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This paper aims to present the findings of research commissioned by a Primary Care Trust in the UK to assess the implementation of a new pilot Human Givens mental health service (HGS) within primary care.

Participating General Practitioners practices were designated as either “Human givens” or “Control” practices. The study focused on service users with mild to moderate depressed mood measured using HADS. The well-being of these participants was examined at the point of referral, and after four, eight and 12 months using three well-being questionnaires.

The results revealed that emotional well-being significantly improved during the first four months following referral for both groups and this improvement was maintained up to and including one year post referral. Compared to the Control group Human givens therapy was found to be of shorter duration, lasting one or two sessions compared to standard treatment which lasted on average four sessions.

Apart from the psychological insight and emotional support, it is suggested that Human givens therapy might help the client to better function in society and maintain a sense of social integration. This has benefits to other providers of social care.

This paper seeks to offer a commentary on Psychologically Informed Services: A Good Practice Guide, a recently published operational guidance document on developing psychologically informed environments (PIEs) in services for homeless people.

The paper is an invited opinion piece and comment, based on the specialist experience and viewpoint of the authors in education on mental health issues in primary care.

The new operational guidance is welcomed, with some provisos. Psychologically informed environments are needed not just in homelessness resettlement, but in all areas where services are commissioned; and all commissioned services should take particular care to collect suitable data on the outcomes they aim for and intend to achieve.

There is a great opportunity with GP commissioning to commission services that are psychologically informed and holistic, although it may be hard to ensure services remain user‐focused and not disjointed if split up for tendering. Public health leadership on the new Health and Wellbeing Boards will be crucial to integrate services so the new system will not make things worse. Given the need, hopefully a similar drive for PIEs everywhere – the criminal justice system, care homes and community wellbeing – will follow.

To broaden the range of well-being outcomes that can be measured for patients with depressed mood and/or other mental health issues the aim is to determine the reliability and validity of a self-reported instrument that was designed by the Human Givens Institute to evaluate emotional distress (emotional needs audit – ENA).

The ENA was administered to 176 patients, aged between 18-65 years (mean age: 39.2 years). The acceptability of the ENA was examined as well as its internal consistency (Cronbach ' s alphas). ENA was administered at four time points and test-retest reliability was conducted between times 1 and 2. The data from three scales also administered to these patients (SWLS, CORE-OM and HADS) were used to aid the conduct of the ENA construct validity (concurrent and discriminant). Analysis of the ENA sensitivity/specificity was also performed.

All the ENA items (except one) were shown to have good acceptability. The internal consistency was also very strong (Cronbach ' s alpha: 0.84); the construct validity also revealed positive results for the ENA: concurrent validity (r=0.51-0.62; p < 0.001); discriminant validity (r=0.22-0.28; p < 0.01). Test-retest reliability was r=0.46 (p < 0.001). Finally, ENA demonstrated high sensitivity (80 per cent), and moderate specificity (35 per cent).

ENA was shown to be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring wellbeing, quality of life and emotional distress. It also allows insight into the causes of symptoms, dissatisfaction and distress. It is suggested that this tool has complementarity to standardised tools when used in clinical practice.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

Describes the development and use of GRIP, an online information storage and retrieval system for personal indexes, using a Hewlett Packard 2100S minicomputer. Users are able to compile their own files consisting of completely unformatted records, and searching is carried out online from remote terminals often in the user's own laboratory. The potential use of the system is indicated and further possible developments outlined.

The new concept ‘iconic biography’ (IB) is explained. Its impact on managers who aspire to lead their organisations to outstanding performance is described using contrasting examples from the public sector. The relationship between a leader's IB and their ability to influence organisational ethos and culture is also described with survey evidence as to the impact on staff attitudes and morale.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This article explores the implementation of quality management initiatives in four local authorities and considers how far such a scenario offers a possibility for social partnership between management and trade unions. Although no collective bargaining processes are defined in the social partnership model, it is contended here that the implied collective bargaining model in social partnership is Walton and McKersie’s “integrative bargaining” model. It is further contended that the scenario of implementing quality management in local government offers all the preconditions for integrative bargaining to take place – both in terms of the legitimate presence of recognised unions and through the pursuit of an issue in which management, staff and trade unions may have mutual interests. In practice, however, conditions for integrative bargaining outcomes did not emerge. Evidence for this was based on assessing senior manager and union branch official opinions through interviews, and on survey responses from Unison members.