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This paper aims to explore the views of human resource (HR) professionals on work motivation and retention of older workers. Furthermore, it seeks to generate qualitative data to inspire measures for future survey research.

The study adopts a qualitative approach, using focus groups. A total of 15 participants were purposefully selected from different organisational settings (e.g. private and public organisations, various sectors, various organisational sizes, HR departments and HR consultants) and from different areas of HR practice (e.g. recruitment, selection, training, evaluation, diversity management, industrial relations). Several procedures are applied to carry out a rigorous qualitative analysis (i.e. interview guide, video recording and field notes, prompt transcripts, double coding, direct quotes and rich data slices when presenting findings).

The paper reveals that focus groups generate rich interaction and their content analysis results in five topics: definition of older workers, diversity amongst older workers, work motivation of older workers, retention policy and practices, and contexts of work motivation and organisation retention policy/practices.

Three focus groups with HR professionals give just a glance of the intended retention practices. Broader qualitative and quantitative research with HR professionals and older workers is needed, preferably carried out by an international and multidisciplinary team.

The paper provides preliminary advice to HR professionals as to which practices aim at retention of older workers, based on insights in theories on work motivation.

The study takes place within Belgium where far‐reaching societal reform is still needed to promote employment of older workers and to move away from the early‐retirement culture. The paper confronts the wealth of work motivation theories and the plethora of HR practices with HR professionals being challenged to retain older workers and to keep them motivated.

The effects of customer satisfaction on loyalty have been widely discussed by the academic community. Although the results of the studies reported in the literature are often contradictory, the existence of a relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is acknowledged, despite the influence of moderators and constraints of various kinds. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this relationship in the specific context of the retail sector, since this sector presents major challenges in terms of competition, and efforts placed on customer satisfaction and loyalty are more evident.

A survey based on the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model was applied to a retail store in Portugal. This model has its roots in Switzerland, where in 1989, Claes Fornell developed a new complementary method for measuring the overall quality of companies’ output, through the calculation of an aggregated customer satisfaction index. The proposed model is based on a set of causal relationships established between a set of constructs. The ultimate goal is to calculate both satisfaction and loyalty indexes as well as to estimate the relationship between both constructs. Structural equation modelling, based on a partial least squares (PLS) estimation methodology, is the statistical technique used to estimate the model parameters, as well as to compare the aggregated indexes. PLS is based on the principles of linear regression and combines multiple regression aspects with factor analysis, in order to estimate a series of interrelated relationships.

The results confirm a positive influence of satisfaction on customers’ loyalty to the retail store. The study also shows the importance of the image construct, due to its strong direct effects on satisfaction, which makes it essential for influencing the loyalty index, both directly and indirectly. The impact of the image construct is also evident on the expectations, as the latter has shown a considerable direct effect on perceived quality.

The study is based on a single case study of a Portuguese sports retail store. In future it would be interesting to study a representative sample of the whole retail sector.

The study is useful for the specific retail store where it was undertaken to help it devise better customer service, in order to increase satisfaction and loyalty. It is also useful for the entire network of stores for that retailer and other retail chains.

The systematic application of customer surveys to whole sectors of the economy would improve competition, customer service and, ultimately, contribute to development and economic growth.

The ECSI has been applied to various industry sectors in different countries, including Portugal. It has never been used in the context of the Portuguese retail sector and it adds to the discussion on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty, which is a pertinent topic of interest for researchers in quality management.

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.

This paper describes the results of an observational study of the information seeking behaviour of Members of Parliament. It is argued that political life functions on a flow of information and that information itself is a prime resource. The study sought to determine the characteristics that impact upon the manner in which information is sourced and used by parliamentarians. For this project a shadowing methodology was adopted. The conclusions drawn include that UK Members of Parliament are subject to a range of triggers of information seeking, in an information rich environment where the amount of information presents decision makers with difficulties. Public accountability results in demands from a wide variety of individuals, groups and associations. MPs are also expected to be knowledgeable about a wide variety of issues, while information need is frequently unpredictable and reactive. Members must be efficient information gatherers and managers and they must be flexible in their attitudes to information seeking, while retaining the capacity to critically appraise the quality of sources.

