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During the last two decades the public sector has come under increasing pressure to improve performance and demonstrate greater transparency and accountability. This pressure has resulted in public sector organisations facing shifts in ways of operating. Various corporate change strategies have been adopted by different public sector agencies, many of these cloning managerial practices from the private sector. These changes in public sector organisations have enormous significance for regional economic and social development. While there is a growing body of knowledge dealing with the management of corporate change there are still significant gaps in understanding the process. While there is much written on public versus private corporate change, there is little distinguishing between change in different types of public sector organisations. This paper analyses change management processes and seeks to determine whether a hybrid model of “new public management” delivers more favourable outcomes than a model focused on cost reduction and private sector prejudice for the bottom line.

The purpose of this paper is to assist public sector organizations to carry out better change management strategies and thus achieve better change processes and also to provide a critique of top‐down change strategies, especially when employed by public sector agencies. Furthermore, the paper uses the case of one such public sector organization to highlight the need to complement top‐down change strategies with other approaches.

The paper used a three‐year longitudinal case study approach to ascertain the efficacy of top‐down change in a large public sector organization. Data were collected by means of a series of employee focus groups and interviews with key management personnel. This was supplemented by organizational communication outputs.

The paper finds that a top‐down change strategy needs to be coupled with other change strategies for change to become successfully embedded in the organization. Organizational factors and processes can limit the effectiveness of communicating top‐down change and prevent information from filtering through the organization in the expected way.

The paper shows that genuine consultation and meaningful two‐way communication must be established for top‐down change strategies to function effectively together with other techniques.

The paper complements previous literature on top‐down change and corroborates earlier findings. In addition, it highlights the vital importance of middle managers in communicating organizational change and the need to establish a genuine two‐way communication flow.

In this study, the authors use the actor-network theory (ANT) as a theoretical framework to better understand constructing learning as part of the networking process to produce innovations. Focussing on the antecedents of innovation within three teams in an engineering company, the authors propose a framework to enhance understanding of the innovative processes. The authors apply ANT to examine how informal learning is distributed amongst human and non-human actors.

Based on 27 interviews in a large Australian engineering company, the authors' qualitative investigation shows that innovation can have very different antecedents. The authors mobilised ANT as the authors' vantage point to explore inanimate actors and their effect on social processes or, more specifically, networks and informal learning.

The authors propose a framework to better understand innovative processes by exploring the network aspects of non-human actors and their connection to learning. More specifically, findings contribute towards a more granulated understanding of how networks, learning and non-human actors contribute towards innovations in organisations.

This study has three significant implications for managers and organisations looking to improve their innovation processes. Firstly, fostering open communication is essential for developing successful innovation processes. Secondly, a close relationship with the customer and/or the final users has often been found to positively contribute to innovation processes. Finally, intrateam motivation is also critical when it comes to creating an environment that supports innovation processes.

Surprisingly, leadership, communication and motivation did not give the best innovative outcome as the authors expected. Challenging traditional theorisations, low teamwork spirit and high individual performance orientation were some of the powerful drivers of highly innovative teams.

This paper aims to examine a case study of an Indian public sector bank (PSB) to better understand the employee's experience of the change, specifically top‐down culture change.

This study uses a qualitative case study approach to describe and extract lessons from a top‐down change in an Indian PSB. The data were collected twice to understand the extent of change with a gap of two years.

The study indicates that selective change has occurred as a response to the external environment that affected organizational mission and strategy. The study findings indicate that there is a significant realignment of the strategy, structure, systems, and technology along with the level of customer satisfaction. Efforts to realign employees' experiences and attitudes, however, leave a lot to be desired.

The study is based on single case study.

Lessons on how to implement change in the public sector are discussed. The findings bring forth a unique challenge faced by organizations to create a culture which is a blend of market and employee orientation. Further studies are needed in this domain.

This research fills the literature gap in the domain of culture change by carrying out a study in a developing country in Southern Asia. Second, most of the studies do not make a clear distinction between behavioral and values levels, and very few studies have looked at both the levels simultaneously. The current study is an attempt to fill this research gap.

Many employers lack disability confidence regarding how to include people with disabilities in the workforce, which can lead to stigma and discrimination. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of disability confidence from two perspectives, employers who hire people with a disability and employees with a disability.

A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted using 35 semi-structured interviews (18 employers who hire people with disabilities; 17 employees with a disability).

Themes included the following categories: disability discomfort (i.e. lack of experience, stigma and discrimination); reaching beyond comfort zone (i.e. disability awareness training, business case, shared lived experiences); broadened perspectives (i.e. challenging stigma and stereotypes, minimizing bias and focusing on abilities); and disability confidence (i.e. supportive and inclusive culture and leading and modeling social change). The results highlight that disability confidence among employers is critical for enhancing the social inclusion of people with disabilities.

