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Describes the process by which an NHS provider Unit sought to make quality assurance and improvement a shared concern of professionals and managers. Development of a quality assurance strategy and related action plans pulled together existing quality initiatives in the Unit and set new initiatives in an agreed framework for organizational development. Thus the strategy filled the gap between a statement of organizational values and detailed quality auditing practices at the sharp end. Through the active involvement of professional staff and managers in multidisciplinary and multi‐level project groups, the facilitated processes of strategy making, dissemination and implementation led to significant learning by and development of staff and managers and an unanticipated spill over of energy, enthusiasm and commitment throughout the organization.

The impact of the NHS reforms, and the resulting purchaser‐provider split, has refocused attention on the relationship between management and medicine in acute hospitals. It is timely to assess the explanatory power of various theoretical models regarding the management‐medicine interface. Argues that this interface is currently rather fluid and that a dynamic and adaptive model is best suited to understanding the way in which doctors and managers develop their relationship within the changing policy context. Two examples illustrate these shifting boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the forces which militate against building capacity for research in business and management that satisfies the double‐hurdle criteria of academic rigour and relevance to practice, despite strong pressures in favour of it.

The paper is a reflective piece based on a small number of interviews with researchers, and a variety of initiatives and events in the business and management environment.

Forces for practice relevant research include rhetorical statements from high‐profile academics, government, the research councils, and many business and management researchers. Forces against it relate principally to editorial and reviewer processes relating to journal publication and grant awards. Modes of academically rigorous, practice relevant research actually carried out are highly varied – some variations are discussed – but these are not widely understood by funding councils, editors, reviewers, or even by researchers working in different modes of such research.

The principal point of this paper is a call for capacity building to develop in the community an understanding of the nature of rigour in different modes of practice relevant and cumulative research. This contrasts with, but is in addition to, more traditional calls for effort to be applied to the further development and promulgation of practice relevant research approaches themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the HRM factors that may have contributed to the failure of UK supermarket group Sainsbury's attempt to enter the Egyptian market.

The paper draws on participant observations and interactions with stakeholder groups during a three‐month study based in a Sainsbury store in Egypt.

The paper reveals that failure to listen to the advice of its Egyptian employees may have been a reason for Sainsbury's failure in Egypt, which occurred despite the supermarket's technical superiority over its rivals.

The paper highlights retailers' need for a deep understanding of host countries' cultures if they are to expand successfully abroad.

The paper presents some interesting suppositions on why, only 14 months after opening the first Sainsbury store in Egypt, the company pulled out and sold the subsidiary at a loss to its Egyptian partner.

This collection of original papers had its origin in a series of annual meetings of the National Association of Forensic Economics (NAFE) held in Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, and the United States from 2004 to 2008.¹ NAFE sponsored these meetings to explore common research areas in the calculation of damages in personal injury and death litigation in Western Europe and the United States. NAFE was founded in 1986 and is the largest association of economists and other damages experts specializing in the calculation of economic damages in litigation in the United States and Canada. The Journal of Forensic Economics (JFE) is the journal of NAFE and has been the primary outlet of peer-reviewed research in forensic economics over the past 22 years. The field of forensic economics has generated a substantial literature on methodologies and empirical research in the calculation of damages in personal injury, death, employment, and commercial litigation; and the use of that literature in the United States and Canadian courts by economists, Certified Public Accounts (CPAs), and actuaries has become commonplace in the past two decades (Thornton & Ward, 1999).²

This chapter reviews The Bruntland Report (United Nations, 1987) and World Economic Forum's (2002) views and broader concerns for people, profit, and planet. Cone's (2010a) corporate citizenship spectrum is explained and discussed. This more modern concept focuses on more sophisticated behaviors of companies including employee engagement, modern measurements of impact and outcomes, and consideration of signature programming.

In a celebrated article, published in 1990, McSean and Law described CD‐ROM as a ‘transient technology’. This paper provides a starting point for a general discussion on the future role of CD‐ROMs in libraries. An examination of the CD‐ROM market and the range of applications available highlights the popularity of the medium. Technical limitations remain, however, and in some subject areas the lack of currency of the data is a significant drawback. Alternative sources of electronic information, including online, tape leasing, BIDS and storage on hard disc, are explored. Although these alternatives are superior to CD‐ROM in some respects, the latter has a promising future particularly for small full‐text applications, multimedia, and small specialised databases. CD‐ROM should be seen, in general terms, as a replacement for printed material rather than a competitor to other forms of electronic information.

Having a good idea, product or system is often not enough to ensure the adoption and diffusion of an innovation. Using an organisational power and politics perspective, several published accounts of product and administrative innovation are analysed. The interplay of political tactics or games are found to be present at both the observable surface level and the deep structural level of power relationships in all areas of activity – individual, group, organisational and societal. The viability of two overall political influence strategies, “asking for forgiveness” versus “seeking permission” are contrasted in terms of their implications for the eventual success or failure of a proposed product or administrative innovation. Several propositions and future research directions which focus on the political nature and processes of innovation are suggested.

Having a good idea, product or system is often not enough to ensure the adoption and diffusion of an innovation. Using an organisational power and politics perspective, several published accounts of product and administrative innovation are analysed. The interplay of political tactics or games are found to be present at both the observable surface level and the deep structural level of power relationships in all areas of activity – individual, group, organisational and societal. The viability of two overall political influence strategies, “asking for forgiveness” versus “seeking permission” are contrasted in terms of their implications for the eventual success or failure of a proposed product or administrative innovation. Several propositions and future research directions which focus on the political nature and processes of innovation are suggested.