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Finding foolproof ways in which to retain customers has been the holy grail of good business since the very dawn of commerce. On the surface the premise seems simple enough; create a product or service that people want and through skilled delivery ensure that your customers keep coming back for more. However, never has such a seemingly straightforward ambition proved so elusive. Organizations in all industries are letting customers down. And as geographical boundaries dwindle and competition increases, disillusioned customers are unlikely to look back.

Adds to the stream of research concerned with understanding the relationship between good service and profit. Takes a broader perspective than recent studies and asks does the financial performance of those organisations with a reputation for service excellence differ markedly from those with a poor reputation? Focuses on three questions: “Does size matter?”; “Are the better organisations more productive?”; and “Are the better organisations more profitable?” The findings, based on a large and wide‐ranging empirical study undertaken in the UK, found that, whether measured in terms of total assets, turnover or number of employees, both large and small organisations are capable of being both excellent and poor. In terms of productivity the findings suggest that provision of better service is staff intensive but yields significantly greater profit per employee. The better service providers have significantly better return on equity and return on total assets than the poorer ones.

The paper presents a brief history of the development of operations management (OM). This provides the backdrop for a content analysis of journal articles published in the Journal of Operations Management and the International Journal of Operations & Production Management between January 1990 and June 2003. MBA student survey data are then used to explore any gaps that may exist between the focus of academic research and the perceived importance of given OM subject areas to practitioners. The practical and conceptual insights highlighted are then used as the basis for a discussion of extant research priorities. The paper concludes with a preliminary conceptual framework that distinguishes between OM research seeking to consolidate operations practice and that which seeks to apply theoretical concepts into a practical context.

Purpose – We investigate the impact of CEO turnover on performance and accounting-based outcomes following major business restructurings.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We analyze a sample of 217 major operational restructurings during the period 1999–2007 using regressions and other statistical tests.

Findings – We document significant improvements in postrestructuring operating and investment efficiencies with little differentiation between restructurings that involve a change in CEO and those that involve continuing CEOs. However, we find evidence of lower accounting quality for the continuing CEO firms. First, restructuring charges of CEO turnover firms are associated with lower current period unexpected core earnings and higher future period unexpected core earnings (lower levels of classification shifting). Second, CEO turnover firms have a significantly lower percentage of (i) restructuring charge reversals and (ii) prereversal shortfalls (in meeting analyst forecast estimates) followed by reversals (suggesting lower levels of subsequent earnings management). Therefore, turnover CEOs are less likely to manipulate restructuring charges to mask true economic performance than continuing CEOs. Overall, our evidence suggests continuing CEOs undertake less substantial restructurings, while opportunistically reporting similar charges and performance improvements, consistent with attempts to pool with new CEO hires to keep their jobs.

Originality/Value – Overall, our results highlight the key economic role played by top corporate managers in major business restructurings, suggesting that CEO turnover leads to both real changes in managerial actions and altered reporting incentives.

The purpose of this study is to review the capital budgeting literature over the past decade.

Specifically, over the years 2004–2013, we review works appearing in the major academic journals in accounting, finance, and management. Further, we review the specialized academic journals in management accounting. We examine the frequency of articles by journal and year published, the type of research method applied, and the topic area studied. We then review the research findings by topic area.

We find 110 articles appearing in the selected journals. While the articles increase in frequency, the research methods applied are predominantly analytical and archival in nature with relatively few experiments, case studies, or surveys. Some progress is observed for capital budgeting techniques and new methods for structuring uncertainty. The studies find that the size of capital budgets is about right for companies with high financial reporting quality, for liquid companies, during periods of normal cash flow, when the budget is financed by equity, for companies when they first go public or first go private. Tax rates and financial reporting methods for depreciation and tax expenses distort capital budgets. Organization structure and performance measurement can distort capital budgeting. Individual differences, especially optimism and honesty, can influence capital budgeting decisions.

This review is limited to the major journals in accounting, finance, and management; and the specialized journals in management accounting. There is much research to be done on capital budgeting, especially case studies of actual practice and experiments related to individual and group decision processes.

The chapter reviews existing research on merger and acquisition (M&A) activities and chief executive officers (CEOs) in organizations. The study provides insights into the existing literature and proposes avenues for future research on M&A activities and CEOs. The present study adopts bibliometric analysis on 319 articles identified from the literature. The articles selected for analysis are extracted from the Scopus database and are selected based on the focus of the papers on M&A activities and CEOs. Existing studies on M&A activities and CEOs demonstrate that CEOs affect M&A activities, CEOs affect the performance of M&A activities, and M&A activities also influence the role of CEOs in M&A activities. We identify and list scientific mapping in trending topics, scientific production, citation analysis, prominent authors, and their affiliations. The study is relevant to academicians, practitioners, and policymakers interested in corporate finance, especially in the areas overlapping CEO attributes and M&A activities.

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a commentary on the work reported by Hilary Johnson and her colleagues, which used partnership working as a lever for developing community inclusion for people with complex communication needs.

The commentary uses the wider literature on social inclusion as well as narrative from current policy in England on the development of “Transforming Care Partnerships” to explore some of the issues raised by the research.

The conclusion is that physical integration is only the starting point for a vision where people with the most complex needs live the “included life” which evolves by developing partnership working and reciprocal relationships between people with and without disabilities.

This paper attempts to highlight relevant key research in the area of social integration as a way of reviewing the likely impact of recent policy on the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and the most complex needs.

This paper presents the findings of an investigation into a mental health promotion initiative in young offender institutions across England. The study involved a survey of staff attitudes towards mental health promotion, and surveyed practice run by these staff. Analysis of staff descriptions of mental health promotion revealed a degree of confusion and a lack of clarity over the definition of mental health and mental health promotion. The concept of a mental health promotion initiative which aimed to improve the well‐being of the general inmate and staff population was not a shared vision and not part of the core work of either health care staff or prison officers. It is recommended that any future campaigns on mental health or health promotion should have a central lead, with some flexibility to allow for the development of local initiatives, fostering local relationships and partnerships.

This study investigates the prescription of antimuscarinic medication and the opinions of qualified psychiatric nursing staff regarding the use of ‘as required’ antimuscarinic drugs at a large secure psychiatric unit. No instances of inappropriate prescribing of antimuscarinic agents were found.