Search results

Although the public sector has become a major employer of management consultants, no research has previously been undertaken to investigate the purchase of management consultants in the public sector context. Outlines an investigation into the purchase of management consultants by government departments, focusing specifically on the selection decision. The UK and Australia were examined to ensure that the findings were not merely local phenomena. Research focused on the public sector decision makers’ guiding procurement principle, value for money, and the criteria and information sources both used and desired to assist the purchase decision. It was found that there was widespread and relatively uniform understanding of the procurement principle, value for money, although there appeared to be a lack of connection between this principle and procurement practice. Public sector decision makers also believed that they had adequate although not satisfactory access to information upon which to base their decisions while, significantly, it was revealed that these decision makers did not believe the selection decision for management consultants was, overall, difficult. Concludes that the implications of this research are twofold. First, it highlights the issues of “corporate memory” and information management, and their impact upon informed decision making, and secondly it questions the applicability of private sector research to public sector practice.

The paper intends to determine the extent to which environmental sustainability issues are integrated in the curricula of industrial design programs in Australian universities.

Industrial design lecturers and program heads were invited to participate in a web‐based survey on their university's industrial design curricula. Online university handbooks were also examined to determine which courses cover sustainability aspects. Survey results were then tabulated and analysed using descriptive statistics.

The study shows that, while there is a concern that sustainable development issues are important and relevant to design courses, the permeation of environmental sensitivity through most industrial design curricula, and indeed among design academics, is only starting to gain ground. Comparative examination of the curricular structures in Australian universities offering degree programs in industrial and product design revealed that, on average, 12 out of every 100 credit points earned have sustainability content.

The paper informs industrial design academics that much more work has to be done in order to educate the next generation of designers about their responsibilities to the planet and its people. It tells them where we currently are and the gaps that we have to bridge in order to achieve environmental sustainability.

The paper is original in the field of Australian industrial design education, and builds on work in other disciplines about incorporating sustainability aspects in tertiary education.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management/Sundry; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution.

Barriers to employment are a significant issue in the United States and abroad. As civil rights legislation continues to be enforced and as employers seek to diversify their workplaces, it is incumbent upon the management field to offer insights that address obstacles to work. Although barriers to employment have been addressed in various fields such as psychology and economics, management scholars have addressed this issue in a piecemeal fashion. As such, our review will offer a comprehensive, integrative model of barriers to employment that addresses both individual and organizational perspectives. We will also address societal-level concerns involving these barriers. An integrative perspective is necessary for research to progress in this area because many individuals with barriers to employment face multiple challenges that prevent them from obtaining and maintaining full employment. While the additive, or possibly multiplicative, effect of employment barriers have been acknowledged in related fields like rehabilitation counseling and vocational psychology, the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature has virtually ignored this issue. We discuss suggestions for the reduction or elimination of barriers to employment. We also provide an integrative model of employment barriers that addresses the mutable (amenable to change) nature of some barriers, while acknowledging the less mutable nature of others.

This chapter integrates research that highlights and demonstrates the importance of the marketing mix and customer attitudinal metrics in influencing the customer’s path to purchase. A key objective of this chapter is the provision of an integrative conceptual framework that links marketing actions to customer mindset metrics along the consumer’s path to purchase and the identification of the mechanisms by which customer mindset metrics contribute to consumer purchase journey. Specifically, it delineates two routes for the effects to manifest on sales: the “mindset route” where marketing actions influence customer mindset metrics, which in turn influence brand performance, or the “transactions route” where marketing actions influence market performance directly without influencing the intermediate mindset metrics. A second objective is to identify empirical patterns on incorporating marketing mix and mindset metrics along the path to purchase by reviewing key papers in this domain. Finally, the chapter concludes with the formulation of a rich, forward-looking research agenda on the customer mindset metrics – path to purchase link.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the reasons why public sector managers approach either consultants or academics for their help in solving problems related to public sector accounting and management reforms.

A field study based on reactions to real‐life constructs and answers to questions about the experiences of public sector managers in Italian, Dutch and Swedish central government agencies.

Public sector managers approach consultants, due to their experience‐based knowledge, for solving well‐defined practical and technical problems. In the case of tacit knowledge, a strong interaction between the public sector manager and the consultant, denoted as socialization, is the typical way of knowledge transfer. In accordance with expectations, public sector managers approach academics for advice regarding value‐laden problems in their organization. However, academics also give advice about practical and technical issues, usually being the primary domain of consultants, but often when impartial advice is required. Although the authors expected academics to transfer knowledge rather detached from their clients (interiorization), this was not corroborated, because often academics work closely with their counterparts in the client organization.

The theoretical framework was helpful in explaining the role of consultants, but it required refinement in explaining the role of academics as external experts.

The paper contributes to a better articulated set of preferences of public sector managers in asking advice from either a consultant or an academic.

The paper offers a simultaneous and systematic empirical examination of the roles that consultants and academics play in public sector management and accounting reforms.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.