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This paper aims to show the particular difference Independent Mental Capacity Advocates (IMCA) can make towards specific decisions which some acquired brain injury clients, who are eligible for the IMCA service, experience.

A case study is highlighted in which the role of the IMCA is described against the background of a selective literature review on the history of advocacy in relation to its emergence as a profession. This analysis references issues of spirituality and culture.

Themes raised in the case are discussed with reference to ongoing research and these are related to the best interests of clients, and to reflexivity as a basis for the professionalisation of advocacy.

IMCA practitioners are instructed in well‐defined “best interests” situations, where an individual has no capacity, support or representation, or requires safeguarding measures in relation to certain decisions. In these cases, social, cultural, emotional, religious or spiritual factors can contribute to the decisions which need to be made.

The emerging role of the IMCA in the “best interests” process is outlined, including how health and social care professionals, or decision‐makers, may relate to, benefit from, or respond to challenges by the IMCA in supporting clients in decisions made on their behalf.

Healthcare professionals and those advocating, including IMCA, could more intentionally weigh up the values and beliefs of clients using, for example, the “best interests checklist” or by referring to “spiritual assessment”, as used increasingly by mental health ward staff and chaplains.

The underpinning assumption in the adoption of 360° feedback is that it heightens an individual's self‐awareness by highlighting differences between how participants see themselves and how others see them. This statement implies that awareness motivates development and improves performance. This paper critically examines the introduction of 360° feedback in the civil service, drawing on the experiences of the Patent Office and taking account of the wider context of civil service modernisation.

The case study gathered data through a series of interviews and questionnaires. It sought the perceptions and experiences of management and participants in relation to the implementation process and the outcomes of the scheme.

At an organisational level the use of 360° feedback, as a performance management tool, failed to develop the self‐awareness anticipated. Neither was it found to be aligned with other development plans or the organisation's core competencies. At an individual level some participants believed that they achieved little from the process overall and this may be related to an expectation that the organisation's HRM system would be more proactive in planning development action on their behalf.

This research reflects the situation in one organisation. It is argued that the findings will have relevance for the wider civil service as the agenda for organisational efficiency, target setting, and performance improvement gathers momentum.

This paper takes a critical perspective on whether HR developments such as 360° feedback have a deep‐seated strategic rationale. It also explores the relationship between 360° feedback and the new public management.

The purpose of this paper is to assess and benchmark Six Sigma strategies in services sector, namely, the telecom field, by establishing tables of fallouts of non-conforming services and their associated costs along with a custom data envelopment model for benchmarking the different strategic alternatives.

Under normality assumption, process fallout in Six Sigma is around 0.002/3.4 part per million for a centered/shifted process. By introducing Six Sigma to applications in services sector, normality assumption may no longer be valid; hence, fallouts of non-normal attributes are computed for different one-sided quality levels. The associated costs of strategy deployment, fallout and transaction completion are all considered. Data envelopment analysis model is also established to benchmark the Six Sigma strategic plans. The strategies are detailed down to processes and to quality characteristics which constitute the decision-making units. The efficiency of each service unit is computed using both CCR and super efficiency models.

The amount of efforts/costs needed to reduce the variation in a service may differ according to the targeted quality level. For the same Six Sigma quality level, services demonstrate different performance/efficiencies and hence different returns. In some scenarios, moderate quality levels could present high efficiencies as compared to services of higher levels. It was also found that the required improvement is less in the case of Log-normal as compared to normal distributions at some quality levels. This observation is also noted across the presented distributions of this study (Normal, Log-normal, Exponential, Gamma and Weibull).

The deployment of Six Sigma in services is mostly found in time-related concepts such as timeliness of billing, lifetimes in reliability engineering, queueing theory, healthcare and telecommunication.

The paper contributes to the existing research by presenting an assessment model of Six Sigma strategies in services of non-normal distributions. Strategies of different quality levels present diverse efficiencies; hence, higher quality levels may not be the best alternatives in terms of the returns on investment. The computed fallout rates of the different distributions can serve as palm lines for further deployment of Six Sigma in services. Besides, the combination of optimization and Six Sigma analysis provides additional benchmarking tool of strategic plans in both manufacturing and services sector.

In August 2007 the Mainsail II SIV-Lite was frozen by its trustee as a result of the ongoing credit crisis. The state of Maine held $20 million of Mainsail commercial paper in its Cash Pool portfolio, a short-term portfolio that puts temporary, excess state revenues to work. When word of the potential loss became public, the Treasurer came under attack. The case introduces the functions of a state Treasury department, with particular emphasis on the investment objectives and guidelines for the cash pool as well as its composition. The case reviews the events leading up to and including August 2007, the month when the credit markets first began to seize and when the financial crisis effectively began. It examines securitization, structured finance, and the Mainsail SIV-Lite structure in some detail.

