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A quiet but exciting revolution has been going on in Aberdeen for the past two years. At its heart has been a shift in the balance of power between users of mental health services, commissioners and professionals. Rob Hughes describes the process ‐ how it started, what happened along the way, and also offer some thoughts on the lessons to be learned for the future.

This article describes research investigating the steps involved in recommending to the Secretary of State for Health whether a care worker should be included on the Protection of Vulnerable Adults (POVA) list, which records individuals barred from working and volunteering with vulnerable adults in England and Wales.The aims of the study were to investigate patterns of referrals to the list; factors associated with the collection of evidence to present to the Minister and to detail the operation of the list.The article focuses on the preliminary part of the research that covered discussion groups with purposive sample of older people, managers and staff during which a vignette approach was used to explore their perspectives.

Notwithstanding heightened awareness of the issues faced by homeless people, the notion that homelessness is the result of individual failings and weaknesses persists. The purpose of this paper is to challenge that perception by giving voice to this marginalised group and exploring the mechanisms through which they made and remade as homeless and may be protected.

Semi-structured interviews (n=23) were carried out with a sample of homeless people who had accessed a range of homelessness services in the study area.

It is argued that largely deprived of the private sphere, which arguably renders them in most need of public space, homeless people find themselves most subject to scrutiny, surveillance, social disapprobation and exclusion.

The authors reiterate that rather than simply being associated with rooflessness, homelessness is as a function of ongoing geographical marginalisation and social alienation.

The authors suggest that dedicated spaces for homeless people to occupy during the day continue to be in need of development because, whilst not unproblematic, they can disrupt processes associated with homelessness.

Further resources should be directed towards homelessness and the issues that arise during daytime for homeless people.

The paper supports the literature which highlights the spatial practices by which stigmatised groups come to be separated from mainstream society.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

Information systems (IS) project failure has been a recurring problem for decades. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the key factors that influence project failure and an analysis of the major areas that can have a significant impact on success; and second, to explore some of the key aspects that have an impact on project management performance from the practitioner perspective and discusses the problems faced by organizations in the closer integration of change and project management.

This study critically reviews the IS failure literature developing a synthesized view of the key issues and common reasons for projects to fail. The approach taken in this study is one that focuses on a number of key questions that pull together the relevant themes in this genre of research whilst highlighting many of the implications for practitioners and organizations alike.

Key questions remain on the underlying causes of instances of poor project management as an IS failure factor. The literature has omitted to develop a deeper analysis of the associations between failure factors and the potential causal relationships between these factors. The realization of project benefits relies on the success of both change and project management yet the formal integration of these two disciplines is constrained by separate standards bodies and an immature body of research.

This study is limited by its theoretical nature lacking an empirical element to provide a deeper analysis of IS failure factors and their interrelationships. This specific area is a recommendation for future research, where causal relationships between failure factors could be developed via a mathematic-based method such as interpretive structural modeling.

With failure rates of IS projects still unacceptably high after decades of attempts to significantly change outcomes, a deeper analysis of this topic is required. The research gaps and recommendations for practitioners highlighted in this study have the potential to provide valuable contributions to this topic of research.

The intent of this study is to present a new perspective of this genre of IS research that develops the main arguments and gaps in the literature from the practitioner viewpoint.

The performance of public sector institutions has always been contentious – this is as old as the system of government itself and its provision of collective goods, irrespective of whether they are tangible or intangible. In the context of South Africa, with its ever-increasing political competitiveness, this chapter assesses political leadership and the African philosophy of Ubuntu or humanism in improving public sector performance management in the country. It does so by addressing certain distinct questions: What is the state of public sector performance and leadership in South Africa? What have scholars contributed in linking public sector performance, and the politics and public administration dichotomy? Are the Batho Pele principles, underpinned by Ubuntu, a worthy notion on which to pillar African political leadership? By adopting an interpretivist, qualitative research design, the study reflects on the essence of a public administration that is effective in delivering political goods and managing the performance of bureaucracies and the political leadership therein. This chapter argues that the performance of public administrations remains a “wicked” problem in South Africa as political populism is on the rise in the country. However, the argument is made that with “good” political leadership – which naturally and effectively encompasses the philosophy of Ubuntu and which understands and mobilizes statecraft – great strides can be made beyond the current rhetoric.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Achieving continuous innovation performance still poses a major challenge to established companies as it requires high flexibility and adaptability in usually efficiently structured organisations. One way to tackle this challenge lies in establishing effective behaviours to successfully establish and apply innovation leadership mechanisms in an organisation. The emerging agile leadership style could provide such effective behaviours, as it addresses the demand for flexibility and adaptability on the organisational level. Despite these clear parallels research on the link between agile leadership and innovation leadership, and their possible combined contribution to drive continuous innovation performance is still in its infancy. Accordingly, the present study examines the behaviours of agile leaders to promote continuous innovation in established companies. It applies a discovery-driven research process of agile leaders to derive and categorise their behaviours. The subsequent comparison of the identified agile leadership behaviours with innovation leadership mechanisms from existing literature leads to eight specific, combined agile leadership principles within the three categories empowerment, performance enhancement, and support for continuous innovation. Eventually, this basis allows the conceptualisation of a first exploratory framework with the identified behaviours as possible enablers, and innovation leadership mechanisms as possible mediators for the continuous innovation performance, subject to test. These findings enhance existing theory by clarifying a possible link between agile leadership and continuous innovation. That way, practitioners can profit from concrete principles for agile leaders to inspire and enable continuous innovation in individuals and teams.