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A fundamental assumption within action learning is that learning only occurs through participation, reflection and action. Revans maintains that individuals will fail to understand the “how” of an experience until they have experienced it for themselves, i.e. “learned by doing”. The purpose of this paper is to postulate that Revans’ second phase of action learning, the reflection phase can, in situations where participation is not possible, be enhanced through reflective vicarious learning (RVL) or learning from the behaviour of others.

This paper adopts a desk research approach review of the literature.

The authors maintain that Revans’ concept of “learning by doing” in the context of the goldfish bowl exercise can enhance an individual’s insight through RVL or learning from the behaviour of others.

The paper is limited in some respects as it focusses on the viewpoint of the author coupled with the literature. Future research could explore participant voices to add an extra dimension to the work.

In terms of utility for others, this paper is useful for developing an understanding of the differing learning opportunities that RVL and action learning combined can offer. As such, it has meaning for action learning facilitators, set members, academics and educational consultants.

This papers originality is that it seeks to enhance Revans’ proposition by illustrating how RVL in the second phase of action learning can enhance an individual’s learning in situations where participation is not possible.

The personalities, style and job demands of top ranking police officers have never before been seriously analysed. Here, by using a management development survey, key personality characteristics and the management and interpersonal styles of top ranking officers are identified. The views of chief officers are discussed, together with an examination of the necessary qualities required. Ways in which senior officers can improve their performance through management training and development and how this can assist their professional growth and development, are emphasised.

This paper seeks to exploit the TV series “inquest” held 12 months after the original programme to assess the impact of Gerry Robinson (if any) on healthcare delivery effectiveness observed at Rotherham General Hospital, UK, in particular, to explicitly identify the positive features in such a way as to better enable transferability of “good practice” between healthcare organisations.

The approach adopted is to first chronicle the areas of perceived progress and delivery shortfalls. Thence via careful reference to the established literature to identify the engineering change modus operandi most likely to yield benefits in typical healthcare scenarios. Additionally, to confirm the expected and identify the unexpected barriers to change.

As with any highly publicised programme, the Hawthorne Effect on the various “actors” is not entirely negligible. A positive step forward is confirmation that actively involving coal‐face players, including physicians, nurses, and support staff in the success gets results. Examples unfortunately emerge where physicians‐led innovation is stifled by either internal or external bureaucracy.

Some reasonably reliable narrative evidence is presented describing what may actually work in healthcare delivery performance improvement programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current practices of large UK organisations with respect to post-audits of capital projects with the aim of improving management decision making in the future. The investment process has been clearly mapped out in the literature, with the initial project proposal, appraisal, selection (investment decision), implementation, completion, and finally the post-audit. It is this latter stage which is ignored by so many organisations and has received less attention in the academic literature, a gap the author hopes to fill.

The empirical data are collated from a postal questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, followed by a short e-mail questionnaire. A methodological triangulation of empirical data obtained from the questionnaires and interviews, were undertaken to overcome some of the deficiencies from just using one method of data collection. The research is empirical and uses exploratory descriptive analysis to interpret the findings. The author focuses on the aspect of organisational learning theory as a process of continuous improvement, learning from past experience, especially in the management decision-making paradigm.

The author discovered nine important reasons for undertaking post-audits and ten for not. An important observation is that while those organisations which do not undertake post-audits attach a greater level of importance to “the reasons for not carrying out post-audits” and “the problems faced in the implementation of post-audits”, these difficulties have been overcome by those organisations that undertake post-audits. Evidence suggests that the current change in business culture, as a result of the recent financial crisis, may be refocusing the aims of post-audits from a learning exercise to one of managerial responsibility.

The research may be limited (in forming general conclusions) as it is based on a relatively small sample size. The author does not, however, believe that this distracts from its importance.

The author argues that training the non-users to overcome the perceived difficulties would enhance the investment decision-making process by encouraging them to learn from the experience of those that undertake post-audits.

The research is original as it reports on a current survey and will fill, what the author perceives to be, a gap in the literature. The respondents to the research consists of some of the most senior executives from the largest UK organisations and their views on academic issues are, in many cases, difficult to obtain; this research therefore has value in this respect. The findings point the way to new lines of enquiry in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of pet ownership and its relationship to wellbeing in later life. In particular, the paper addresses the issue of pet ownership in communal residential settings for older people both now and in the past, comparing attitudes, policies, and practices in regard to pets in the late 1950s with the early years of the twenty‐first century.

