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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

To research involvement of healthcare staff in the UK and identify practical organisational and policy solutions to improve and boost capacity of the existing workforce to conduct research.

A mixed-method study presenting three work packages here: secondary analysis of levels of staff research activity, funding, academic outputs and workforce among healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom; 39 Research and Development lead and funder interviews; an online survey of 11 healthcare organisations across the UK, with 1,016 responses from healthcare staff included for analysis; and 51 interviews of healthcare staff in different roles from six UK healthcare organisations.

Interest in research involvement is strong and widespread but hampered by a lack of systematic organisational support despite national policies and strategies to increase staff engagement in research. While useful, these external strategies have limited universal success due to lack of organisational support. Healthcare organisations should embed research within organisational and human resources policies and increase the visibility of research through strategic organisational goals and governance processes. A systems-based approach is needed.

The research gathered data from a limited number of NHS trusts but these were purposively sampled to provide a range of different acute/community health service organisations in different areas. But data was therefore more detailed and nuanced due to a more in-depth approach.

The findings are relevant for developing policies and practice within healthcare organisations to support research engagement. The findings also set out key policy and strategic recommendations that will support greater research engagement.

Increased research activity and engagement in healthcare providers improves healthcare outcomes for patients.

This is a large scale (UK-wide) study involving a broad range of healthcare staff, with good engagement of nurses, midwives and Allied Healthcare Professionals who have not been previously achieved. This allowed valuable analysis of under-researched groups and comparisons by professional groups. The findings highlight the need for tailored action to embed research reporting, skills, professional development and infrastructure into organisational policies, strategies and systems, along with broader system-wide development.

Examines the tenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.

This chapter describes the transition of a nursery school to a laboratory school. Dissatisfaction on the part of populations involved with the nursery school led to an extensive self-study, the results of which indicated several forms of discontinuity. The program was restructured through initiating structural changes and articulating missions congruent with those of traditional laboratory schools. Actions specific to educating and training students, conducting scientific inquiry and research, and implementing best practice and educational innovation also were taken in order to address the new missions and achieve higher levels of continuity. Throughout the chapter the difficulty and necessity of linking theory and research with practice and innovation are highlighted.

In recent years, much energy and finance has been expended by successive governments in monitoring teaching and – separately – research quality. Although official conceptions of quality have been challenged, there has been little serious questioning in the UK of the supposed connections between teaching quality and staff research. This is surprising, since the weight of international evidence suggests a limited – and perhaps even negative – relationship between these activities in terms of the student experience. Drawing on the findings of a detailed case study, this paper argues that encouraging and enabling research among academic staff not only enhances their job satisfaction, it can also improve the educational experience of their students. The potential benefits to students, however, will be maximised only if the potentially negative impacts of staff research are managed carefully.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the establishment of a Research Working Group at Flinders University Library, a mid‐sized teaching and research university located in South Australia. The group was founded to encourage staff to develop a more reflective, research‐oriented and evidence‐based professional practice initially for a three‐year term. This paper comes at about two years into the pilot and provides an interim report of the group's experiences and achievements.

As a case study, this paper describes the introduction and background of the Flinders University Library Research Working Group, its purpose, the selection of projects, and its work to date.

The paper reports on the management‐driven practical supports that have been implemented to assist practitioners undertaking research at Flinders University Library.

The paper can be used as an exemplar for other academic libraries with staff with non‐tenured staff which lacks a culture of research.

This paper adds an Australian perspective to the existing literature on support for academic librarians undertaking research. The literature is dominated by US and Canadian experiences based on academic status.

This paper aims to explore problems facing the recruitment of accounting and finance staff in research-led universities. “University accounting and finance (A&F) departments are experiencing difficulty in attracting and retaining suitably qualified staff” (Duff and Monk, 2006, p. 194). The literature identifies a number of reasons for the shortage of A&F phenomenon (Duff and Monk, 2006; Smith and Urquhart, 2018), including, the wide salary gap between academe and industry profession, difficulty in achieving publications in highly rated journal, high workload in teaching and marking due the limited number of A&F staff.

The paper provides new insights for the use of the grounded theory and how the theory has been generated from the semi-structured interviews.

This study has resulted in eight main challenges emerged, and a final theory has been generated. Implications of this research on business schools are valuable in research-led universities, the A&F staff recruitment strategies and the A&F research strategies in research-led universities.

The novelty of this research is based on the induction of the challenges that a business school faces, as a case study for a research-intensive teaching-led UK university, in recruiting new A and F appointees and retaining existing members of staff.

This paper introduces some of the research that has been conducted into staff stress in learning disability services. It also examines how some individual characteristics of service users, particularly challenging behaviour and mental health problems, may influence the levels of staff stress reported. Service changes as a result of the development of supported living are also considered briefly. Some suggestions are made as to how these changes might influence staff. The importance of new research investigating these developments from a staff perspective is highlighted.

This paper examines the growth of research in polytechnics. It considers the extent to which polytechnic libraries are able to support academic research. The role of large research collections, such as exist in many university libraries is discussed. The paper argues that polytechnic libraries can best support research not by emulating the collection‐building policies of the universities, but rather by developing active information services. It uses a case study from Brighton Polytechnic to demonstrate how a successful service has been offered to researchers in the subject fields of accountancy, business and management. Analysis of online search records and of a survey of academic staff is used to evaluate the efforts of Brighton Polytechnic library to provide a useful service to academic researchers.