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Many contemporary approaches to talent management are unaffordable. This paper seeks to summarise some key findings of a five‐year investigation into quicker and more affordable routes to creating high performance organisations. It aims to suggest a practical and much more cost‐effective way of quickly achieving multiple corporate objectives and measurable benefits for both people and organisations is often being overlooked.

A programme of critical success factor, “issue” and other surveys was complemented with a five‐year evaluation of more recent case studies to understand early adoptions of performance support and to assess their results and implications. The applications examined were discussed with the relevant technical architect and the results obtained corroborated with commissioner/user performance data and/or documented assessments/reactions.

Recruiting exceptional people – even if affordable – can create a host of problems if they are not properly managed, which is often the case. Paying for talented people may make little sense for organisations that cannot harness or capture and share what they do differently. Talent needs to be relevant to what an organisation is seeking to do and critical success factors for excelling in key roles, and what top performers do differently in these areas captured and shared.

Evaluations of performance management need to consider all the objectives that are beneficially impacted.

One can avoid certain general, expensive, time consuming and disruptive corporate programmes in an area such as talent management and adopt quick, focused, cost effective alternatives that generate large returns on investment, and quickly deliver multiple benefits for people and organisations. Performance support can enable average performers wherever they may be to excel at difficult jobs.

A wider range of people can be helped to do difficult jobs.

The paper summarises the main findings of an investigation that has identified deficiencies of contemporary approaches to talent management, identifies an approach which if strategically adopted can enable relevant talent in terms of how to excel at key roles to be developed as and when required, and sets out the benefits of Talent Management 2, of which performance support is a central element.

In 2016 all new houses in England and Wales must be zero carbon. To date most work in zero carbon housing has been carried out on detached family housing typologies. Practice has shown that one of the overriding factors in the struggle to achieve zero carbon status (Code for Sustainable Homes Level 6) is the projected significant increase in construction cost. While grant funding can offset some of this increase, further costs savings will be required to allow developers to deliver affordable homes within reasonable profit margins. One result of this will be a reduction in design quality; which will impact on the quality of the spaces provided and the robustness and longevity of the construction and finishes. In order to deliver better design standards, higher density attached family housing models should be considered to ensure that a proportion of the projected increase in cost of the building fabric can be transferred to the internal volume of the house, thus achieving better quality living spaces. The following paper reviews the context for future housing provision in the UK and examines two existing medium density terraced housing developments. The existing examples reflect two contrasting approaches: one derived from low-energy principles utilising minimum space standards, the other reflecting the need for high quality spaces but at premium cost. A new medium density terrace model is proposed that deals with these conflicting demands to demonstrate that it is possible to provide affordable, high quality, higher density, family housing whilst meeting low energy targets.

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a worldwide-known, design for quality approach, which gathers several design quality methods. Among them, the House of Quality (HoQ) correlates the Voice of Customer and the Voice of Company thanks to L-shaped (2D) Matrix Diagrams (MDs). This paper theorizes, as logically possible, the extension from a bi-dimensional representation (a customer and a provider) to a higher N-dimensional representational freedom without altering the typical QFD’s customer-provider posture. The purpose of this paper is to present QFD 3D: the extension of the Relationship MD in the HoQ toward a third dimension (two customers and a provider or two providers and a customer).

The proposed method is based on an existing well-known quality management tool such as MDs. The authors extend its representational capability by substituting the current L-shaped MDs (2D) with C-shaped ones (3D). The mathematical validity of this extension is described to demonstrate the correctness of the approach.

The paper presents the logical validity and a case study concerning a three-dimensional extension of the Relationship MD in the HoQ, typical of the QFD approach.

The results are limited to a three-dimensional extension. Situations where more than three actors are simultaneously involved are theoretically possible, but they are out of the scope of the current research. The difficulty in manipulating 3D representations on traditional supporting tools will be completely reversed on new computer-supported tools. The proposed method is meant to be a useful and efficient instrument for correlating the needs and the services in multi-actors-based scenario, using a QFD design quality approach fueled by IT support tools.

This paper can be used as guideline for further researches on N-dimensional extensions of HoQ. The proposed method can be used in a scenario based on the Triple Helix of Innovation. It gives a clear correlation between different needs and services, facilitating the decision-making process and the constitution of a more comprehensive view of the scenario under a quality management approach.