Following a review of the research literature on older people and companion animals, the paper draws on new data derived from recent research conducted by the authors. It compares archived material on the residential homes for older people that Peter Townsend visited in the late 1950s as part of his classic study, The Last Refuge (1962), with findings from revisiting a sample of these homes 50 years later. The authors employed the same methods as Townsend (observation together with interviews with managers and residents).

The historical dimension of the research reveals ambivalence both in the past and in present times in respect of residents' pets in care homes. Top‐down controlling regimes in the past have been replaced by concerns about health and safety and the need to strike a balance between rights, risks, and responsibilities. The variations in current policy and practice in England and Wales seem to reflect the subjective views and experiences of care home managers and proprietors. The lesson seems to be that care home owners should be expected to have an explicit policy in regard to the keeping of companion animals, but one that is not dictated by law.

The longitudinal data drawn on in this paper add a new perspective to research on older people and pets in care homes.

Since women were first admitted to the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in 1976, gender integration has been an important issue. This chapter reviews the works of two social scientists that researched and documented the gender integration efforts of that time. It then summarizes more recent gender climate data, presents data from our study of correlates of cadet perceptions of females at USAFA, and discusses implications of these findings for gender climate and leadership development programs. In the early years of gender integration, male cadets had more traditional attitudes toward women in society than civilian males or female cadets; views that changed little by the time of graduation. Also, they often were vocally opposed to the integration of women at the Academy and in the military and viewed female cadets and officers as less capable leaders. In contrast, the females in the first cohort were less traditional in their attitudes and backgrounds and were very positively supportive of women in nontraditional roles. Nevertheless, they were “feminine” in their gender identities and, unexpectedly, became “more feminine” over the course of their Academy experience.

Despite vast improvements in the past 30 years or so, some gender integration issues remain; there continue to be gender-related jokes and comments, and a small but substantial portion of men do not believe that women belong at the Academy.

In the present study, we looked at what variables predicted men's and women's agreement with the statements: “female cadets can hack it (succeed) here” and “I have no trouble taking orders from a female officer.” We also looked at how cadets rated leadership scenarios featuring either male or female officers.

The findings revealed that different variables predict men's and women's attitudes toward females at USAFA.

Results are discussed in terms of continuing efforts to improve the gender climate at USAFA as well as to enhance leadership development programs.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

OUR correspondent revives the problem of fiction supply on a paying basis to readers in public libraries. The figures he gives of the sums that a charge of one penny per issue might realize in certain libraries if the number of books issued remains as last year are impressive; the sums are usefully substantial. He does not deal with objections obvious to librarians. We have recently been admonished for making any charge in connexion with our lendings, as we have shown in these pages, when we wrote that the law can be altered although new library legislation seems unlikely at present. The other quite practical difficulties are that one withdraws privileges from the public only at the risk of a clamour for their restoration. Then it is commonsense to argue that if the people desire to provide themselves with any kind of reading from public funds they have the right to do so. At present they appear to exercise that right, otherwise it seems unlikely that a large city would allow two millions of fiction to be circulated out of a total issue of three and a half millions. It cannot be contended that our local statesmen do not see the significance of these figures. There is the further question of the unsatisfactory nature of the terms non‐fiction as embracing everything that is not narrative imaginative prose, and fiction as embracing everything that is. The whole question, like the poor, is always with us, but it cannot conveniently be brushed aside.

Business is any legally permissible economic activity for gain. The first relation between government and business is that government determines by law what are the illegal activities, e.g. fraud, crime, violence. Government is the rule maker.

The burgeoning of the convenience store in the UK is taking many forms — from the home‐grown variety (often via symbol groups) to transatlantic imports. What they have in common is extended opening hours and a broad variety of merchandise, hut within that band there are many variations, and the style of the operations are often dictated by the character of the parent company. We are now seeing the beginnings of an indigenous multiple, which, while springing from the roots of a floundering grocery chain, nevertheless has a mark of distinction and has pushed the c‐store into the upmarket bracket for the first time. Sue Sharples looks at the new style Cullen's convenience store.