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The purpose of this paper is to explore how workers experience planned and unplanned change(s), how the effects of change endure in organizations and the entanglement (Gherardi, 2015) of materiality, affect and learning.

Research design is ethnographic in nature and draws from 30 semi-structured interviews of workers in an Australian organization. Interviews were designed to elicit narrative accounts (stories) of challenges and change faced by the workers. Desktop research of organizational documents and material artefacts complemented interview data. Analysis is informed by socio-material understandings and, in particular, the ideas of materiality, affect and learning.

Change, in the form of a fire, triggered spontaneous and surprisingly positive affectual and organizational outcomes that exceeded earlier attempts at restructuring work. In the wake of the material tragedy of the fire in one organization, what emerged was a shift in the workers and the practices of the organization. Their accounts emphasized challenges, excitement and renewal, which prompt reconsideration of learning at work, in particular the entanglement of affect, materiality and learning in times of change.

Much workplace learning research identifies change as conducive to learning. This paper builds on this research by providing new understandings of, and insights into, the enduring effects of change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a contextualized local government case study of the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in conjunction with the Australian Business Excellence Framework (ABEF) to highlight the importance of a good strategic fit between LSS and organizational objectives before implementation.

A local government council is used in a case study-based approach. Organizational artefacts and documents were used for data collection in conjunction with interviews from senior executives within the organization.

Results indicate that when used in conjunction with the ABEF, LSS provides focus on organizational learning practices embedded within the implementation of continuous improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to discourse regarding the effective application and implementation of LLS in local government.

LSS tools and techniques are known to local government, but are applied in isolation of the overarching LSS framework. This paper emphasizes the importance of comprehensive implementation of these tools, guided by the inclusion of an external contextualized framework (ABEF) in conjunction with the LSS to achieve sustainable continuous improvement.

Business excellence frameworks are widely used in the public sector as a reference/means for improvement. This paper highlights the importance of LSS in operationalizing strategic direction provided by such frameworks and providing the focus on learning practices critical for sustainable improvements.

Measurement practices have long been considered vital for informing the management of performance in organisations. Their application to local governments is a more recent, yet multi-decade phenomenon facilitated by New Public Management trends. This paper aims to review the landscape of publications that discuss performance measurement (PM) practices in Australian and New Zealand local government contexts and identify implications for future research.

A systematic review methodology was used to identify a shortlist of publications. Next, a rating-based researcher appraisal process was applied. Multiple iterations of search and appraisal were conducted to form the basis for inductive thematic analysis and synthesis.

Analysing 65 PM publications, two interrelated themes, namely, discourses of performance as efficiency, accountability or strategic growth and change were identified, which influence the adoption of local PM tools and frameworks. As demands for strategic growth and more complex service delivery increase, strategic and localised adaptation of PMs may be required to integrate learning and communicative competencies with technical and operational capabilities.

The systematic review methodology has been applied to address some of the limitations of publication and reporting biases in literature. This research provides a starting point for future investigations and broadening of discourse in local government contexts.

This paper represents the first systematic review of 1995–2020 publications on performance management practices used by local governments in Australia and New Zealand.

This paper aims to present a review of literature that considers the use of quality frameworks in higher education (HE). Quality frameworks provide a minimum standard of teaching and learning of students. This systematic literature review identifies the tools and techniques to continuously improve the systems and processes that underpin teaching and learning are missing. With this in mind, the authors present a focus on Lean Six Sigma (LSS) as an improvement methodology adopted by the HE sector and present the factors that drive or hinder the implementation of LSS in higher education institutions (HEIs).

A review of the literature and thematic analysis has been undertaken relating to the application of quality frameworks and methodologies within the literature set.

The findings show that quality frameworks to be lacking insofar as their focus on compliance is no incentive for continuous improvement. This finding is not unique to the HEI sector and similar challenges exist in other sectors. A further finding identifies the need for academic professional practice to go beyond quality assurance to attend to the transformation of students. Together these present an apparent disconnect between continuous improvement methodology and HE quality frameworks.

A literature review does have limitations insofar as some literature may have been missed because of different key terms. A further consideration being literature from 2019 not available at the time the review was conducted.

It represents the state of play in regard to the use of quality frameworks operating in HE and business schools. Insight is offered into how the use of continuous improvement methods can deliver quality in HE to benefit the sector, students and others. An agenda for future research is offered.

The discussion is valuable as it seeks to improve understanding of the relationships between methodologies with adopted quality frameworks in the HEI sector. A contribution is made in the use of force field analysis to represent the critical success factors and barriers of LSS in HEI.

