4 et 6 les questions suivantes: ‘Existe‐t‐il un guide général pour les diverses catégories d'Archives ou des guides particuliers pour l'une ou l'autre d'entre elles?’ et ‘Existe‐t‐il des catalogues imprimés, des publications tant officielles que privées, susceptibles de constituer un instrument complet de référence pour tout ou partie importante des fonds d'archives?’ Les réponses des divers pays à ces questions, malgré leur caractère très inégal, ont fait du Guide international un bon instrument d'information générale sur les Archives. Malheureusement les circonstances ont empêché la publication du volume consacré aux États non européens, tandis que le temps qui s'écoulait tendait à rendre périmés les renseignements fournis sur les Archives européennes.

IDEAL methods of Library service; this, in simple translation is the purpose before the Library Association Conference at Manchester this year. The first thing that strikes any observer is the great variety of current library work. There was a day, so recent that fairly young men can remember it, when a Library Association Conference could focus its attention upon such matters as public library charging systems, open access versus the indicator, the annotated versus the title‐a‐line catalogue, the imposition of fines and penalties; in short, on those details of working which are now settled in the main and do not admit of general discussion. All of them, too, it will be observed, are problems of the public library. When those of other libraries came into view in those days they were seen only on the horizon. It was believed that there was no nexus of interest in libraries other than the municipal variety. Each of the others was a law unto itself, and its problems concerned no one else. The provision of books for villages, it is true, was always before the public librarian; he knew the problem. In this journal James Duff Brown wrote frequently concerning it; before the Library Assistants' Association, Mr. Harry Farr, then Deputy Librarian of Cardiff, wrote an admirable plea for its development. Wyndham Hulme once addressed an annual dinner suggesting it as the problem for the younger librarians. Carnegie money made the scheme possible. But contemporaneously with the development of the Rural Library system, which now calls itself the County Library system as an earnest of its ultimate intentions, there has been a coming together of the librarians of research and similar libraries. We have a section for them in the Library Association.

The authors aim to examine whether the well-established unified theory of acceptance and use of technology can be effectively adapted for use in an external audit setting and whether the re-specified model holds under different levels of budget pressure.

This paper takes the form of a case study/questionnaire with Lisrel path modelling.

Results support the re-specified model.

The model should aid audit research by providing a platform for new research to explore more specific solutions to technology reluctance. The authors extend general TAM research through additional exploration of the theory and impact of social influence, a determinant that has shown inconsistent tendencies in prior studies. The authors address several limitations in past TAM research including the use of student participants and self-selection bias.

Firms must understand the implications of their policies and culture on the intention of audit teams to voluntarily utilize software. Technology can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of audit procedures, aid in the identification of fraud and lower litigation costs. Accounting firms have invested in the development of audit testing software and can only recoup these investments if the software is used.

The study is the first to completely model the intention to use technology in an external audit engagement with consideration of budget influences.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze empirical studies related to the implementation strategies for clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) in intensive care units (ICUs).

A systematic review with a narrative synthesis adapted from Popay et al.’s method for a narrative synthesis was conducted. A search using CINAHL, Google Scholar, Academic search complete, Cochrane Register for Randomized Controlled Trials, MEDLINE via PUBMED and grey literature was conducted in 2014 and updated in 2016 (August). After reading the abstracts, titles and full-text articles, 11 (n=11) research studies met the inclusion criteria.

After critical appraisal, using the Joanna Briggs Critical Appraisal Tools, eight randomized controlled trials conducted in adult and neonatal ICUs using implementation strategies remained. Popay et al.’s method for narrative synthesis was adapted and used to analyze and synthesize the data and formulate concluding statements. Included studies found that multi-faceted strategies appear to be more effective than single strategies. Strategies mostly used were printed educational materials, information/ sessions, audit, feedback, use of champion leaders, educational outreach visits, and computer or internet usage. Practical training, monitoring visits and grand rounds were less used.

Findings can be used by clinicians to implement the best combination of multi-faceted implementation strategies in the ICUs in order to enhance the optimal use of CPGs.

No systematic review was previously done on the implementation strategies that should be used best for optimal CPG implementation in the ICU.

This index accompanies the index that appeared in Reference Services Review 16:4 (1988). As noted in the introduction to that index, the articles in RSR that deal with specific reference titles can be grouped into two categories: those that review specific titles (to a maximum of three) and those that review titles pertinent to a specific subject or discipline. The index in RSR 16:4 covered the first category; it indexed, by title, all titles that had been reviewed in the “Reference Serials” and the “Landmarks of Reference” columns, as well as selected titles from the “Indexes and Indexers,” “Government Publications,” and “Special Feature” columns of the journal.