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The purpose of this paper is to examine strategic decisions surrounding critical events to show how the decision-making processes evolve and how the dominant logic changes vis-à-vis those decisions. Further, this study explores the processes of managerial decision making focusing on spatial and temporal cognition dimensions.

The methodology adopted in this study is a case study using the retrospective processual analysis approach. Data were collected using both primary and secondary sources. In all, 40 years of secondary data on key critical events and decision making were collected using a range of secondary sources. Those events were further examined using 49 in-depth semi structured interviews.

The findings of this study explain the relationship between operant conditions, strategic actions and outcomes of strategic decisions by highlighting the significance of knowledge strategy, strategic agility and intentionality in shaping and reshaping managers’ dominant logic. Further, the authors show that the dominant coalition, among other factors, plays an important role in building decision-making capacity and in the formation and transformation of an existing dominant logic.

The study identified a number of limitations. First, the issue of generalization as the data were collected from only two case study companies. Second, in some cases respondents were asked to respond to research questions using “memory of the events” which took place a long time ago, hence the issue of credibility. Further, sometimes respondents reported information collected through hearsay. To overcome the limitations of this research, the authors made all efforts to ensure that the data collected were reliable and credible such as by using diverse data sources, confirmation of events at multiple level and personal observations.

The study identifies and explains a number of factors which influence decision making. The authors also present the revised dominant logic model which can act as a tool in managerial decision making.

The paper shows how managerial decision making changes knowledge strategy, which in turn leads to changes in existing dominant logic or the creation of a new dominant logic, hence looking at the issues of decision making using an evolutionary perspective. Second, the paper empirically tests and explains the relationship between intentionality, actions and organizational outcomes using spatial and temporal learning. Finally, the use of the longitudinal retrospective processual analysis and events analysis, is a novel way of understanding a particular phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to derive from an on-going, innovative, project to explore the concept, and application, of “recovery” in the care and clinical management of patients detained in one UK high-security hospital.

Utilising a qualitative, action research, methodology the aim was to involve forensic mental health nurses in a collaborative, client-centred approach to identification and resolution of dilemmas in the process of planning care for offender-patients.

In this context the authors identify constraints and contradictions involved in employing recovery principles in institutions critics refer to as part of the disciplinary apparatus of psychiatric and social control; where the taken for granted lives, and relations, of an incarcerated population are measured by the calendar, not the clock.

Protective practices remain highly relevant in high-secure practice. Safety, an important value for all can by and large be achieved through recovery approaches. The humanistic elements of recovery can offer up safe and useful methods of deploying the mental health nurse on the ward. Many nurses have the prerequisite approach but there remains a wide scope to enhance those skills. Many see the approach as axiomatic though nurse education often prepares nurses with a biomedical view of the ward.

Currently, philosophical tenets of recovery are enshrined in contemporary health policy and professional directives but, as yet, have not been translated into high-secure settings. Drawing on preliminary findings, attention is given to the value of socially situated approaches in challenging historic dominance of a medical model.

It is concluded that recovery could be a forerunner of reforms necessary for the continued relevance of high-secure care into the twenty-first century.

This research is located in high-secure setting. The social situation is marked by the extent of the isolation involved. A value is in this situation. First it is akin to the isolation of the tribe utilised by many anthropologists for their ability to adopt the “social laboratory” status to test out theories of behaviour in industrial society. The authors urge others to utilise this research in this way. Second, the situation represents the locus of so many of societies dilemmas, paradoxes and fears that moral issues morph from what is the mundane in wider society. In this way humanistic approaches are tested via action research with nurses in some rigouous ways.

E-government involves the use of technology for the betterment of government and for making government more responsive to the governed. However, as practiced, some barriers complicate the achievement of this goal. This chapter provides an overview of e-government at the US national level; identifies access barriers; proposes a research agenda intended to make e-government more accountable and helpful to the audiences it intends to serve; and discusses the implications of e-government to the library community.

This study explores factors that influence the initiation of leadership coaching relationships that include externally employed coaches and school administrators.

This qualitative research study includes semi-structured interviews, observations and documents collected across three academic years within the context of a university-based leadership coaching program. Participants included six leadership coaches and six school administrators who participated in the program.

Qualitative analysis indicates that gender and race, prior professional experience, pre-existing professional relationships and the complexity of the district’s organizational structure influence the initiation of the coaching relationship.

Confidentiality restrictions imposed by the program limit opportunities for member checking and other forms of triangulation. Additional data collection using more expansive research methods would help address this limitation.

This study contributes to the sparse literature about leadership coaching with school administrators by describing how different factors influence initiation coaching relationships.

It is argued that addicts, as people in general, are forward-looking and that they try to make the best of what they have got. However, this does not imply that they are fully rational. Cognitive defects, instabilities in preferences, and irrationalities in the form of wishful thinking and dynamical inconsistency play an important role in addictive behaviours. These “imperfections” in people's rationality may not have very large consequences in the case of ordinary goods, but their effect can be dramatic in relation to addictive goods. In the first part of the paper, the rational addiction theory and the empirical evidence that have been presented in support of the theory is reviewed. Regarding the conventional tests of the theory by econometric methods, it is argued that the tests are misguided, both theoretically and methodologically. Furthermore, it is claimed that the definition of addiction implicit in the rational addiction theory is unrealistic, and that the theory makes unrealistic assumptions about human nature. Some empirical evidence for these claims is reviewed. It is concluded that although the theory has its virtues, it faces serious problems and must be rejected in its original form. Secondly, the socio-cultural embeddedness of addictive behaviours, and the social roots of individual preferences, are discussed. These issues are more or less ignored in rational addiction theory. It is argued that we cannot expect to obtain a proper understanding of many addictive phenomena, unless they are seen in their proper socio-cultural context.

Data from a 1989 survey of over 600 middle‐level managers in a large Canadian corporation were analysed to examine the characteristics of jobs held by career‐family and career‐primary men and women. Hypotheses were developed based on human capital theory, statistical discrimination theory, and gender role congruence theory. Examining career outcomes suggested that participation in household labour had a significantly more negative association with men's hierarchical level than with women's. Implications for theory and suggestions for research are discussed.

Discusses the long existing and confusing problems of establishing the relationship of who is, and who if not, a dependent worker. Reflects developments which have occurred in British law as it affects the employment field, plus an evaluation and analysis of some of the different types of employment relationships which have evolved by examining, where possible, the status of each of these relationships. Concludes that the typical worker nowadays finds himself in a vulnerable position both economically and psychologically owing to the insecurity which exists.

Knowledge is the single most important competitive advantage an organization can have. But it's often not clear how to effectively obtain and share it.