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Reducing the lead time for engineered‐to‐order products can allow more time for exploration and testing of design alternatives, reduction of project durations, or some combination of both. Combined with improved reliability of work flow on site, more fabricated products can be pulled to site when needed, thus avoiding unnecessary inventories. Lead time reduction benefits both the design and the construction phases of projects, and it benefits the fabricator as well. Integration of engineering and detailing may offer the greatest potential for lead time reduction. However, fabrication lead times can also be reduced. This paper describes the application of lean production concepts and techniques to structural precast concrete fabrication. The key change was learning to identify and utilise work flow as opposed to focusing management effort on keeping workers and plant busy. Results included shop cycle time and lead time reduction, increased throughput rate, and improved productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Hotel Workers Union and its impact on talent management in the New Zealand hospitality sector using the corporatist framework drawing primarily on the works of Schmitter (1979) to construct a critical, historical employment relations approach.

The data for this paper were gathered as part of a history of employment relations in the New Zealand hotel sector from 1955 to 2000. The main methods were, namely, semi-structured interviews and archival research.

This study found a historical employment environment of multiple actors in the employment relationship, with hotel unions playing a more complex and nuanced role to influence talent management in the New Zealand hotel sector. The paper suggests that neither the hotel union nor employers effectively addressed talent management challenges in this sector.

The study contributes detailed empirical knowledge about historical relationships between hotel unions and talent management issues in New Zealand.

The paper argues that applying a corporatist perspective to the history of the Hotel Workers Union and the issues of talent management that result from that history provides a unique and insightful contribution to the field

This research explores the purchasing behavioural drivers of young Chinese consumers purchasing foreign clothing brands. The aim is to include a range of drivers identified by different investigations into a single approach, to determine direct and indirect channels by which these drivers influence purchasing behaviour, and their relative importance in quantitative terms.

The methodology is based on an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour that considers hypotheses based on a number of studies revised in the literature review. This theoretical framework was used as the basis for a questionnaire applied to a sample of 362 young Chinese consumers. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling approach was used to analyse the collected data.

The results revealed three main channels influencing purchasing behaviour which were shown to share the same root, corresponding to the influences of the social network young consumers belong to. This result suggests that social norms have a key role in explaining young consumers' purchasing behaviour through its impact on their needs for status and social recognition, their attitudes towards foreign cultures and foreign brands, and their beliefs regarding the attributes of foreign clothing.

The work therefore provides companies operating in the foreign clothing market the confidence to devise business strategies that focus on the channel demonstrating the highest influencing power. A strategy likely to have the highest influencing power is one that uses celebrities to promote the reputation of products and reinforce the messages associated with status and social recognition. Reinforcement of these strategies could include secondary strategies linked to the other channels such as the one related to the adoption of foreign cultural symbolism.

In contrast to the majority of related studies, this investigation also explores indirect channels or paths by which a behavioural driver affects the behaviour of young Chinese consumers. In fact, this investigation not only simultaneously identified the different paths influencing young Chinese consumers purchasing behaviour but also quantitatively identified their relative importance.

The purpose of this paper is to review the historic development of the requirements for sub-floor (also known as “basementless space” or “crawl space”) moisture management in the USA, UK and New Zealand (NZ) from 1600s to 1969.

The review of 171 documents, including legislation, research papers, books and magazines, identified three time periods where the focus differed: 1849, removal of impure air; 1850–1929, the use of ground cover and thorough ventilation; and 1930–1969, the development of standards.

Published moisture management guidance has been found from 1683, but until the 1920s, it was based on the provision of “adequate” ventilation and, in the UK, the use of impermeable ground cover. Specific ventilation area calculations have been available from 1898 in the UK, 1922 in the USA and 1924 in NZ. These are based on the area of ventilation per unit floor area, area of ventilation per unit length of perimeter wall, or a combination of both. However, it was not until 1937 in the USA, 1944 in NZ and after the period covered by this paper in the UK, that numerical values were enforced in codes. Vents requirements started at 1 in. of vent per square foot of floor area (0.7 per cent but first published in the USA with a misplaced decimal point as 7 per cent). The average vent area was 0.69 per cent in USA for 19 cases, 0.54 per cent in NZ for 7 cases and 0.13 per cent in UK for 3 cases. The lower UK vent area requirements were probably due to the use of ground covers such as asphalt or concrete in 1854, compared with in 1908 in NZ and in 1947 in USA. The use of roll ground cover (e.g. plastic film) was first promoted in 1949 in USA and 1960 in NZ.

