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On the one hand industrial and business managements pay lip‐service to creativity, but on the other hand they show scant recognition of the characteristics of creative people. And yet it is on scientists and engineers of a special kind, as well as many other creative people, that the future depends – technologically, socially, culturally and spiritually. In this article, Professor Stein presents valuable data for the selection and management of creative scientists, engineers and supporting personnel. The central point he makes is that to do its job right, management needs to do far more to acknowledge the role it must itself play in the creative process. This article is a condensed and modified version of a paper presented by Dr Stein at the 1985 annual conference of the Personnel Association of Ontario, on 28 February 1985, held in Toronto, Canada. We acknowledge permission of the Association to publish.

The current study aims to explore the role of stories in organizational sensemaking processes. Rather than positioning stories as one among many different sensemaking mechanisms, it is argued that stories allow a particular kind of sensemaking that is inherently open‐ended, distinguishing it from theoretical and propositional explanations for organizational phenomena. Drawing on previous Foucaultian discussions of epistemes, the paper aims to introduce the notions of epistemic impasse and epistemic spillover, arguing that cross‐functional interaction can cause tensions between incompatible epistemic bases, and that stories can act as a mechanism to overcome such tensions.

A qualitative methodology is used to illustrate the above mechanism in an ethnographic, participant‐observer study of a university student‐support center.

The results show how storytelling led to an increasingly open and ultimately universalizing tendency with the center, thus demonstrating both the potentials and limits of using stories within organizations.

The current paper adds to the storytelling literature by showing how stories not only act as a sensemaking mechanism, but also reimagine the definition of sense in a way that makes it more polyvalent and open to multiple epistemic standpoints.

This paper details the results of research undertaken on middle management burn‐out in hotels within a 50‐mile radius of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. The research explores the effect of variables such as gender, marital status, organizational and familial support on the degree of perceived burn‐out experienced by middle‐level managers associated with front‐line departments (reception, food and beverage service, housekeeping, etc.) in hotels. The study found that women experience a higher degree of burn‐out than men, as do single (unmarried) managers. Managers who perceive less family support also experience higher levels of burn‐out. A comparison of this study with similar studies undertaken in 1989, 1990 and 1993 shows that burn‐out has become more of a management problem. The 1999 figures show an average increase of 32 per cent from 1989 across the three dimensions of the burn‐out inventory used in this study.

The purpose is to show how actors' relative power or parity is dynamically instanced in discrete speech behaviors that are exchanged throughout everyday organizational interaction.

Politeness theory, rooted in the dramaturgical theories of Erving Goffman, details a set of linguistic indices used to show regard for others' face. This conceptual paper draws on politeness theory to model the unfolding of power relations within face-to-face verbal interchange in organizations. The paper presents a number of propositions suggesting how power differentials (or parity) are reflected in a set of common speech behaviors used to defray threats to face throughout organizational interaction.

This article extends and applies politeness theory to organizations by exploring specific motives and linguistic outcomes of high and low power actors, describing the behavioral egalitarianism associated with organic organizations, and suggesting how the demand characteristics of face-to-face interaction create oligarchic tendencies that militate against the success of workplace participation. Politeness' role in the social construction of power, and in distortive processes within hierarchical communication, is also discussed.

This paper enables researchers to understand the specific linguistic features associated with power-related roles, and it shows how the social distribution of certain speech behaviors is a function of power and dependency relations.

The findings provide managers a fine-grained understanding of how power affects speech, and an understanding of how such speech patterns may stymie attempts to stimulate organizational empowerment and employee voice.

Prior scholarship has neglected this most important topic.

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically formulate the plausibility of affective recalling through the analysis of different psychological theories and assumptions and develops the theory of vacation happiness bias on the emergence of some variations on affective recalling and forecasting intertwined with dispositional affect, affect regulation and types of situational affect.

This study uses a non-empirical method to find gaps in the literature and the existing theories and build a new theoretical model, vacation happiness bias.

The theory of vacation happiness bias accounts for how the modified focalism model that is expanded to affective recalling beyond affective forecasting works, and thus the modified model is better accounted particularly for the vacation field. In addition, the theory of vacation happiness bias explains how different types of affect and affect regulation are intertwined with one another within the modified focalism frame, thereby yielding some variation. Recalled vacation experiences are more positive than vacation experiences as of the present as a result of affect that is controlled through affect regulation merged with social desirability bias.

Research in tourism and psychology fields has not yet deemed affective recalling, even though affective recalling would likely be more salient in the vacation context that is different from the context of daily life.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how maternity doctors deal with anxieties generated through their interactions with patients.

The authors juxtapose two critical stories, collected as part of a large mixed method field study of leadership and patient care in three UK hospitals. The study of “organizational stories” is particularly relevant in health care settings that are liable to unleash strong emotions and fantasies, stories have a great advantage of offering an outlet for unconscious emotions and fantasies. The authors collected stories (n=48) from different stakeholders, and after extensive discussions and analysis, it was decided to focus this article on two stories told by two different doctors. These stories sum up not only the storytellers' own personal experiences but also reveal something more profound and general about the nature of doctors' anxieties and the means used to contain them. By restricting the discussion to two narratives, many variations are left outside our remit; the benefit, however, is that the nuances contained in these stories can be looked at in far greater detail.

The principal cause of doctors' anxiety in this study was a constant balancing between an objectifying “I‐it” and a communicative “I‐Thou” relations with their patients and the organization. If the doctors were unable to deliver what in their personal scale would have been good or even satisfactory patient care, anxiety levels started rising. The coping with and managing of anxiety was mainly done through controlling of relations with patients and colleagues.

The paper offers insights into situations that prompt diverse challenging emotions.

The purpose of paper is to shine light on the under‐theorised relationship between old age and victmisation. In classical criminological studies, the relationship between “age”, victimisation and crime has been dominated by analysis of younger people's experiences. This paper aims to address this knowledge deficit by exploring older people's experiences by linking it to the social construction of vulnerability.

The paper explores both historical and contemporary narratives relating to the diverse experiences of older people as victims in the UK. In particular, from 1945 to the present, statistical context and theoretical advancement illuminates that older people as a social group have a deep “fear of crime” to their relative victimisation.

A careful survey of the criminological literature highlights a paucity of research relating to older people's views and experiences of crime and victimisation. The conceptual issue of vulnerability in different contexts is important in understanding ageing and victimisation in UK. The paper's findings illustrate that their experiences have remained marginalised in the debates around social policy, and how the criminal justice system responds to these changes remains yet to be seen.

Any research attempt at theorising “age” should take into consideration not just younger people, but also the diverse experiences of older people. Policy makers may care to ponder that benchmarks be written that takes into full consideration of older people's experiences as vulnerability.

For criminal justice scholars and practitioners, there is a need to listen to the narratives of older people that should help shape and frame debate about their lived experiences. There should be an examination of existing formal and informal practices regarding elders, as the first step in developing an explicit and integrated set of policies and programmes to address the special needs of this group.

This is an original paper in highlighting how important old age is in construction of “victims” in modern society. By theorising age, victimisation and crime it is hoped to dispel and challenge some of the myths surrounding later life, crime and the older victim.