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Discusses the role of top management in providing leadership by example on the road to Total Quality. Explores important themes from executive workshops ‐ how to “model” quality and service in all interactions with employees; how to market the quality and service precept; and how to be visibly involved in the continuous improvement programme. Reviews customer research, training and follow through procedures. Suggests that the completion period of the programme must be overseen by a steering group of key players in the business who will be given specific responsibilities.

Our regular contributor on the contemporary educational literary scene reviews a mixed bag of practical books.

Describes how Joshua Tetley′s “Quality Pays” programme illustrates that the only way to achieve a real, sustainable competitive edge, is to commit the company to a service‐driven organisation. Traces the development of the Quality Pays programme and the need to develop an infrastructure to facilitate Quality Pays as an on‐going process. Describes the programmes basic aims and the training involved. Lists six key ingredients which enable companies to maintain the momentum and avoid some of the pitfalls of earlier quality service initiatives. Asserts that following these six ingredients should enable companies to develop a culture based on the premise that the customer is always right.

Reports on a study which explored the views of key stakeholders regarding the meaning and implementation of effective health care and clinical governance in NHS Trusts, and the role for public health professionals. The authors used a national questionnaire survey to derive a sample for qualitative telephone interviews and two area case studies. The authors found that the meaning of effective health care and the means employed for implementation varied. Mergers were seen as hindrances to gaining organisational engagement whilst others, such as the White Paper on quality and the notion of clinical governance, were seen as facilitating. A widespread aspiration was a more integrated and corporate quality culture where quality was central, not marginal. The authors conclude that there is widespread concern among Trusts to change their culture and assert effective health care as a central value. Public health skills, rather than the discipline itself, are seen as important for such culture change.

The social sciences and institutional theory have seen the proliferation of the term actor and the profusion of its meanings. Despite the importance and ubiquity of actor in institutional theory, the term is largely taken-for-granted, which has stunted the development of institutional theories of actors. The authors aspire to spur theorization of actor in institutional theory in the hope of carving out institutional theories of actor in the collective research agenda. The authors first contextualize their interest in actor in institutional theory and discuss the intellectual context within which the authors put this agenda forward. The authors briefly sketch out the main themes that would provide fruitful areas of inquiry in this new agenda and bring together a variety of strands in institutional theory with a clear focus on the relationship between institutions and actors. The authors conclude by discussing the contributions included in the volume.

This chapter draws upon ethnographic observation and walking interviews with private security staff to offer in-depth insight into the hyper-regulation of the city and the lived dynamics of parkour’s inconsistent inclusion and exclusion from urban space. This chapter argues that the street-level governance of urban space is largely incoherent, fractured and characterised by a myriad of conflicting spatial interests. As neoliberalism has privatised and fractured the city into a series of microspheres of spatial sovereignty, there is a lack of any notion of the common urban good; therefore, what should be allowed and prohibited from urban space. This is a manifestation of the broader trend towards post-political forms of governance. It is argued that the confusion and contradiction that surrounds what city spaces should be for actively contributed to the forms of spatial compromise developed between private security and the traceurs.