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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how service managers perceive their service prior to, and following the delivery of a cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) anger management group for individuals with an intellectual disability.

Telephone interviews were conducted with seven service managers, before and after a CBT group intervention. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis to identify common and/or contrasting themes.

Before the intervention took place managers observed a lack of consistency in how their staff dealt with challenging incidents and the serious consequences these incidents had for service users as well as staff. They spoke about the importance of multi-disciplinary working and good quality staff selection, support and training. After the group intervention managers commented on a positive “spilling-out effect” whereby the whole organisation was influenced by the intervention, a greater willingness on the part of service users to talk about their problems, and an increased confidence in the staff members who had co-facilitated the group work.

The implications of the themes raised are discussed and recommendations for further research are suggested.

This research provides a unique contribution of managers’ views and insight into how hosting a CBT group intervention impacted on their wider services.

This article explores the concept of ‘risk’ that is both an epistemological tool and major facet of “late modernity” (Delanty, 1999). During the 1970s, the use of the notion ’risk’ was mainly confined to ‘natural sciences’, when the concept was used to analyse and improve the ‘security’ of technological systems (Giddens, 1990). According to Delanty (1999) it was not until the 1980s and 1990s that social science based ‘disciplines’ discovered the importance of the topic in relation to changes affecting modern society. In particular, the disciplinary development of Sociology, for example, has discovered ‘risk’ as one of the important aspects of neo‐liberalism and modernity (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; Luhmann, 1993; Delanty, 1999). Sociological conceptions of risk are rapidly changing the role of social science (Delanty, 1999). For example, Delanty (1999) claims that there are studies on epistemology or legitimation of risk knowledge. The conflict between sociologically informed concepts of ‘risk’ and the more traditional, probabilistic calculations of risk represent a contest of competing social philosophies and visions about the future development of human and financial resources, relationship between economic growth and environmental protection, role of government and individuality, and projections and visions about the future it can be argued. A sociologically informed understanding of risk illustrates the interconnectedness of an “ageing population,” social policy and social life. From this perspective, risk is more than a calculation of costs and benefits, it is a theoretical mechanism for weighing different sets of political orientations which impinge on the positioning of individuals and populations.

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of cities develop strategies. The discourse of strategic management has become an obligatory point of passage for many city managers. This paper starts by posing an ostensibly simple question: why do cities need strategies? The commonsensical answer to the question is: because cities compete with each other. This paper aims to problematise the seemingly natural link between cities, competition and strategy. It also aims to explore the role that calculative practices play in creating city league tables that, in turn, function as the a priori condition that generates competition between cities.

This paper is interdisciplinary and draws on the related disciplines of accounting, organization theory and strategy. The argument unfolds in four steps: first, it briefly provides some theoretical background for analysis and relates it back to strategizing and accounting as a calculative practice; second, it scrutinizes league tables as an a priori of competition; third, it discusses the implications of the argument for city management and critical accounting; finally, it concludes with a discussion of the power effects of those calculative practices that shape strategizing in cities through the production of competition.

This paper argues that city strategizing is best understood as a set of complex responses to a new competitive arena, one rendered visible through calculative practices, manifested through city rankings. The paper makes five key contributions: one, league tables reduce qualities to a quantifiable form; two, league tables create an order amongst an heterogeneous ensemble of entities; three, league tables stimulate the very competition they claim to reflect; four, once competition is accepted, individual players need a strategy to play the game; and five, league tables have important power effects that may result in unintended consequences.

The paper contributes to understanding how calculative practices relate to strategy; it explores the organizational environment in which city managers strategize; in addition, it discusses the problem of civic schizophrenia.

The paper seeks to open up an agenda for studying city management, strategy and accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications that Power’s book had to the author’s research in public sector auditing.

In this paper, the author reflects and debates the inspiration that Michael Power’s book The Audit Society had on the author’s own research.

The author finds that this book had a significant influence on how he succeeded theorizing his studies on auditing, and how he could contribute to the audit literature. It is stunning how the book succeeded in synthesizing audit research, encouraging scholars to understand auditing as a social practice, i.e. how auditing can be theorized using various social science theories and how the book also appealed to broader social science.

This paper is a reflection that covers around a 20-year period with potential mis-representations of how exactly sequences of actions and thoughts were.

This paper helps to clarify how it is that audit operates and influences everyday life of persons involved with auditing.

This paper casts doubts as to what actions are carried out in the name of audit and that audit is not just a value free activity but involved with political agendas.

The originality of this paper is that it fleshes out how a seminal book can have significant implications on how research is carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how strategic, patient-centred communication plays a part in the discursive management of expectations posed to patients and healthcare organizations.

