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Why did a powerful department of hospital doctors support a merger with a rival hospital that they knew would ruin their beloved workplace?

This ethnographic study draws on 12 months of fieldwork consisting of 24 one-on-one interviews as well as 26 h of observations, informal conversations and archival records research to answer its research question. Grounded theory and the discourse analysis were employed to analyze all data.

Data reveal how participants' belief in a “merge or go bankrupt” narrative contributed to widespread support for a merger that seemed unthinkable on the surface. Although each doctor believes the merger will jeopardize or ruin their workplace culture, none resisted the merger nor did any ask hospital executives to provide evidence in support of their claims regarding the benefits of the merger (namely, that it would save their organization from inevitable bankruptcy).

The author relied on a family relative to introduce the author to and gain entry into this workplace. One potential consequence is biased interpretations of data. To address this, the author constantly revisited the data and compared the author’s interpretations with interviewees' words (i.e. “grounded” theory).

This study provides empirical and theoretical contributions to organizational storytelling scholarship.

Psychosocial risk factors and high rates of psychiatric comorbidity render individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) vulnerable to developing low self-esteem (LSE). Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) interventions are effective for enhancing self-esteem in typically developing populations, but the degree to which they are clinically beneficial for individuals with ASD has been little explored. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A pilot group intervention was undertaken to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of CBT for LSE in adults with ASD. Adaptations to standard protocols were made, in order to accommodate core ASD characteristics.

Four participants attended eight sessions: these comprised formulation of causal and maintaining mechanisms for LSE, cognitive interventions designed to reduce self-criticism and promote a more balanced self-view, and behavioural interventions intended to increase engagement in enjoyable activities, and enhance problem-solving skills and assertiveness. Self-report questionnaires were completed at four time points: baseline, at the first and last sessions, and at one-month follow-up. Data analysis indicated no change in the primary self-esteem outcome measure. Some improvements were noted on secondary outcomes, specifically in social anxiety and depressive symptoms, and general functioning.

Further studies are needed to determine how to design and deliver CBT interventions and techniques which target LSE in individuals with ASD.

This is one of the first CBT group interventions designed to address LSE in adults with ASD.

The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under investigation.

Criticism of the dominant, rational approach to project management (PM) and its underlying hypotheses highlights a considerable PM research gap for research projects (research problem). The authors undertake a six-step constructive research approach to investigate if SD (the construct) constitutes a fruitful method to support the management of collaborative research projects. A two-part literature review summarizes known challenges in collaborative research projects and introduces the history and application of SD methodology. The work includes participatory action research (PAR) in two case studies, constituting a qualitative research method.

The authors found the SD method to be useful for structuring and analyzing intuitive project processes. However, using SD in the management of single projects presents some fundamental challenges. SD, like PM, struggles with issues related to myopic decisions, a “predict and provide” attitude with clear aspects of path dependency in the project front-end as well as inconsistent and/or missing identification of success criteria among different stakeholders.

This paper does not provide any comprehensive, normative account of scenario techniques or compare SD with other foresight and future studies methods. Although PAR is in itself a research method that demands systematic description and execution, the focus of this paper is the overall constructive research approach.

The paper offers a broadened repertoire of methods to describe and analyse project stakeholder situations (collaborative aspects) and to structure and balance the need for both rational and intuitive project processes (research aspects). The SD method also supports development of graphical storylines and facilitates the use of influence diagrams, event trees and cost/benefit analysis.

Although PM literature contains several references to SD, the practical application of SD at single-project level has, to the authors’ knowledge, never been described in the PM literature.

By adopting a cognitive perspective, we examine ways in which knowledge creation processes within organizations effectively enhance organizational knowledge via the cognitive processes of organizational members. We identify two distinct yet complementary learning processes—informational and interactive—and argue that these processes contribute to the creation of organizational knowledge in different ways. We use cognitive mapping to examine changes in knowledge and use a research design involving pre‐test and post‐test of cognitive maps. Results suggest that organizational knowledge generally improves as organizations engage in the knowledge creation processes and that the effectiveness of such processes in creating knowledge depends on the context. The conceptual arguments and methods developed in this paper should encourage researchers to conduct additional empirical research and help managers change the mix of the informational and interactive learning processes for effective learning as their firm's competitive environment becomes more volatile.

