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Many personnel managers apparently fail to make an appreciable impact on the running of their organization, possibly because their work is mainly seen as subjective rather than aimed at effectiveness and efficiency. Reviews a package of diagnostic instruments for analysing the performance of personnel departments in the Health Service primarily in the light of the importance of customer service, the emphasis being on measurement of performance. Concludes that only in this way can the HR department shed its cosy image and be perceived as a mainline function.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question: how does socially responsible buying/sourcing applies to human talent? The authors examine this question in the unique context of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) relationship with the “buscones” (agents) representing prospects from the Dominican Republic.

Using game theory, the authors model how MLB teams create rules to curb unethical behavior within the supply chain. The principal relationship the authors will model is that of the franchises and the prospects. This relationship has as its core an investment decision by the individual franchises: should they incur costs to ameliorate the context in which the prospects find themselves, or not? The costs of investment, whether it is in academies, general education, a revision of recruiting policies or something else, must be weighed against the negative externalities that are likely to result if the exploitation of the DR recruits becomes common knowledge to other stakeholders, particularly the public.

The model shows that when investments are roughly evenly distributed, the teams successfully vote to outlaw unethical behaviors and thus collectively avoid the negative externalities. However, when investments are asymmetric, the teams invested in the current system vote against a ban to maintain a competitive edge, even though the system imposes costs on all of those involved.

This paper serves as the initial paper that examines international sourcing, social responsibility and baseball. As international sport clubs/franchises continue to source athletic talent from around the globe, the issues discussed in the paper are both original and pertinent.

Examines an approach for introducing total quality management (TQM) in a small safety, engineering and management consultancy. The assessment of the organizational climate using a questionnaire survey followed by a series of meetings with staff to explain the results was found to be an effective means for highlighting problems and stimulating debate. On the other hand, the formulation of TQM strategy was found to be time consuming and complex, quality costing was considered by senior management to be too involved and complex, and there was resistance from middle management. Points out that a rigid approach to TQM cannot be taken in small professional service companies and the approach needs to develop in response to internal needs. Covers the basic introduction and the issue of quality costing.

After years of covering industrial affairs with superficial film footage and studio chats with familiar management and union figures, television is at last making creditable efforts to explore the working of industry in greater depth. Led by BBC's Money Programme, other channels are devoting more time to business affairs. It's a trend which offers tangible benefits to industry, as Matthew Collins explains.

An adaptable, integrated full glass cockpit and flight management system has been developed and is in production for application in multiple Sikorsky rotorcraft. The entire system was conceived, designed, tested and delivered in an unusually short time period. A systematic process was used to define the avionics system attributes, major capabilities, and cost targets up‐front and track them during the development program. First flight was achieved 12 months after contract start, and production deliveries commenced 5 months after first flight. The integrated glass cockpit has accumulated more than 9,000 flight hours in customer operations to date. This flexible system architecture allowed the team of Sikorsky and Rockwell Collins to reuse several blocks of existing military and civil application software, and to interface the various Avionics subsystems using industry standards. This proved to be a critical factor in allowing us to meet the compressed design and development schedule.

This article describes a collaborative effort between a teacher educator, an inservice teacher, and a preservice teacher to develop a program for integrating women’s history in an eighth-grade early American History course. Using the results of a survey given to social studies teachers within the local district, they designed a program intended to address primary barriers to the integration of women’s history in the curriculum. Teacher-identified barriers included a lack of quality resources and a lack of time as well as a need to conform to district curriculum and state standards and a lack of content knowledge in women’s history among teachers. In addition to a description of the project, the article provides a discussion of lessons learned through the process.

As part of its continued expansion Kleen‐e‐ze Holdings plc has appointed W.M. (Bill) Collins to the newly created position of Chief Executive, Industrial Operations.

The purpose of this study sought to identify the main themes linked with wine hotel experiences, based on tourists’ narratives shared online, and to investigate whether these narratives vary according to traveler type.

Content analysis was carried out on 4,114 online reviews of 52 wine hotels located in 27 wine regions across 11 nations in both the Old and New World.

The analysis of these web reviews revealed that narratives can be grouped under 11 themes organized into 7 main dimensions as follows: wine, lodging (i.e. hotel, area and room), food service (i.e. restaurant and breakfast), scenery (i.e. views and vineyards), staff, transportation and recommendation. The main narratives vary according to traveler type.

Improving the present understanding of wine tourists’ experiences should help wine hotel managers find new approaches to enhancing visitors’ satisfaction. As the dimensions of wine tourism experiences shared online vary according to traveler type, wine managers can design their offer to target families, couples, friends, solo and corporate clients.

Prior research has identified the need for market segmentation in the wine tourism industry. This research addresses this need by specifying the wine tourism experience according to traveler type. The breadth of the data, and the method of using travelers’ own testimony as opposed to more common surveying are additional contributions for both academics and managers.