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This paper aims to examine the usefulness of organizational change theory for management practice.

The authors present an exploratory, empirical study of managers who were taught organizational change theory as part of a postgraduate degree. Building on the study findings, they analyse managers' subsequent experiences of organizational change; of how they use change theory in practice and the impact on their practice of their earlier formal study.

The paper finds that the complexities of managing change in practice reflect distinctive organizational environments and cultures. The skills and knowledge which managers found most useful were those that enabled them to “make sense” of the organizational change they subsequently experienced. The main impact of their earlier studies was to prompt informative, discursive and reflective approaches to change management.

The paper discusses the implications for future teaching of organizational change and the development of organizational change theory.

The qualitative findings of the study add to, and help to explain, earlier research findings on the questions of how managers' experience change, how they use organizational change theory and its impact on their practice.

This chapter asks, how do the decisions made by Ambridge women compare to the rest of the UK when faced with an unexpected positive pregnancy test, and will explore the decisions made by four Ambridge women when faced with the question of their own pregnancies. It will firstly present the UK context of pregnancy and family composition and go on to examine four case studies of unplanned pregnancy, the decision-making process encountered and its outcomes in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.

Upcycling was introduced in The Archers by Fallon Rogers, who created a business from selling furniture she had upcycled. The author cites other examples from Archers episodes: Bert Fry’s egg mobile was originally an old caravan. Eddie Grundy built Lynda Snell’s shepherd’s hut from farmyard scrap. Josh Archer expanded his online farm equipment sales to include old items refurbished and sold for profit. Definitions of upcycling imply that the original item has become worthless. The author, however, includes examples of nostalgic value placed on relics of a bygone age and suggests a dichotomy between the values of older versus younger Ambridge residents. Upcycling can also be viewed in a metaphorical sense: Lilian Bellamy, for example, regularly upcycled herself with cosmetic assistance. The most sinister example is that of Rob Titchener, who used coercive control to upcycle Helen (then) Titchener into the image he wanted. The author concludes that while motives may take several forms, it is Fallon Rogers who consistently uses both creativity and business sense in her upcycling endeavours.

This study seeks to examine the impact of downsizing and restructuring decisions and processes on perceptions of organisational knowledge and effectiveness after downsizing and restructuring events in “successful” and “unsuccessful” organisations.

The study proposes a conceptual framework hypothesising that the impact of decisions and processes on levels of organisational knowledge are key determinants of effectiveness in post‐downsizing and restructuring organisations. Data were collected using a survey instrument developed through review of literature along with focus group findings. Survey data are factor‐analysed to identify stable constructs for testing hypotheses using regression analysis.

The findings indicate that the significance of the variables tested is found in those organisations considered by employees to be unsuccessful after downsizing and restructuring, rather than in their successful counterparts

The findings indicate that organisations undertaking downsizing or restructuring need to consider the organisational culture and climate with regard to knowledge retention and the potential impact of these initiatives to ensure that employee experiences are constructive. Support strategies such as counselling and training are important, as are job redesign, time for employee handover and documentation of procedures, if knowledge retention is to be maximised.

Although knowledge retention within organisations is generally accepted as desirable, little previous research has considered the impact of downsizing decisions or processes on knowledge retention. Additionally, data collected for this research were drawn from multiple respondents within a large number of organisations, providing breadth and depth of data for analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore and foreground secondary religious education (RE) student teachers’ accounts of the dilemmas they experienced in their classrooms and schools in a highly racialised post referendum environment. Teacher narratives are analysed in order to suggest ways in which a transformative teaching and learning agenda drawing from a pluralistic human rights framework can be reasserted in place of government requirements to promote fundamental British values (FBV).

Qualitative data were collected in focus group interviews to gain insights into how the referendum environment was experienced phenomenologically in localised school settings.

The interview data reveals the complex ways in which the discourses circulating in the post referendum milieu play out in highly contingent, diverse secondary school settings. These schools operate in a high stakes policy context, shaped by the new civic nationalism of FBV, the Prevent security agenda and government disavowal of “multiculturalism” in defence of “our way of life” (Cameron, 2011). A key finding to emerge from the teachers’ narratives is that some of the ways in which Prevent and FBV have been imposed in their schools has reduced the transformative potentials of the critical, pluralistic RE approaches to teaching and learning that is promoted within the context of their university initial teacher education programme.

The findings suggest that existing frameworks associated with security and civic nationalism are not sufficient to ensure that young citizens receive an education that prepares them for engagement with a post truth, post Brexit racial and political environment. Transformative teaching and learning approaches (Duckworth and Smith, 2018), drawing upon pluralistic, critical RE and human rights education are presented as more effective alternatives which recognise the dignity and agency of both teachers and students.

This paper is an original investigation of the impact of the Brexit referendum environment on student teachers in a university setting. In the racialised aftermath of the referendum the need for transformative pluralistic and critical educational practice has never been more urgent. The data and analysis presented in this paper offer a compelling argument for a root and branch reformulation of current government security agendas in education.

The study presents the principal results of a survey into patient information needs and satisfaction levels in a large general hospital as part of a feasibility study on the provision of a patient information service. The background to the survey is the change in the patient/doctor relationship to one of consumer/supplier, coupled with the growing awareness of the importance of patient education and information as a form of preventive medicine. The survey found that information given prior to admission increased satisfaction rates for information provision generally, but also led to more questions being asked during the stay in hospital. Patients were given information freely, though there are slight gender differences, and there is a preference for verbal rather than written information from doctors. There are implications for patient information services. A range of patient resources is provided by wards, but there are problems of co‐ordination of supply and the human resources needed to manage them effectively.