Common themes found in the evolution of sub-floor moisture management include a lack of documented research until the 1940s, a lack of climate or site-based requirements and different paths to code requirements in the three countries. Unlike many building code requirements, a lack of sub-floor moisture management seldom leads to catastrophic failure and consequent political pressure for immediate change. From the first published use of performance-based “adequate” ventilation to the first numerical or “deemed to satisfy” solutions, it took 240 years. The lessons from this process may provide guidance on improving modern building codes.

This is the first time such an evaluation has been undertaken for the three countries.

Individual performance review (IPR) and performance related pay (PRP) were formally introduced into the British National Health Service (NHS) by circulars PM(86)10 and PM(86)11 in September 1986.

Points out that the transformation of Russia into a modern industrial democracy depends to a high degree on the capacity of Russian managers′ to absorb and implement Western management know‐how; this, in turn, depends on the success of trainers to communicate management know‐how into the Russian/post‐Soviet frame of reference. Focuses on Russian managers′ attitudes to a current training programme commissioned under the EC TACIS (Technical Assistance to the CIS) Programme. Twelve managers, all from the construction sector, were asked to state their expectations of the training programme in relation to their companies and themselves. Analysis of the responses suggested that Russian managers have a very limited self‐image as managers and that they see the West as a key source of solutions to Russia′s economic problems. But a striking implication to emerge was that the Russian managers were inclined to misconceive the applicability of Western management to Russian conditions. Concludes that trainers and policy makers may need to do more to make Russian managers aware of the value of Western management knowledge to Russian society.

Introduction It is noticeable that most management training and education incorporates an element of marketing studies in one form or another. This is true for business studies degrees and diplomas, for post‐graduate management degrees and diplomas, and for professional studies. It may be in need of particular justification, since it is often the case that it is easier to see the link between topics such as management accounting and functions such as production or personnel, than the relationship with marketing, which seems a rather different type of business discipline. In fact, this problem is complicated further by the changing nature of marketing itself, since views on the role of marketing in the company have changed radically in most companies in the last two decades.

Alternative document models (ADMs) were created with the purpose of reducing the extent to which anomalies occur in counts of web links at the page level, and have been used extensively within webometrics as an alternative to using the web page as the basic unit of analysis. This paper seels tp carry out a longitudinal study of ADMs in an attempt to ascertain which model gives the most consistent results when applied to the UK, Australia and New Zealand academic web spaces over the last six years.

Information science software (SocSciBot Tools, socscibot.wlv.ac.uk) was used to process hyperlink structure text files for UK, Australian and New Zealand universities and produced standard Page, Directory, Domain and Site ADMs using both inlinks and outlinks. Spearman bivariate correlation analysis was then undertaken to determine the level of correlation between these eight ADMs and a measure of site size for each university.

The findings show that the Domain ADM gives the most consistent results. However, the Directory ADM also gives more reliable results than are evident when using the standard Page model. Aggregating at the site (or university) level appears to provide less reliable results than using the page as the standard unit of measure, and this finding holds true over all three academic webs and for each time period examined over the last six years.

The use of Spearman's correlation coefficient is considered to be unreliable when used with very small sample sizes and, with only eight universities, the New Zealand academic web space may not be sufficiently large to give truly accurate statistical results.

While previous specific studies have shown that more accurate results can be obtained through the use of the Domain or Directory ADM, the paper has shown that these results are consistent over time and across different countries' academic web spaces.

Suggests that one of the constraints in developing a marketing information system is in the interaction between the systems and personnel involved in gathering, processing and communicating that information. Proposes that a marketing information system is only effective in relation to the motivation and attitudes of individual staff members.