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This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and political context of neo-liberalism and its pervasive impact on the social and economic order over recent decades. It also highlights the unintended consequences of this elite-driven programme of institutional reform as realized in the emergence of hybridized regimes of ‘polyarchic governance’ and the innovative discursive and organizational technologies on which they depend. Within the latter, ‘leaderism’ is identified as a hegemonic ‘discursive imaginary’ that has the potential to connect selected marketization and market control elements of new public management (NPM), network governance, and visionary and shared leadership practices that ‘make the hybrid happen’ in public services reform.

Presents 31 abstracts, edited by Johanthan Morris and Mike Reed, from the 2003 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, held at Cardiff Business School in September 2003. The conference theme was “The end of management? managerial pasts, presents and futures”. Contributions covered, for example, the changing HR role, managing Kaizen, contradiction in organizational life, organizational archetypes, changing managerial work and gendering first‐time management roles. Case examples come from areas such as Mexico, South Africa, Australia, the USA, Canada and Turkey.

This chapter reviews three analytical perspectives – ‘structural’, ‘network’ and ‘cultural’ – on the study of power and their implications for theorizing elites. It builds on this initial theoretical review by developing a critical realist approach to the study of organizational elites out of the structurally based perspective identified in the first section of the chapter. The explanatory potential of this critical realist approach is then illustrated through two case studies of ruling elites embedded in contrasting historical, political and social contexts. The final section of the chapter provides a discussion of the wider implications of these case study analyses for understanding and explaining the ‘new feudalism’ which is emerging in advanced political economies and societies.

During the 1980's there is some evidence to suggest that the British state began to take a rather more pro‐active role in sponsoring and supporting managerial education and training with the longer‐term objective of producing a ‘professionalised’ occupational group or strata. A number of reports on the condition of management education and training in the UK (Mangham and Silver, 1986; Handy, 1987; Constable and McCormick, 1987) indicated that general provision in this area fell well below that provided by our major European competitors and, for the most part, was patchy, fragmented and poorly organised. The dire warnings of accelerated economic decline — due, at least in part, to the glaring intellectual and technical deficiencies of British management when compared to its various European counterparts — galvanised the state into undertaking a number of initiatives aimed at producing a more coherent, extensive and integrated system of management education and training (expansion of business/management schools in higher education sector; Charter Initiative; Enterprise Initiative; BIM support and involvement; positive response from ‘professional associations, such as IPM etc.). These initiatives — often taken in concert with a relatively small number of British owned and controlled multinational corporations (such as ICI) —were directed at transforming the culture and organisation of British management in the direction of a more ‘enterprising’ values system, combined with a more developed and integrated system of accreditation and training. The underlying ideological tensions — not to say contradictions ‐ between an enterprising or ‘entrepreneurial’ value system, on the one hand, and a professional or status— oriented value system on the other, were hardly recognised, much less debated. The organisational problems likely to accrue as a result of this underlying ideological conflict were also left unresolved. For the most part, they were sublimated within a pragmatically‐oriented drive “to do something” about the appallingly low level of management education and training in the UK as quickly as possible. The fact that some of the major actors or agencies charged with transforming the quality and standing of management education and training had rather different ideas as to how this objective was to be achieved (e.g. increasingly strained relations between Charter Group and BIM Universities) was also glossed over in the desperate rush to “get a slice of the action”. While initiatives of this kind — if not on the same scale that seemed to be envisaged — had been undertaken before in the 1960's and 1970's (Whitley et al, 1981), and certain developments had taken place in relation to particular technical specialisms within management as a whole (Armstrong, 1987), the 1980's witnessed a more concerted strategy of reform in which the rhetoric of ‘professionalisation’ played an important ideological and political role.

Insights into UK National Health Service staff perceptions of the term “management” are given, together with many views on the implications of the Griffiths proposals. Nurses, clinicians, administrators and managers were questioned about their responses to the fundamental changes in the role of general managers. Comment is made on the levels of understanding about “management”, and interesting conclusions are drawn.

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the history of Records Management Journal on its 20th anniversary; it aims to review and analyse its evolution and its contribution in the context of the development of the profession and the discipline of records management. The paper seeks to provide the context and justification for the selection of eight articles previously published in the journal to be reprinted in this issue.

The paper utilises the contents of Records Management Journal (1989 to date) to present a thematic analysis of topics covered and their development over time, and statistical data (from 2002 to date) provided by the current publisher to assess quantitatively the use and impact of the journal worldwide. The paper then compares this with a series of key turning points in the records management profession.

There is evidence that the initial aspiration for the journal to make an important and long‐lasting impact on the field of records management in the UK has been exceeded because its readers and contributors are global. The volume of downloads has continued to increase year‐on‐year and the journal appears to be the only peer‐reviewed journal in the world in the records management discipline. The journal has responded to and kept abreast of the records management agenda.

The analysis is based on the work of the current and immediate past Editor and did not seek the views of its Editorial Board members, readers or contributors to the journal.

Looking to the future, the journal must seek to widen its impact on other key stakeholders in managing information and records – managers, information systems designers, information creators and users – as well as records professionals. It must also continue to develop the scope of its content, whilst maintaining its focus on managing records, and must keep pace with technology developments. It should try to influence the professional agenda, be controversial, stimulate debate and encourage change. And it should remain a quality resource.

The paper provides a unique critical analysis of the journal, its history and contribution to the development of records management, on its 20th anniversary of publication.

Since the late 1980s we’ve been inspired by feminist theorizing to interrogate our field of organization studies, looking critically at the questions it asks, at the underlying premises of the theories allowing for such questions, and by articulating alternative premises as a way of suggesting other theories and thus other questions the field may need to ask. In so doing, our collaborative work has applied insights from feminist theorizing and cultural studies to topics such as leadership, entrepreneurship, globalization, business ethics, issues of work and family, and more recently to sustainability. This text is a retrospective on our attempts at intervening in our field, where we sought to make it more fundamentally responsive to problems in the world we live in and, from this reflective position, considering how and why our field’s conventional theories and practices – despite good intentions – may be unable to do so.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the practice of comedians in relation to freedom of expression, so as to throw light on the issue of giving or avoiding offence.

The literature of comedy, newspaper coverage of comedy in the UK in 2008, observation of comedians in performance, and a small, informal interview programme with stand up comedians were used in the preparation of the paper.

Stand up comedians, despite their own sense that they defy restriction and popular perception of their material as often offensive, do monitor their material for potential offence. They assess the extent of offence and modify their performances in response. In some cases they apply personal formulae to this process.

The interview programme is too small to claim to be fully representative and is intended only to give an indicative view of the field.

Examination of comedians' practice has implications for information service institutions and the giving of access to potentially offensive content.

The paper may be the first study of comedy in an information science context and it contains implications for further studies that use comedy as an example of content, and creative practice to further develop understanding of information provision issues.

Considerable effort has been made by this Laboratory and industry to make polyfunctional derivatives of rosin through the introduction of different groups into the resin acid moiety.

Investigates the increasing popularity of the video as a medium for TQM Training. Debates the advantages and disadvantages of using case studies as the subject matter of these Training videos. Reviews the better products on the market and highlights the fact that videos alone do not constitute an adequate Training programme, they must be backed up by a total quality strategy and by other resources. Concludes that videos should not be used as an easy way out of TQM Training, but that used correctly they can be a fast and effective way of spreading the quality message.