Thousands of articles propose different QFD case studies all based on a bi-dimensional correlation between a customer and a provider. This paper proposes a method to extend the pertinence of QFD to scenarios where more than two actors are simultaneously correlated. Considering in particular three actors, the resulting three-dimensional Relationship MD in the HoQ is a totally new design quality tool for correlating customers’ needs and providers’ services. This can result in a significant gain of time and representational ability for quality managers who have to correlate multiple customers with a service provider and conversely a customer to multiple service providers. This approach open the doors for new QFD tools fueled by IT.

This paper aims to provide a country case study of South Africa’s response during the first six months following its first COVID-19 case. The focus is on the government’s (mis-)management of its non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) (or “lockdown”) to stem the pandemic and the organized business sector’s resistance against the lockdown.

This paper makes use of a literature review and provides descriptive statistics and quantitative analysis of COVID-19 and the lockdown stringency in South Africa, based on data from Google Mobility Trends, Oxford University’s Stringency Index, Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 tracker and Our World in Data.

This paper finds that both the government and the business sector’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been problematic. These key actors have been failing to “pull together,” leaving South Africa’s citizens in-between corrupt and incompetent officials on the one hand, and lockdown skeptics on the other. This paper argues that to break through this impasse, the country should change direction by agreeing on a smart or “Goldilocks” lockdown, based on data, testing, decentralization, demographics and appropriate economic support measures, including export support. Such a Goldilocks lockdown is argued, based on available evidence from the emerging scientific literature, to be able to save lives, improve trust in government, limit economic damages and moreover improve the country’s long-term recovery prospects.

The pandemic is an unprecedented crisis and moreover was still unfolding at the time of writing. This has two implications. First, precise data on the economic impact and certain epidemiological parameters was not (yet) available. Second, the causes of the mismanagement by the government are not clear yet, within such a short time frame. More research and better data may be able in future to allow conclusions to be drawn whether the problems that were besetting the country’s management of COVID-19 are unique or perhaps part of a more general problem across developing countries.

The paper provides clear practical implications for both government and organized business. The South African Government should not altogether end its lockdown measures, but follow a smart and flexible lockdown. The organized business sector should abandon its calls for ending the lockdown while the country is still among the most affected countries in the world, and no vaccine is available.

There should be better collaboration between government, business and civil society to manage a smart lockdown. Government should re-establish lost trust because of the mismanagement of the lockdown during the first six months of the pandemic.

The outline of the smart lockdown that is proposed for the country combines NPIs with the promotion of exports, as a policy intervention to help aggregate demand to recover. The paper provides advice on how to resolve an impasse created by mismanagement of COVID-19, which could be valuable for decision-making during a crisis, particularly in developing countries.

The main objective of this study is to find out how food handlers in catering establishments perceive ensuring food safety and which problems they meet along the way.

Using a qualitative approach, ten food handlers in Slovenian catering facilities were included in the case study. A semi-structured approach was applied to provide a deeper insight into food safety barriers perceived by respondents. Participants first read short fictitious newspaper news about a foodborne disease at a tourist farm, which served as a starting point.

The results demonstrate barriers which most often originate in a lack of knowledge (e.g. improper food safety training, incorrect food safety knowledge testing, knowledge and maintaining of CCPs), shortage of food hygiene skills (e.g. handwashing, food defrosting) and weak work satisfaction (e.g. insufficient payment, poor interpersonal relationships and weak motivation). Food safety knowledge and consequently training methods were found to be the biggest barrier for the efficiency of the HACCP system in practice.

Due to the small sample, the results cannot be generalised to the entire population of food handlers in Slovenia.

The results indicate weaknesses in food safety knowledge among professional food handlers.

The study provides a deeper insight into implicit opinions of ten food handlers in catering facilities regarding barriers in providing food safety, their knowledge and behaviour in their work with food.

The automation of technical service functions has led to many changes in workflows and culture. Recent enhancements have leveraged systems developed by materials vendors of books and serials to further enhance library efficiency, resulting in adjustments to how work is assigned both inside and outside the library. Future developments are expected in technical service functions following the same trends, as well as changes that will provide ways to manage the emerging electronic products.

The aim of this study is to define land use policy sources of barriers to community-based housing options in practice.

The paper accentuated the need to tackle land use sources of barrier to Community Land Trust (CLT) performance, through text analysis of semi-structured interview responses from key stakeholders.

This study found out that there is a need to ameliorate stakeholder approach to community-based housing (CBH), which is hampered by restrictive land use sources of barriers that occur in an urban and rural context. These barriers were found to include both planning inadequacies and a systemic inefficient network of knowledge transfer practices between stakeholders. Recommendations include the need for drastic policy intervention through the political willingness to address Section 106 shortcomings in the choice of affordable housing supply models, and the inaccessibility of land below market rate in an endogenous prescriptive planning system.

