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This chapter seeks to optimize HR shared services performance by highlighting the potential for service fragmentation that can arise out of in the so-called Ulrich (structure or service delivery) model.

The evidence used in this chapter principally comes from the author’s own work, especially research for the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), and draws upon academic literature where possible.

This chapter argues that HR directors should guard against three sets of fragmentation risks. Firstly, HR shared services should be properly connected to the rest of HR to offer customers an integrated service to avoid the structure’s division of labor inducing incoherence. Second, to guard against this risk, HR directors should exercise care in outsourcing/offshoring beyond individual, discrete services because contractually or spatially separating services risks exacerbating this tendency to fragmentation. Outsourcing/offshoring may focus too much on cost savings and insufficiently on quality. So, third, HR should argue for the distinctiveness of its activities and fight commoditization that is also implied in the creation of cross-functional shared service centers.

The arguments in this chapter could be better supported by academic research. In-depth case studies of management decision making and shared services operation would help support or challenge the chapter’s conclusion, as could quantitative evidence on the benefits/disbenefits of outsourcing/offshoring/cross-functional shared services centers.

We have highlighted a number of reported problems with HR shared services operation, besides the three principal risks noted above, but we have suggested possible solutions that could be adopted by practitioners.

HR managers may find this chapter helpful in designing new HR structures or in assessing the effectiveness of shared services that goes beyond the typical key performance indicator measures.

Adopting a dual processing cognitive perspective, this study explores the decision-making processes past the start-up stage that small entrepreneurial businesses employ to grow. The author examines how entrepreneurs evaluate and make decisions on growth opportunities in their business environment. The author uses cognitive style as a theoretical lens to capture differences in information processing, combining interviews and psychometric questionnaires to analyse cognitive styles. The longitudinal mixed methods approach illustrates the richness of the entrepreneur’s decision-making process, which the author tracks over a two-year period. The author determines how intuitive and analytical cognitive styles are used by entrepreneurs and the contribution these styles make to decision-making. The findings show that the two cognitive styles are versatile as entrepreneurs adjust and adapt their cognitive style over time, in keeping with the situational factors of their business environment. The author also finds marked differences between novice and mature entrepreneurs and that experienced entrepreneurs exhibited greater levels of cognitive versatility, which was directly linked to their prior experience. The study has significant implications for future research, which should consider the question how an entrepreneur’s cognitive style is dependent on the business context and their prior experience.

Many of the largest athletics programs in the United States today are dependent upon revenue streams to sustain their teams. While still in the earliest stages, athletic professionals are finding ways to deepen the engagement with potential and current fans and donors with their department's mission and values. Social media is being used to put fans in the seats as well as create new paid content. No longer limited to the column inches in a newspaper or 30 seconds of highlights on the local news, athletics programs are breaking new grounds in the world of social media.

Purpose – Intersexuality is examined from a sociology of diagnosis frame to show how the diagnostic process is connected to other social constructions, offer new support that medical professionals define illness in ways that sometimes carries negative consequences, and illustrate how the medical profession holds on to authority in the face of patient activism.

Methodology/approach – Data collection occurred over a two-year period (October 2008 to August 2010). Sixty-two in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals connected to the intersex community including adults with intersexuality, parents, medical professionals, and intersex activists.

Findings – Medical professionals rely on essentialist understandings of gender to justify the medicalization of intersexuality, which they currently are doing through a nomenclature shift away from intersex terminology in favor of disorders of sex development (DSD) language. This shift allows medical professionals to reassert their authority and reclaim jurisdiction over intersexuality in light of intersex activism that was successfully framing intersexuality as a social rather than biological problem.

Practical implications – This chapter encourages critical thought and action from activists and medical professionals about shifts in intersex medical management.

Social implications – Intersexuality might be experienced in less stigmatizing ways by those personally impacted.

Originality/value – The value of this research is that it connects the sociology of diagnosis literature with gender scholarship. Additional value comes from the data, which were collected after the 2006 nomenclature shift.