The study addresses an important gap in the literature by developing a better understanding of the concept of disability from the perspectives of employers who hire people with disabilities and also employees with a disability.

This paper assesses the ability of the minimally verbal child with autism to recognise their own voice. The rationale for this study rests in recent advances in technology aimed at making the voice of speech generating devices (SGDs) sound more like the child using them (van Santen and Black, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the child’s ability to actually recognise the sound of their own voice in a series of short experiments using computer-based methodology.

Using a voice-face matching computerised paradigm, the performance of 33 children with autism was compared to that of 27 children with developmental delay (DD), and 33 typically developing (TD) children. The children were matched for verbal and non-verbal ability and a training period was conducted prior to the main test to ensure children’s understanding of what was expected of them.

The findings of this study suggest that the child with autism recognise the sound of their own voice at test, but with much greater difficulty than age-and-ability matched comparison groups. The implications of this finding are useful for researchers in the field of speech mimicry technology and manufacturers of SGD software packages. The paper also provides empirical insights about how the child with autism may process voice in their everyday social interactions.

Some limitations to this study exist, for instance, there were only a small number of presentations involving self-voice in this task. This may have over simplified the process for the young TD children and the children with DD. Nevertheless, it is striking that despite being matched for non-verbal mental age, the children with autism performed significantly less well than either of the other two groups of children. However, future studies would benefit from adjusting the number of presentations of voice and face accordingly. It is also important to note that for some children with autism the simultaneous presentation of faces and voices may act more as an interference effect (Cook and Wilding, 1997; Joassin et al., 2004) than a facilitation effect (Molholm et al., 2002). Future studies may wish to test a subgroup on voice recognition without the aid of visual prompts.

The paper includes implications for the type of voice children with autism may prefer to use when communicating via a SGD. The authors suggest that if the child does not recognise or prefer the sound of their own natural voice on such devices, partial or complete abandonment of the SGD may occur.

This paper fulfils an identified need to research how children’s abilities and preferences can be taken into account at the point of decision making for particular communication tools.

Outlines the internet’s contribution to the US economy with particular reference to the growth of online investing since 1994. Presents a study of the factors leading to this growth and its impact on the industry. Tabulates the market shares and stock commissions of the top ten online brokers, discusses their competitive strategies and identifies their key growth drivers. Suggests that they examplify McNair’s (1978) “wheel of retailing” by moving from a new, discounted service to a range of services like those of traditional brokers. Considers the online industry’s current problems (technical, legal, regulatory etc.), gives some advice on choosing an online broker and ranks the top ten by various criteria. Predicts that customers will benefit from increasing competition in the future and that the most successful firms will be middle‐tier ones offering a good combination of cost and service.

The purpose of this article is to describe the experience of PricewaterhouseCoopers' partners in functioning in teams engaged on global development projects in the context of the relationship, created by so‐called globalization, between developed (particularly the US) and less developed countries.

The design of the paper sets the actual experience of the PricewaterhouseCoopers' partners who took part in Project Ulysses within the framework of contemporary geopolitical attitudes and briefly outlines the historical antecedents for Western (European and American) philanthropic efforts to assist economically less‐developed countries.

The paper describes the parallel benefits of Project Ulysses in supporting the developmental needs of the countries in which participants conducted their projects and the cultural awareness/team building outcomes for PricewaterhouseCoopers and its partners.

The value of the paper is that the case study it describes offers a model to other large multinational organizations faced with the challenges of creating cross‐cultural teams while at the same time presenting themselves as globally aware corporate citizens committed to participating concretely in the development of less developed countries. The care in preparation, training, measurement and follow up exhibited by the program offers a road map for other organizations contemplating similar initiatives.

To maximize their effectiveness, exit interviews should incorporate employee voice and be aligned with other HR processes. The purpose of this paper is to describe a three-step approach to the strategic use of exit interviews.

The current study synthesizes extant theory including that of employee voice to enhance the exit interview process. A qualitative study conducted within a large marketing research organization demonstrates how exit interviews that utilize employee voice can inform HR and organizational strategy.

Application of the proposed process to the case study revealed conditions, critical incidents, and cognitive processes underlying exit decisions for employees in several job categories. Qualitative exit information is used to describe corresponding employee withdrawal paths.

Use of the three-step exit interview process is expected to enhance HR decisions. Data gathered from the three-step process can be used by HR and organizational leaders to develop action plans as well as inform an organization’s strategic decisions.

An organizational example is presented in which insight into underlying causes of voluntary turnover are discovered through exit interviews. Exit interview information suggested interventions related to HR processes. Such targeted insights from exit interviews can greatly improve retention and enhance organizational effectiveness.