The quality of consulting services informing project decisions is crucial for the effectiveness of public investments. We analyze the ability of the consulting industry to provide adequate services to government agencies in Italy. At the aggregate level we observe that the value of the public demand for consulting services is a small and highly variable share of revenues of the consulting firms. At the micro level, we analyze the procurement data for some 300 feasibility studies. Although the market for those studies has been reasonably competitive, it has attracted a small fraction of the all consulting sector, and the quality of the studies has been unsatisfactory. We claim that an increasing public demand would provide more incentives for firms to focus their business on the provision of quality consulting services to the public sector.

There is a research gap in terms of understanding how green consumers perceive green products in a marketplace context. The purpose of this paper is to respond to this omission by exploring the green consumers' product demands and consumption processes.

Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with Portuguese green consumers are used to discuss potential key factors (reasons to buy green products, defining green product characteristics, feelings about pricing, perceived product confidence, willingness to compromise, environmental knowledge, consideration of alternatives, product's point of purchase and use and disposal).

The analysis indicates that green consumers represent an artificial segment and provides further empirical support to the definition of sustainability as a market‐oriented concept. The paper's findings suggest that mainstreaming green products is a more positive alternative than green segmentation.

This research is exploratory in nature and the authors followed established guidelines to ensure objectivity. However, the study's findings are restricted to Portuguese green consumers and a replication in other countries would help to remove any potential country bias.

Sustainable businesses are eager to learn who the green consumer is in order to define this market segment. This may not represent the best strategy, however. Targeting green products to a niche market based only on intangible environmental or ethical values may not only be hindering the progress of sustainability as a market‐oriented concept but also missing the huge opportunity of gaining competitive advantage in the inevitable future marketplace.

Most marketing studies were unsuccessful in segmenting green consumers even “on average”, resulting in elusive and contradictory outcomes. Only very few studies are aimed at exploring the green consumer's behavior using qualitative research approaches. This paper explores the product demands of green consumers, as well as their consumption processes in detail.

A few years ago, in an effort to promote co‐operation between the two professional associations of librarians in Ireland, a Liaison Committee, consisting of members nominated by the Council of the Library Association of Ireland and members nominated by the Committee of the Northern Ireland Branch of the Library Association was formed. The first fruit of its endeavours was found in the establishment of an Annual Joint‐Conference of the two bodies, the first one being held at Portrush, in Northern Ireland in 1963.

A FEW years ago, in an effort to promote co‐operation between the two professional associations of librarians in Ireland, a Liaison Committee, consisting of members nominated by the Council of the Library Association of Ireland and members nominated by the Committee of the Northern Ireland Branch of the Library Association was formed. The first fruit of its endeavours was found in the establishment of an Annual Joint‐Conference of the two bodies, the first one being held at Portrush, in Northern Ireland in 1963.

I suppose that most noticeable of all the changes in our profession since I came into it has been the multiplicity of the methods by which one can become a librarian. A. E. Standley says in a recent article in the L.A.R., in 1970: “The term librarian includes the Library Association chartered librarian, the graduate with a degree in librarianship, the scholar librarian, the information and intelligence officer, the translator, the abstracter, the non‐library‐qualified subject expert”.

Extending the springboard perspective with the resource dependence theory, the authors posit that cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are a new channel for emerging economy firms (EEFs) to enhance their technology capabilities. This study aims to examine the impact of cross-border M&As initiated by EEFs on their technology augmentation vis-à-vis matched domestic M&A cases and investigate the factors influencing the difference in post-merger innovation capability.

This paper estimates the post-acquisition innovation capability of acquirers from emerging economies (EEs) that engage in cross-border M&As. To remove possible selection bias, the authors leverage a difference-in-difference-style approach in combination with a matched sample constructed by pairing each cross-border M&A case with a similar domestic deal. The data set contains 266 cross-border M&As and 266 matched domestic M&A deals between 2003 and 2011, whereby acquirers are based in 6 EEs and targets are in 36 countries consisting of both EEs and advanced economies (AEs).

The present empirical results show that cross-border M&As engaged by EEFs are an important engine for improving EEFs’ innovation capability through technology augmentation. The main empirical results are as follows. First, compared with matched domestic acquirers with similar characteristics, EE cross-border M&As have a positive effect on innovation capability. Second, the positive effect of the EEFs’ cross-border M&As relative to the matched domestic M&As on innovation capability is driven largely by cross-border M&As with targets in AEs. Third, the increase in post-M&A innovation capability of the EE cross-border acquirers comes mainly from deals where targets are based in countries with relatively superior human capital and innovation capability than those of the acquirers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first systematic study of whether cross-border M&As serve as an effective channel of technology augmentation for EE acquirers compared to matched domestic acquirers with similar characteristics.