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Describes how the West Midlands Employment Service has developed a strategy for total quality. Follows the stages an office goes through on their Quality Path using a gardening analogy to describe the process. Acknowledges that TQ initiatives need to continue from the top down, the bottom up and through the middle with every level involved until they become part of business as usual.

Recent surveys show that process‐reengineering (BPR) has had widespread adoption in western countries. This has been motivated by case studies where drastic improvements in quality, productivity, cost reduction and competitiveness have been reported. The rate of failure in re‐engineering attempts, though, has been reported to be equally high. It is estimated that over 70 per cent of all re‐engineering attempts fail to produce bottom‐line improvements. Describes one such failed attempt in a large public organization in Brazil. As a result of the re‐engineering attempt, the organization had its IT infrastructure significantly improved, and the access to IT was decentralized by the downsizing of computer applications from a mainframe to a local area network. On the other hand, no radical changes in the organization’s business processes had resulted, despite the US$ 8 million invested in the BPR attempt. Moreover, even though some processes had been automated, almost no staff reduction was effected. The lack of layoffs meant that even the increase in efficiency in those processes, which by no means was radical, was not realized.

The purpose of this paper is to present the core themes derived from literature that contribute to the failure of continuous improvement initiatives in the manufacturing industry.

The approach taken was to complete a systematic review of literature, grouping the failure factors through the use of idea maps and affinity diagrams into the core themes reported.

From the review it is evident that continuous improvement initiatives can fail due to a multitude of factors; but that these can be grouped under eight core themes. The themes found to contribute to the failure of continuous improvement initiatives are: Motives and Expectations, Organizational Culture and Environment, The Management Leadership, Implementation Approach, Training, Project Management, Employee Involvement Levels, and Feedback and Results. These themes have been further categorized into a three-stage model.

The review was carried out using a selection of high-quality journals, although this may have restricted the findings. The research is also limited to manufacturing, so it is unknown if the same factors impact initiatives in the service or public sectors. Continuous improvement is defined for the purpose of the study as TQM, Lean, and Six Sigma.

From a practical perspective, the research findings create awareness for organizations of the complexity of organizational change in the form of continuous improvement implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a dynamic meta-heuristic model of effecting organizational change which informs smooth directing and routinizing change according to the specific situation relevant to every change attempt.

Because of the dynamic nature of variables and their interaction, developing a static model cannot be tenable. This study, therefore, attempts to generate a meta-heuristic method for constructing a dynamic organizational change model by combining qualitative methods (content analysis and Delphi Technique) and Artificial Neural Networks (Fuzzy Theory and Genetic Algorithm).

Each change program requires its unique method of implementation as change attempts are context specific. Hence, static models should give way to some dynamic ones. Whereas such static models abound, this paper stands out as offering a dynamic model for organizational change by using a rather unconventional method.

This can be regarded as a road map informing higher echelons of the complexity and leadership of change, while at the same time helping change agents have access to acceptable amount of variables that can make their change attempts more promising.

This model contains more flexible variables which reflect the incumbent organizations’ situations. While almost all previous models of change attempt take into account a few/handful variables which are seen to impact on change solidly and independently. But such an analysis with the usual statistical and mathematical methods is not justified. This challenge is met here using metaheuristics and artificial intelligence methods. The model formulated, thus, is dynamic, non-linear and multi-dimensional. Entering the data related to any specific field turns it to a customized model suitable for use in a given field; and this is not only a contribution to the theory but also can allegedly increase the chance of the success of the change agent managing to utilize the optimal amount of variables suggested in this paper.

Top‐down or outside‐in change methodologies are increasingly seen to be ineffective. Systems thinking suggests that change in organizations is a much less straightforward and more subtle phenomenon than previous models allow. Since the late 1970s and as organic metaphors have become used more, the concept of organizational learning has emerged as central to the issue. However, an understanding of how this may take place is still undeveloped. Recently technologies for whole systems development have emerged based on Weisbord′s dictum that for change or learning to occur we need to “get everybody into improving the whole”. Whole systems development can offer a way to realizing the learning organization. Provides a case study of whole systems development in action within Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council in the UK. Begins with a brief account of the ideas on which whole systems development is based and concludes with a commentary on the case study.

IN this and subsequent numbers we are issuing an art supplement devoted to the subject of Library Architecture. Sheffield's new library system is the first to be dealt with, followed by Exeter, Dagenham, Croydon, Burnley, Hornsey, Bolton, Halifax, and others. The importance of library planning for the modern librarian cannot be overestimated, seeing the great need for remodelling old buildings and for providing new ones for new areas of population. The spread of population over the country is the most remarkable phenomenon of the age in which we live; there are now flourishing towns in places where ten years ago corn was growing. The old idea of one library in a town has given place to library provision which in some places approximates in its numbers of “agencies” to that which is frequent in America. So we get the need for many types of building, and hope to describe a number of them in this series.