This paper highlights the subjective limitations of the CLT model in regards to grey areas between setting boundaries to what is an acceptable level of concessions to CBH and the socio-economic impact or benefits of a completely deregulated social housing system. These boundaries do vary from system to system, hence the need for UK housing institutions to address identified inherent barrier sources and their reconciliation with international best practices. Therefore, greater roles can be accorded to the CLT model in the UK affordable housing dynamics based on its confirmed strengths and merits.

This paper adds to literature through the practical identification and interpretation of various key stakeholder perspectives on sources of CLT barriers and an idealised strategy to tackling them accordingly. This contributes to the housing affordability debate on the viability of CBH options, and how it could be invariably hampered by direct and indirect effects of planning and restrictive land use policies in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the affordability of Malaysian housing market, sufficiency of affordable housing and factors influencing the housing affordability in Malaysia.

In this study, qualitative research approach was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten industry practitioners from developers and real estate agencies and further validation with three industry experts.

The findings reveal that housing affordability is a grave concern to average Malaysians, and the supply of affordable housing is insufficient in the current residential property market. Income, property price, land cost and demand and supply are identified as significant factors affecting housing affordability.

The research findings provide an insight rather than definitive information, as the small sample size could limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research can include participants from the public sector and focus on the policy options.

This paper provided numerous policies to ensure successful deliverability of affordable housing which eases government to partner with private sector to formulate a systematic framework for implementation of affordable housing programs and schemes.

There is a need for government to pay more attention to housing needs of middle-income groups. Also, the government is urged to ensure transparent balloting process in every implementation of affordable housing programs.

The paper emphasised the issues of undersupply of affordable housing and mismatch of property price and income. The paper also highlights the key reasons behind high housing affordability index. Hence, it is hoped that this paper will encourage positive debate and gain some attention from the policymakers, practitioners and researchers in Malaysia and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to consolidate policy, research, evidence and good practice around strategies tackling fuel poverty and affordable warmth for older people aged over 60 to support the development of more effective services for this life course stage and to tackle physical and mental health inequalities.

The authors consolidate current policy, research, evidence and examples of good practice in exploring effective interprofessional approaches that contribute to affordable warmth for older people through “desktop analysis”. The authors support this with qualitative data from Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs), health inequalities and environmental health from research comprising four longitudinal case studies in the Midlands and North of England over 18 months and semi-structured interviews with members and support officers. A total of 50 interviews were undertaken and 55 hours of HWB meetings observed.

There are numerous older people living in fuel poverty. The depth of fuel poverty increases with age particularly the over 75s and physical and mental ill health are affected. There are an increasing number of tools to help estimate health care costs around the cost effectiveness of interventions and there is a real need for more local evidence about what is working well, how and why. However, there is no mandatory requirement for fuel poverty strategies and more creative local strategies are required taking organisational and interprofessional relationships into account. The emphasis in integrated care provides new impetus and scope to encourage preventative services but these new partnerships need to be effective in what is a complex policy environment. There is still a long way to go in places. The challenges of ageing are numerous, complex and not fully understood and sit across multiple policy areas.

Fuel poverty strategies tend to be delivered on a geographical or income bases rather than by life course approach and a focus on older people. We need to focus more specifically on older people, a rapidly growing population and to better understand thermal properties of our ageing housing stock and how best to intervene to protect and improve health and safety. Emerging approaches need to overcome artificial statutory and non statutory divides and move towards sustainable, evidence based affordable warmth strategies for older people to protect and improve health.

As public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become preferred and veritable approach to deliver affordable housing, the seemingly lack of understanding of the significant factors that impact on success has become a notable setback. This study aims to delineate significant factors that can support decisions in affordable PPP public housing delivery.

Largely, a questionnaire survey was adopted to elicit insights from practitioners, policymakers and experts to develop an evaluative decision support model using an analytical hierarchy process and multi-attribute utility technique approach. Further, an expert illustration was conducted to evaluate and validate the results on the housing typologies.

The results revealed that energy efficiency and low-cost green building materials scored the highest weighting of all the criteria. Furthermore, multi-storey self-contained flats were found to be the most preferred housing typology and were significantly influenced by these factors. From the model evaluation, the scores on the factors of sustainability, affordability, cultural values and accountability were consistent across all typologies of housing whereas that of benchmarking, governance and transparency were varied.

The decision support factors captured varied dimensions of key factors that impact on affordable PPP housing that have not been considered in an integrated manner. These findings offer objective and systematic support to decision-making in affordable PPP housing delivery.