Purpose – This chapter contributes to comparative biopolitics and reviews primatological literature, especially about our nearest relatives, the Great Apes.

Design/methodology/approach – Biopolitics in this chapter means evolutionarily informed political science, with emphasis on power relations. I review the literature on intrasexual and intersexual dominance interactions among individuals and competitive and/or agonistic interactions among groups in the Great Apes (Hominidae, formerly Pongidae): orangutan (Pongo with two species and three subspecies), gorilla (Gorilla with four subspecies), bonobo (Pan paniscus), and common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes with four subspecies). In the final section I present some (speculative) thoughts on Pan prior or the modern human ancestor.

Findings – Not only Man is a political animal.

Originality/value – Impartial, objective, and as complete as possible review of the literature for the students of (comparative) politics, ethology, and psychology.

Although it is widely acknowledged that health care delivery systems are complex adaptive systems, there are gaps in understanding the application of systems engineering approaches to systems analysis and redesign in the health care domain. Commonly employed methods, such as statistical analysis of risk factors and outcomes, are simply not adequate to robustly characterize all system requirements and facilitate reliable design of complex care delivery systems. This is especially apparent in institutional-level systems, such as patient safety programs that must mitigate the risk of infections and other complications that can occur in virtually any setting providing direct and indirect patient care. The case example presented here illustrates the application of various system engineering methods to identify requirements and intervention candidates for a critical patient safety problem known as failure to rescue. Detailed descriptions of the analysis methods and their application are presented along with specific analysis artifacts related to the failure to rescue case study. Given the prevalence of complex systems in health care, this practical and effective approach provides an important example of how systems engineering methods can effectively address the shortcomings in current health care analysis and design, where complex systems are increasingly prevalent.

The aim of this article is to summarise the available evidence from systematic reviews about the effectiveness of interventions to prevent or treat child physical abuse and neglect. A computerised search was undertaken of major electronic databases up to December 2005 using key search terms. Only systematic reviews were included in which the primary studies evaluated the effectiveness of targeted or indicated interventions for child physical abuse or neglect. A total of 31 systematic reviews were identified and 15 met all the inclusion criteria. They covered a range of interventions/services, including home visiting, parenting programmes, multi‐component interventions, intensive family preservation services, family‐focused casework and multi‐systemic family therapy. There was limited evidence of the effectiveness of services in improving objective measures of abuse and neglect, due in part to methodological issues involved in their measurement, but good evidence of modest benefits in improving a range of outcomes that are associated with physical abuse and neglect, including parental and family functioning and child development. The results also showed some interventions (eg. media‐based and perinatal coaching) to be ineffective with high‐risk families. The evidence provided by these reviews has clear implications for children's services in the UK and other western developed countries.

This chapter presents empirical evidence on the effects of attributional retraining (AR), a motivation-enhancing treatment that can offset maladaptive explanatory mind-sets arising from adverse learning experiences. The evidence shows that AR is effective for assisting college students to adapt to competitive and challenging achievement settings.

This chapter describes the characteristics of AR protocols and details three primary advances in studying AR efficacy in terms of achievement performance, psychosocial outcomes, and processes that mediate AR-performance linkages. The psychological mechanisms that underpin AR effects on motivation and performance are outlined from the perspective of Weiner’s (1974, 1986, 2012) attribution theory.

Laboratory and field studies show that AR treatments are potent interventions that have short-term and long-lasting psychosocial, motivation, and performance benefits in achievement settings. Students who participate in AR programs are better off than their no-AR counterparts not just in their cognitive and affective prospects, but they also outperform their no-AR peers in class tests, course grades, and grade-point-averages, and are more persistent in terms of course credits and graduation rates.

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on treatment interventions in achievement settings by documenting key advances in the development of AR protocols and by identifying the next steps critical to moving the literature forward. Further progress in understanding AR efficacy will rest on examining the analysis of complex attributional thinking, the mediation of AR treatment effects, and the boundary conditions that moderate AR treatment efficacy.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.