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Describes the methodology used to survey the organizational culture in four strategic business units of an NHS trust. Data were collected from selected organizational members on 19 different dimensions of culture using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Reports the findings from the culture survey in one of the four directorates in detail to demonstrate the quality of data to be collected using this methodology.

This research chapter argues lawyers, not just bankers, for good and bad have been involved in all aspects of the current financial crisis. Indeed after examining and assessing various civil causes of action related to the “Mortgage Meltdown” and its aftermath, it appears if lawyers had been less involved or had raised warnings about legal risks as well as economic ones, whether the financial impact would have been so disastrous and widespread. Indeed by raising cautionary flags earlier, lawyers might have better served both the clients’ and the public's long-term interests. This view thus complements issues related to criminally prosecuting mortgage fraud that has also seen explosive growth and where lawyers have again played central roles. Lawyers have been involved at the back end too in terms of legislation or resolving issues such as bankruptcies and foreclosures.

The chapter examines several causes of action the media have reported being raised by various parties and how they illustrate the role lawyers, regulations, and legislation have played in the origins and evolution of the current crisis. The cases explored involve individual parties and class actions. The chapter also analyzes in detail a case representing opposite ends of the origination and foreclosure closure spectrum by describing a derivative shareholder suit against corporate officers and directors actively involved in creating the subprime mess, who were then sued for covering up the inevitable results from failed loans in the reports to shareholders. It thus illustrates the legal complexities emerging from the abuse of complex financial and organizational structures impacting many investors. Finally the chapter concludes by arguing there is a public policy need not only for financial regulatory reform but also for a tightening in the professional standards and regulatory penalties imposed on lawyers involved in such transactions.

The process approach to multi-level organizational behavior is based on the assumption that multi-level organizational behavior is processual in nature. This article defines group and organizational processes and their representation as process frameworks. Both functional and inclusional classes of levels exist, each of which has at least five categories of levels. All ten categories are special cases of process frameworks. This article provides examples of each category level, which it uses to illustrate new models of organizational work, extended models of interdependence, a new typology of theories based on their levels of processes, and a new tool for survey research called knobby analyses. After explaining the basic idea of knobby analysis, the article briefly describes the processual theory of the organizational hologram, the use of linear programming, and causal-chain analysis to provide multi-level explanations of employee opinion data. These ideas are embodied in conducting a strategic organizational diagnosis, which is the first stage of organizational design. Organizational design encompasses multiple stages, each of which itself involves multiple, multi-level phenomena and analyses. The basic point is that the processual nature of multi-level organizational phenomena gives more hope for improvements in theory building and their application if one uses the process approach rather than a variable approach.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Advance Decisions, address low uptake and examine fundamental issues that can inform the development of policy and practice in this area.

This paper discusses findings from a research project with the charity Compassion in Dying (analysing calls to its telephone helpline) and practical experience of working with the charity Advance Decisions Assistance (helping people write Advance Decisions and training healthcare professionals).

Older people themselves identify the issues of autonomy, identity and efficacy as key challenges in writing Advance Decisions and having them respected.

This paper shows how addressing the “real world” challenges of advance decision making can inform policy and practice.

This chapter investigated how pre-existing ideas (i.e., prototypes and antiprototypes) and what the eyes fixate on (i.e., eye fixations) influence followers' identification with leaders from another race. A sample of 55 Southeast Asian female participants assessed their ideal leader in terms of prototypes and antiprototype and then viewed a 27-second video of an engaging Caucasian female leader as their eye fixations were tracked. Participants evaluated the videoed leader using the Identity Leadership Inventory, in terms of four leader identities (i.e., prototypicality, advancement, entrepreneurship, and impresarioship). A series of multiregression models identified participants' age as a negative predictor for all the leader identities. At the same time, the antiprototype of masculinity, the prototypes of sensitivity and dynamism, and the duration of fixations on the right eye predicted at least one leader identity. Such findings build on aspects of intercultural communication relating to the evaluation of global leaders.

This chapter considers the opportunities and challenges for HE to develop, support and celebrate excellent teaching. Drawing on conceptualisations of teaching excellence in quality frameworks and in the literature, it considers how teaching quality has traditionally been interpreted, suggesting (as in Chapter 2) that there is a need for more nuanced and comprehensive understandings of teaching excellence to be developed, demonstrated, recognised and rewarded, to reflect the complex nature of teaching excellence across the academic career profile. It considers how institutions might build and communicate shared understandings of excellence in teaching and promote a culture in which excellence at all levels of teaching is valued in the same way as research. It discusses the ways in which the professional learning and support needs of academics can be met at various stages of the academic career, to develop in teaching faculty and education leaders a sense of being appreciated, connected and competent in their contribution and commitment to teaching excellence.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

This volume includes two major explanations of the meltdown that I critically discuss. The first is a “normal accident theory” arguing that the complexity and coupling of the financial system caused the failure. Although these structural characteristics were evident, I argue that the case does not fit the theory because the cause was not the system, but behavior by key agents who were aware of the great risks they were exposing their firms, clients, and society to. The second interpretation is a neoinstitutional one, emphasizing that ideologies, worldviews, cognitive frames, mimicry, and norms were the source of behaviors that turned out to be disastrous for the elites and others. The implication is that elites were victims, not perpetrators. I argue that while ideologies, etc., can have real effects on the behavior of many firm members and society in general, in this case financial elites, to serve personal ends, crafted the ideologies and changed institutions, fully aware that this could harm their firms, clients, and the public. Complexity and coupling only made deception easier and the consequences more extensive. For anecdotal evidence I examine a decade of deregulation, examples of elected representative, regulatory officials, firms, and the plentiful warnings.