It is customary these days to denounce our society for its unconscionable neglect of the elderly, while we look back romantically to some indeterminate past when the elderly were respected and well cared for. Contrary to this popular view, old people historically have enjoyed neither respect nor security. As Simone de Beauvoir so effectively demonstrates in The Coming of Age (New York: Putnam, 1972), the elderly have been almost universally ill‐treated by societies throughout the world. Even the Hebrew patriarchs admonished their children to remember them as they grew older: “Cast me not off in time of old age; when my strength fails, forsake me not” (Psalms 71:1). Primitive agrarian cultures, whose very existence depended upon the knowledge gleaned from experience, valued their elders, but even they were often moved by the harsh conditions of subsistence living to eliminate by ritual killing those who were no longer productive members of society. There was a softening of societal attitudes toward the elderly during the period of nineteenth century industrial capitalism, which again valued experience and entrepreneurial skills. Modern technocratic society, however, discredits the idea that knowledge accumulates with age and prefers to think that it grows out‐of‐date. “The vast majority of mankind,” writes de Beauvoir, “look upon the coming of old age with sorrow and rebellion. It fills them with more aversion than death itself.” That the United States in the twentieth century is not alone in its poor treatment of the aged does not excuse or explain this neglect. Rather, the pervasiveness of prejudice against the old makes it even more imperative that we now develop programs to end age discrimination and its vicious effects.

Throughout history, from ballads to requiems, music has played an important social role in reflection on mortality. Not only do musicians articulate their angst and thoughts about death, but, in so doing, they enable listeners to explore their own feelings. While the relationship between music and mental health can be examined from a number of perspectives, two broad approaches can be taken: artist-centred approaches and listener-centred approaches. The first analyses the life and work of artists, focussing particularly on the ways in which they explore death and angst in their music. The second looks at the ways in which the life and work of an artist is interpreted by listeners. Within these general approaches, a complex set of questions emerge – often at the interface of both approaches. How is the music used by listeners in their reflection on mortality? How is music used to manage mental health? Does reflection on the life and work of an artist contribute to suicidal ideation? Is the reception of music altered by an artist’s suicide? Using both these approaches and drawing particularly on the work of Émile Durkheim, this discussion demonstrates the significance of popular music analysis for death studies, focussing particularly on the issues surrounding popular music’s relationship to suicidal ideation.

Outsourced information technology (IT) workers establish two different employment relationships: one with the outsourcing company that hires them and another with the client organization where they work daily. The attitudes that an employee has towards both organisations may be influenced by the interpretations or attributions that employees make about the reasons behind the human resource (HR) management practices implemented by the outsourcing company. This paper aims to propose that commitment‐focused HR attributions are positively and control‐focused HR attributions are negatively related to the affective commitment to the client organization, through the affective commitment to the outsourcing company.

These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 158 highly skilled outsourced employees from the IT sector. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM).

The paper's hypotheses were supported. It can conclude that, if an employee interprets the HR practices as part of a commitment‐focused strategy of the outsourcing company, it has clear attitudinal benefits. The study found that the relationship between HR attributions and the commitment to the client organization is mediated by the commitment to the outsourcing company.

These findings hint at the critical role of outsourcing companies in managing the careers of these highly marketable employees.

This paper is the first to apply the concept of HR attributions to contingent employment literature in general and to outsourced IT workers in particular.

Postcards have been sold by the billions over the past 100 years or so, but you never would recognize their popularity by checking library holdings. Most libraries ignore them, yet a reporter observed at the 1981 national poster and postcard show: “Postcard collection—a nostalgic pastime that has become a consuming passion for thousands of Americans—is more popular today than when picture postcards first caught on at the turn of the century.” Among the dealers of new cards, Kennard Harris says that “in the past five years there has been an explosion of museum postcard publishing and sales in this country.”

With more corporations using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award as a benchmark, any change in the award's criteria is significant. New for 1995: Money talks. This year's version of the Baldrige standards incorporates a new segment on financial results and more assessments of future‐oriented activities.