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In recent years, the clinical performance of named cardiac surgeons in England has been disclosed. This paper aims to explore the nature and impact of disclosure of clinical performance.

The paper draws on literature from across the social sciences to assess the impact of disclosure, as a form of transparency, in improving clinical performance. Specifically, it employs the “programme theory” of disclosure.

The “programme theory” of disclosure involves identification, naming, public sanction and recipient response. Named individual (consultant) surgeons have been identified through disclosure but this masks the contribution of the clinical team, including junior surgeons. Mortality is the prime performance measure but given low mortality rates, there are problems interpreting this measure. The naming of surgeons has been achieved through disclosure on web sites, developed between the health‐care regulator and the surgical profession itself. However, participation remains voluntary. The intention of disclosure is that interested parties (especially patients) will shun poorly performing surgeons. However, these parties' willingness and ability to exercise this sanction appears limited. Surgeons' responses are emergent but about a quarter of surgeons are not participating currently. Fears that surgeons would avoid high‐risk patients seem to have been unrealised. While disclosure may have a small effect on individual reputations, the surgical profession as a whole has embraced disclosure.

While the aim of disclosure has been to create a transparent medical system and to improve clinical performance, disclosure may have the opposite effect, concealing some performance issues and possibly strengthening professional autonomy. Disclosure therefore represents greater transparency in health‐care but it is uncertain whether it will improve performance in the ways that the policy intends.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese economic reform process has engendered significant changes in the structure and management of work organizations. Central to this process has been the “marketization” of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). The paper reviews the attempts to reform SOEs as conducted, primarily, under the modern enterprise system (MES) and group company system (GCS) programmes.

The paper analyses institutional issues relating to organizational restructuring, describes the evolution of the SOE “problem” in China, and discusses case evidence of enterprise reform in one of the largest SOE‐dominated industries, iron and steel. Qualitative field data, collected regularly (mostly yearly) since 1995, were derived from in‐depth interviews with executives of ten large SOEs that have restructured as part of MES and GCS programmes.

It is suggested that the historic reluctance of SOEs to embrace reform stems from three main factors – the opaque nature of property rights, the failure of ministries to produce a firm strategy for channelling surplus labour and the inability of government agencies to offer a sense of managerial autonomy to SOE executives. Recent policies designed to overcome these problems together with kindred ones for separating government functions from business operations in the drive to prepare SOEs for global markets are described. It can be argued that China's preference for gradual reform reflects the wider reform context where economic restructuring has not been accompanied by a greater expression of political democracy.

The paper's findings offer insights from a major longitudinal field study of two of the main programmes of China's reform period.

President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Following the fundamental review by the Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, under the Chairmanship of Sir Ron, (now Lord) Dearing, in July, 1997 (and Scottish equivalent under Sir Ron Garrick); the Quality Assurance Agency for higher education (QAA), is currently consulting on the detailed elaboration of those Committees’ main recommendations. The QAA proposals are designed to provide public assurance on both the quality and standards in higher education and comprise an inter‐related set of components under the following headings: the development of a complete and overarching framework of qualifications for the UK; the development of a national template for individual programme specifications; the development of benchmarking information and threshold standards across 41 subject areas; the development of institutional codes of practice and institutional reviews; and the strengthening of the existing external examiner system to encompass a formal role of feedback on quality and standards to the QAA. The paper was submitted by the Association of Business schools to the QAA, in the format specified by the QAA. It can therefore best be understood in conjunction with the QAA’s consultation paper “An agenda for quality”, which provides greater detail of the main components, set out above.

The purpose of this research is to extend current knowledge regarding rivalry communication among sport consumers to better understand how rivals behave with one another when they communicate.

This national survey of US sport consumers used a novel approach to explore whether and with whom rivals discuss National Football League (NFL) game outcomes. The survey captured both uniplex and multiplex data by asking respondents to name rival discussants with whom they had recently interacted, and the fan behaviors they exchanged with those named rival discussants.

Through use of this novel data collection approach, new findings were uncovered related to blasting, glory out of reflective failure, schadenfreude and the influence of team identification on the exchange of rivalry fan behaviors. The results of the uniplex and multiplex data analyses uniquely showcase the ways in which social identity theory combines with team identification to enact rivalry behavior.

This research is the first to precisely dichotomize the psychological antecedents from the communicated behavior between rival fans. Results reveal the precise ways in which team identification influences discordant communication between rival fans, which differs from past research in an interesting new way.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The communist political system in Eastern Europe rested not upon consent but upon coercion. As an ‘important centre of administrative repression’, the secret police proved vital in ensuring the survival of the regimes which they served. In the earliest phase of communist rule, during the late 1940s and 50s, the secret police were primarily employed as instruments of political and social change. Their task was to intimidate the population as a whole into accepting the fact of communist party rule. Once the communists had consolidated their power, the task of the police altered and became one of ‘political maintenance’. In this second phase, which lasted right up until 1989, the secret police no longer acted as agents of change but, instead, as guardians of the status quo.