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Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

AT an international exhibition in Moscow during September a pavilion covering 6,500 sq. ft. displayed equipment designed to improve the organization of work. The unusual thing is that the equipment was office machinery and systems exhibited by the Business Equipment Trade Association of this country and five of its member firms. Until now the U.S.S.R. has been a negligible market for such goods, but the Soviet Union has now declared its intention to increase the automation of clerical work through installing modern equipment of the sort favoured by western countries. The report of a delegation of the Association's members put this point so strongly that, as a ‘joint under‐taking’ with the British Board of Trade, it was thought justifiable to attack this burgeoning market.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

Being different from others can be stressful, and this may be especially salient for newcomers during organizational socialization when they may be expected to fit in. Thus, drawing on conservation of resources theory, the authors examine the effects of newcomers' individual differentiation on their subsequent emotional exhaustion.

The authors test a multiple mediation model with data from 161 UK graduates collected at three times using structural equation modeling.

The results largely support the hypotheses, identifying individual differentiation as a motivational resource associated with the proactive behavior of changing work procedures. In turn, changing work procedures links with the personal resource of positive affect, which facilitates the relational resource of social acceptance and predicts lower emotional exhaustion. Individual differentiation predicts lower social acceptance also, but not via monitoring as anticipated.

The results provide novel insights into the effects of individual differentiation on emotional exhaustion in the context of organizational socialization. The study highlights that, while newcomers high in individual differentiation face depletion of the relational resource of social acceptance, they can still adjust well and avoid emotional exhaustion through changing work procedures to foster positive affect.

The question of health and safety at work is a central issue for trade unions. In Britain it is an area of concern where there were important legislative initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, although surprisingly this has received relatively little attention in the debates about trade unionism. This neglect results in an aspect of union activity about which little is known. Explores through a detailed longitudinal study of a middle‐range engineering firm, from the late 1970s into the 1990s, the ways in which trade unions organize and act on health and safety questions. Argues that it is almost “routine” that workers face dangers and hazards at work, a central feature of the work and employment experience of most workers. However, this is often difficult to deal with as individual issues, or as matters which are subject to collective consideration. On the one hand, workers often appear to accept the dangers and hazards they face. On the other hand, managements are preoccupied with questions relating to production and finance, rather than the day‐to‐day problems faced by workers. This tension suggests that the future wellbeing of workers in unionized workplaces lies not so much with legislative provisions and rights at work, but in education and the organizing ability of workplace unions, raising and addressing what often seem like individualistic problems in collective ways.

Ways in which work in the civil service is controlled are examined. A matrix of staff control procedures is outlined on the basis of their function: direct, detect, correct and motivate; and their impact: impersonal or personal. The role of the line manager as controller is then considered.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the enactment of safety routines in a transshipment port. Research on work safety and reliability has largely neglected the role of the workers’ knowledge in practice in the enactment of organisational safety. The workers’ lack of compliance with safety regulations represents an enduring problem that often involves first-level managers, who are willing to turn a blind eye toward divergent practices. The CHAT conceptual vocabulary and theoretical model is used to explore this issue.

A grounded, empirical study in a large transshipment port in the Mediterranean area is conducted. Ethnographic methods including participant observation and interviews are used, and emerging data are analyzed through an interpretive methodology. The paper explores 30 employees’ narrated accounts of how safety rules are enacted or infringed while living and working in the field in a transshipment port. Data obtained through organisational shadowing provided secondary data. Interview data were analyzed using content analysis, using a CHAT framework. Constant comparison and theoretical sensitivity were pursued through an iterative analysis process.

This study documented the critical role the workers’ knowledge played in practice in ensuring the efficient functioning of the port, and evidenced that the disconnect between safety procedures and technical productivity standards is the most important factor determining the erratic compliance with prescribed procedures. The selective application of safety norms was deliberate in nature, collectively shared and culturally regulated.

This contribution fails to address probably the most important aspect of the activity theoretical approach: its developmental orientation. The initial analysis intervention was meant to lead to a longitudinal process of expansive learning and development in the activity system. The authors had planned to initiate a cycle of expansive learning laboratories involving representatives of the dockworkers, the port management and the safety certification firm, but this had to be postponed to an undefined time due to the significant changes occurred in the international maritime cargo industry and the decision of the multinational company who owns the transshipment port to cut down its cargo traffic and privilege other ports in the Mediterranean area.

The practical implications of the case study concern the conception and design of safety training and management for the port organisation. By acknowledging the disconnect between espoused safety routines and the constraints and affordances of the workers’ everyday work practice, it is suggested that safety training could be more effective if it engaged the workers (or first-level supervisors) in the fine tuning of safety regulations. Workplace learning opportunities could enable the workers to learn and construct situated safety practices.

This paper seeks to highlight how the consideration of local knowledge and context-dependent practices can achieve better comprehension of situated application of safety norms.

The paper contributes to understanding the complexity of enacting and translating safety procedures into everyday work practices.

The purpose of this paper is to assist organizations in the professional risk prevention.

It consists of a proposal for a BQA method of the work procedures analysis.

In the suggested method, the authors use the principles of BQA and propose a new formulation of parameters of a work procedures simplification.

The suggested method constitutes an invaluable help to implementation of the work permits system.

The suggested method facilitates the process of working safety assessment providing substantial assistance to one of the most important stages that is to decide which particular indicators will be considered.