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The paper aims to provide practical suggestions to practitioners of human resources (HR) that show how employees can be a source of competitive advantage for the firm.

This paper is based on earlier research and practical experience.

That resource-based theory can be practically applied to HR management to develop employees to be a source of competitive advantage.

This paper provides HR practitioners with concrete examples to improve practice and work strategically for the benefit of employees and the wider firm.

This paper shows how a theory of strategy translates into everyday practice for HR practitioners.

This paper aims to demonstrate the practical application of resource-based theory to the work of HR practitioners and to show how employees can be a direct source of competitive advantage for the firm.

The popular models of competitive strategy seem to reduce employees to invisible units of production – an inconsequential, undifferentiated mass. Even criticisms of Porter’s model do not appear to notice that he forgot about the workers. The idea that a firm’s internal resources, especially its employees, could play a part in generating competitive advantage is not considered. This is despite a great deal of scholarly research demonstrating that employees do not just contribute to competitive advantage; they can themselves be a direct source of competitive advantage.

This paper is valuable to HR practitioners, HR consultants, organizational development specialists and strategic planners.

Psychological developmental informed theories imply that addiction is not exclusively due to the addictive properties of the substance but that early psycho-social experiences are influential on later life. The purpose of this paper is to understand substance dependency, relapse and recovery amongst community-based substance using offenders in relation to their childhoods, relationships and significant life events, from their perspective. A key aim was to help better inform policy and practice.

A qualitative study (interpretative phenomenological analysis) was used to understand the impact of childhood, relationships and significant life events amongst (N = 17) adult ex/offenders with substance use dependency problems, (who were part of the UK Government rehabilitation programme), to understand their substance use and recovery from their own perspectives.

Four main superordinate themes were developed illustrating participants extremely adverse childhoods. Substance use was a means to cope with current and past trauma and crises and to help manage the emotions and mental health which could accompany these difficulties. Managing recovery was about learning to manage life itself, including emotions, mental health problems, trauma/responses, relationships and everyday life.

This group is under researched where qualitative methods have been used. The study focussed on early-psycho-social experiences and relationships and the influence of these throughout the life cycle, in relation to their substance use. The study was informed by theories often used in therapeutic settings but rarely in research, (Orford, 2008; Khantzian, 2012; Flores, 2012, Van Der Kolk, 2014).

Bakers Delight Holdings is the largest retail bakery chain in the world. With over 650 bakeries in three countries the company employs both a large number of bakery staff in its company‐owned bakeries and several hundred corporate staff in support offices. Bakery employees include shop assistants, baking apprentices and bakery managers while the corporate offices have staff in areas including information technology, training, operations, purchasing, recruitment and marketing.

This paper aims to demonstrate how appreciative inquiry methods can be applied by managers to developing and reviewing business strategy as an alternative, more inclusive and positive approach than is traditionally adopted.

Two cases are presented emanating from consulting projects undertaken by the author.

The cases highlight that appreciative inquiry methods can be applied practically to matters of strategy in different types of organizations.

The practical implications are far reaching. Appreciative inquiry is a fully inclusive method of organizational research. It can be easily and inexpensively adopted and run by management teams, and all employees can be active participants in the process.

The paper is the first that specifically marries appreciative inquiry with business strategy development and review for practitioners and that presents practitioner-oriented cases.

The purpose of this paper is to provide HR practitioners with a model to engage employees in organizational improvement initiatives, which is positive, creative, and inclusive.

The design for this paper is based upon the author’s experience and reading, and the approach is to provide and explain a model with practical examples.

The author found that the appreciative inquiry method has wide applications with regard to improving organizations of all sizes and industries.

The findings of this paper are valuable to HR, organizational development, change managers, practitioners, and consultants. The model is easy to apply and inexpensive.

The North Somerset Education & Training Consortium provides a wide range of education and training courses of varying lengths and intensity, with built‐in, long‐term progression opportunities. Paul Davis and colleagues describe how access to graduated learning has given confidence to people with experience of mental health problems, enabling them to progress both at personal and academic levels.

This paper develops and tests a model for explaining small and medium-size enterprise (SME) participation and success in public procurement. The model is informed by a capability-based view of public sector tendering that includes relational and procedural dimensions. To test the model a survey was carried out on firms competing for contracts with Irish public sector organizations (n = 3010). The survey was repeated one year later to demonstrate reliability (n = 3092). Overall, the results lend support to the model. Procedural capability is associated with frequency of tendering and typical value of contract sought. Relational capability is not. Procedural and relational capabilities are each significant in accounting for success rates in contract competitions and commercial orientation towards the public sector.

This paper examines the role of theory in public procurement research. Theoretical rigour is integral to management science, yet little is known on the extent and form of theory in public procurement. With the field starting to mature, addressing this issue is timely. From conducting a systematic literature review we find that 29 percent of articles are theoretically grounded, with the incidence of theory having increased in recent years. Economic, sociological, psychological, and management theories are all in evidence, but micro-economic theories predominate. Our findings also show that survey reporting and case studies account for almost half of all studies; procurement research is focused on organizational-level aspects more than regulatory-policy issues or public buyers; and studies to date have largely emanated from the North American and European regions. The contribution of this paper lies in clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of public procurement. Out of this we highlight the need for greater theoretical rigour, point to the under-use and even absence of theories that could have high validity and utility, and suggest a narrowing of research foci.

There is currently much debate about the meaning of competency and its importance to professionalization. This article explores the personal meaning and importance of competency from the perspective of public buyers and managers in Ireland and the UK. Using an in-depth mixed method research design, we propose a typology of public procurement competency and discuss the implications of the framework for professionalization of public procurement.