The paper provides an analysis of four documents collected as part of an ethnographic case study regarding “The Perspective of the Patient” – a Danish Hospital’s patient-centred communication programme. Mapping methods inspired by Grounded Theory are used to qualify the analysis.

The paper shows that strategic patient-centred communication addresses both a care-oriented approach to the patient and deploys market perceptions of patients. Market and care is seen as co-existing organizing modes that entail expectations to the patient. In the communication programme the patient is constructed in six information-seeking patient figures: affective patient; target group patient; citizen with rights; patient as a competent resource; user as active partner; and consumer. As a result, the patient-centred communication programme renders the patient as a flexible figure able to fit organizational demands of both care orientation and market concerns.

This study contributes to qualitative research in organizational health communication by combining two subfields – patient-centredness and health communication – in an empirical study of how market and care are intertwined in a patient-centred communication programme. The argument goes beyond the prevalent prescriptive approaches to patient-centredness and healthcare communication, instead providing a critical analytical perspective on strategic communication and patient-centredness and showing how expectations are posed to both patient and organization.

This paper aims to examine how long-lived firms can further develop through digitalisation in terms of actions, conditions and effects from a competitiveness perspective.

This exploratory study follows an inductive approach based on a survey conducted via interviews undertaken with nine long-lived Italian firms. The dimensions of the model (command, continuity, community, connection), elaborated by Miller and Le Breton-Miller (2005) in relation to longevity factors, were chosen to analyse digitalisation’s contribution to these long-lived firms’ development.

The digitalisation implemented by the analysed firms contributed in a variety of ways: (1) improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their business processes, (2) enhanced the understanding of customer experience, (3) supported their craftsmanship and the transmission of the knowledge included in the entrepreneurial path, (4) increased the awareness of the cultural value of the firms’ heritage and (5) allowed for the development of cutting-edge design skills by experimenting with content on different digital platforms and devices.

This study suggests managers of long-lived firms develop digital skills that allow them to interact with the rapid evolution of this context and understand how to effectively implement digitalisation in their specific firm. From this perspective, it is strategic to establish or strengthen collaborative network relationships to acquire such necessary skills.

This study provides novel empirical evidence on how long-lived firms are facing the challenge of digitalisation in terms of actions, conditions and effects to improve their competitiveness and ensure their survival.

The aim of this study is to identify and rank the factors of innovation capability (IC) in Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This study focuses on ascertaining the important factors that help in enhancing the IC with an emblematic focus on the MSME sector of India.

This paper proposes a multicriteria decision-making methodology, which is based on fuzzy analytic hierarchical process to prioritize the factors that enhance the IC of MSMEs. Finally, sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine the ranking stability.

Knowledge management is the most important enabler, followed by creativity and idea management and organizational culture.

Several organizations promote the strategic measures for enhancing the IC. To increase their capability to innovate, there is a need to identify, acknowledge and implement the drivers of IC into practice.

Prioritization done in the study facilitates the entrepreneurs to determine the most important factors that need crucial attention in dealing with sensitive issues of IC. Entrepreneurs can take several steps to implement the most important factors for enhancing the IC into practices for meeting the needs of the consumers, generating profits and enhancing the competitiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how users on social media view brands with a heritage. Consumers commonly post opinions and accounts of their experiences with brands on social media. Such consumer-generated content may or may not overlap with content desired by brand managers. Drawing from “The medium is the message” paradigm, this study text-mines user narratives on Twitter1 to shed light on the role of social media in shaping public images of brands with heritage through the lens of the stereotype content model.

The study uses a data set of almost 80,000 unique tweets on 12 brands across six categories, compares brands high versus low in heritage and combines dictionary-based content analysis with sentiment analysis.

The results indicate that both user-generated content and sentiment are significantly more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding warmth, consumers use significantly more positive words on sociability and fewer negative words on morality for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding competence, tweets include more positive words on assertiveness and ability for low-heritage brands. Finally, overall sentiment is more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage.

Important from co-creation and integrated marketing communication perspectives, the findings provide brand managers with actionable insights on how to more effectively use social media.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to examine user-generated content in a brand heritage context. It demonstrates that heritage brands, with their longevity and strong links to the past, need to be aware of how contemporary social media can detract from their image.

The purpose of this paper is to present a personal view of Professor John Rose. The organisational skill of the late Professor John Rose is illustrated by reminiscences, and his choice of Thales Press as the name of his publishing house is shown to be apposite. An aspect of his “statement of mission” for World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics and Kybernetes is considered in detail.

The presentation is partly anecdotal but also serious concerns are expressed about current developments in cybernetics.

The drive and organisational skill of John Rose will be sadly missed.

Rose's insistence on soundness of approach is important though arguably slightly misdirected. Attention is drawn to an important development in psychophysics of vision.

The reminiscences and views are the author's own.