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International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001: 2015 quality management systems places an obligation on organizations to consider the role of organizational knowledge as a resource. The purpose of this paper is to systematically relate the key fundamentals of knowledge management to the seven quality management principles of ISO 9001: 2015. It is the first to consider this relationship.

The paper traces the history of quality standards and the background to the inclusion of an organizational knowledge clause in ISO 9001: 2015. It then systematically considers the seven quality management principles in relation to knowledge management principles.

The core elements of the knowledge management standard are incorporated with the organizational knowledge clause. Explicit and tacit knowledge are addressed by the ISO standard. Knowledge and its management will become increasingly important in organizations driven by ISO certification requirements.

ISO 9001: 2015 was released in September 2015 which means that organizations have yet to apply the organizational knowledge clause. This paper is a conceptual one which needs to be complemented with empirical research.

This paper identifies the role of knowledge management principles as they apply to ISO 9001: 2015 and the seven quality management principles. More than 1.1 million organizations are certified to ISO 9001, plus many others who use the standard informally. Those involved with organizational quality will need to understand the role of knowledge in the organization.

Quality services and products need to be underpinned with strategic knowledge management.

This paper is the first to discuss knowledge management in relation to the seven quality management principles which assist the development of policy for quality management.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03090590010377754. When citing the article, please cite: John P. Wilson, Steven Western, (2000), “Performance appraisal: an obstacle to training and development?”, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 24 Iss: 7, pp. 384 - 391.

Utilising data from 18 in‐depth case studies, this study seeks to explore training, development and human resource development (HRD) practices in European call centres. It aims to argue that the complexity and diversity of training, development and HRD practices is best understood by studying the multilayered contexts within which call centres operate. Call centres operate as open systems and training, development and HRD practices are influenced by environmental, strategic, organisational and temporal conditions.

The study utilised a range of research methods, including in‐depth interviews with multiple stakeholders, documentary analysis and observation. The study was conducted over a two‐year period.

The results indicate that normative models of HRD are not particularly valuable and that training, development and HRD in call centres is emergent and highly complex.

This study represents one of the first studies to investigate training and development and HRD practices and systems in European call centres.

The growth of vocational skills competitions demonstrates an increased interest and popularity in companies, schools, colleges, and at regional, national and international levels. There are a number of significant benefits and also challenges associated with the competitions for individuals, their organisations, and for the nation as a whole, and this article draws parallels with the Olympic Games. This article combines research from a variety of sources to give a comprehensive overview of the history and purpose of the competitions and also to describe the various organisations supporting them. This is the first article to map the terrain of skills competitions and, having done so, it calls for further research to be conducted into their impact.

This paper investigates the nature of vicarious or secondary post‐traumatic stress disorder in relation to six Dutch organisations and their personnel working in Rwanda, a country heavily affected by genocide and war. Drawing from the literature and empirical research it is argued that a systematic approach can strongly contribute to a more coherent human resource management/human resource development cycle of environmental analysis; identification of job descriptions and person specifications; relationship of jobs, persons and teams; recruitment, selection and contracting; induction and training; deployment and management of individuals and teams; and finally, debriefing and counselling. In this way, there is greater potential for the organisation to achieve objectives and enable its expatriate workforce to handle the stressful conditions in which they may find themselves.

This article investigates the meaning of experiential learning and relates this to the nature of cognition through the development of an experiential learning model based on information processing. This experiential learning model is then used as the basis for the design of a meta‐model – the learning combination lock (LCL). The LCL model provides for the first time, to our knowledge, a systematic process for the trainer, educator or developer to consider and select from some of the main ingredients of the learning process. It is not intended to be used mechanistically but rather as an aide‐mémoire which may also be added to and developed according to the considerations of the programme designer, the trainer or educator, and the needs of the learner.

Marks and Spencer's Plan A environmental strategy is an ambitious one which addresses economic, social and environmental considerations. As part of this process it recently used a sustainable learning store strategy to develop, capture and disseminate learning before, during and after construction so that learning could be transferred to future projects. Significantly, the strategy did not draw on “traditional” learning organisation concepts; instead it developed its own bottom-up approach to identify the important areas for learning. The practices developed for the learning store were then evaluated against a learning organisation blueprint.

A literature review of learning organisations in construction was complemented by a case study of the prototype Marks and Spencer learning store. The strategies adopted by the company were assessed against Pedler et al.'s blueprint for a learning company.

The systematic learning store strategy developed by Marks and Spencer matched the 11 main criteria described by Pedler et al.'s learning company blueprint and also included managing and leading. The strategies adopted by M&S have the potential to be adopted by other organisations seeking to become environmentally sustainable learning organisations.

This case study was undertaken from the perspective of one retail organisation and did not directly evaluate the other stakeholders. It was also largely cross-sectional in nature and describes the learning which occurred but not its application to any subsequent downstream projects. Its applicability to other industries and organisations therefore needs to be investigated further.

The strategies used during the development of the Marks and Spencer's learning store have the potential to be adopted by other retail, construction and organisations from other sectors and have significant benefits to the environment.

Little has been written about the practical application of sustainability approaches for learning organisations. The scale and scope of the Plan A strategy would not appear to have been achieved by other organisations.