Men's music? Isn't that what the popular music industry has always been? Rock, middle‐of‐the‐road, pop, jazz, punk, disco, and (yes!) classical—it's all part of a world every bit as macho as that of dockworkers or football players. Music is big business and big business follows a safe and profitable path.

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of accelerators as authentic learning-based entrepreneurial training programs. Accelerators facilitate the development and assessment of entrepreneurial competencies in nascent entrepreneurs through the process of creating a start-up venture.

Survey data from applicants and participants of four start-accelerators are used to explore the linkages between accelerators and the elements of authentic learning. Authentic learning processes are then mapped onto the start-up processes that occur within the accelerators.

Accelerators take in nascent entrepreneurs and work to create start-ups. This activity develops the participants’ entrepreneurial competencies and facilitates authentic self-reflection.

This study explores how accelerators can be useful as authentic learning platforms for the development of entrepreneurial competencies. Limitations include perceptual measures and the inability to conduct paired sampling.

Entrepreneurship training is studied through the lens of authentic learning activities that occur within an accelerator. Participants develop and assess their mastery of and interest in entrepreneurship through tasks, exposure to experts and mentors, peer learning, and assessments such as pitching to investors at Demo Day.

This paper reports on the authentic learning processes and its usefulness in competency development and self-appraisal by accelerators participants. The opportunity for competency development and self-appraisal by nascent entrepreneurs before escalating their commitment to a start-up may be an accelerator’s raison d’être.

Traditional approaches in qualitative research have adopted one research paradigm linked to an established typology. This paper addresses the unconventional application of two research paradigms in one study. A critical realist approach was used to augment a constructivist analysis of data in a research project seeking to explore the meaning that managers in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) attach to hazard identification, the construction of a hazard profile reflective of the business and its use in assisting to manage hazards within the SME's safety management system framework. Critical realism offered a complementary but essential framework to explore causal mechanisms that led to a deeper understanding of the findings by searching for the processes and causality that lay beneath the social and organizational phenomena observed.

This paper compares the two research paradigms in order to seek junctures and apply them to a research project. Analytical tools applied to each research paradigm within the project are presented, followed by a new multiparadigm conceptual model that integrates critical realism and constructivism, providing an original contribution of knowledge to this field of qualitative research.

The adoption of a multiparadigm model enabled not only the interpretation of social phenomena but also the determination of its causality, enabling a more insightful answering of the research question and leading to a deeper insight into the phenomenology that was studied. This research approach widens the boundaries of qualitative inquiry within organizational research by promoting strategies that challenge more traditionally anchored research typologies, and consequently contributes to better research outcomes.

This study was conducted across four organizations. Similar research is encouraged across a greater number of case studies to validate the process of using a constructivist and critical realist paradigm to gain a more insightful understanding of events and their causality.

The comparison of two research paradigms and consequent provision of a conceptual model (Figure 3) provides potential for the development of further multiparadigm models for research projects within the field of organizational management.

This paper has the potential to promote engagement and collaboration between research scholars seeking to explore the use of multiple research paradigms.

Such an approach has not previously been widely discussed or adopted to examine qualitative data, and advances theory in qualitative research. The application of two research paradigms using such an approach can be applied to businesses in a number of different contexts to gain a more insightful understanding of research participant perspectives, observable events arising from those perspectives and their associated causality.

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, this article explores the influences of market intelligence on the development of small business marketing capabilities, with reference to specialized marketing capabilities, architectural marketing capabilities and dynamic capabilities.

The conceptual framework and propositions present and interpret the resource–capability complementarity between market intelligence and small business marketing capabilities and outline the relationship between individual capability sets.

Market intelligence is shown to be crucial in the development of small business marketing capabilities and in the implementation of more formalized marketing strategies that allow small businesses to create value for customers and improve their performance. However, the level to which market intelligence is utilized and marketing capabilities are developed is found to be considerably influenced by the small business owner-manager and firm learning.

It is imperative that small businesses acknowledge the practical benefits of market intelligence and harness these advantages accordingly. However, owner-managers must be motivated to encourage the development of more formalized marketing capabilities and act incisively upon the information derived from market intelligence.

Recent research indicates that market intelligence and marketing capabilities can interact to enable a firm to align its resources with the market, by providing customer insights that guide them as to which value-adding activities they should implement. However, extant research in this area remains in its infancy, and very little is known about the adoption processes of market intelligence in small businesses and its role in developing marketing capabilities.

Shame is a common, yet seldom acknowledged emotion. Shame signals a threatened social bond in which the claim of as what one wants to be seen (i.e., the claim for a certain relational identity and relative status positioning) is neglected by the other party. Using a case study approach, this chapter provides insights into how shame shapes the relationship and leadership structure in organizations. The case used is based on a documentary TV show; hence this chapter also provides insight in the use of visual/TV material to gain insight in relational leadership dynamics.