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The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative appraisal of structures, fraud loss and performance data in London local authorities (LAs) with that of the National Health Service (NHS) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in order to test the Fraud Review's contention that LAs are “less well equipped” to deal with fraud than central government departments.

Primary research was undertaken through questionnaires to all London boroughs and interviews with key personnel in two comparator organisations.

London boroughs are no less competent or effective in investigating fraud. Each has a specialist anti‐fraud response and has similar levels of performance as comparator organisations. Whilst London boroughs outperform in some areas such as sanctions per officer against the NHS and detection levels in benefit fraud against the DWP, there are concerns over higher per unit staffing cost, principally caused by the autonomous and diverse nature of local government. Further that some authorities are unaware of, or unwilling to deal with, certain fraud typologies.

The research was limited to London local government and further work is needed outside the capital.

Recommendations are made for the introduction of an explicit statutory requirement for LAs to have an anti‐fraud resource, standardisation of definitions and consideration of borough‐based multi‐agency fraud teams.

There has been no previous research of this type and it may be useful to government when considering how to deal with fraud, LAs and those with an interest in public sector fraud.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse fraud investigative practice in London local authorities with reference to recognised best practice and two comparator organisations, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and National Health Service (NHS).

Primary research was undertaken through questionnaires to all London Boroughs and interviews with key personnel in two comparator organisations.

Each London Borough has a specialist anti‐fraud response with professionally qualified investigators, demonstrates compliance with best practice and excels in areas such as case supervision and joint working. However, concerns remain, regarding a lack of agreed national standards and some failing to use the full range of investigative techniques, such as surveillance and computer forensic examination.

The research was limited to London local government and further work is needed outside the capital.

Recommendations are made for: the introduction of national professional guidance to investigators; minimum competency standards for fraud investigation; research into the applicability of the National Intelligence Model to high volume fraud; and a less fragmented approach both within and across local authorities.

There has been no previous research of this type and it may be useful to government when considering how to deal with fraud, local authorities and those with an interest in public sector fraud.

Organizational learning (OL) is receiving increasing attention from researchers and practitioners alike. In fact, some have suggested that the only sustainable competitive advantage is a firm's ability to learn faster than its competitors. In spite of OL's promise, the field has been slow to evolve. The primary impediments to the development of OL theory are that inconsistent terminology is used for comparable concepts and that different definitions are used to describe the phenomenon. Furthermore, many theorists have neglected to make explicit their underlying assumptions about the phenomenon. Employing an inductive approach, this review surfaces the implicit and explicit assumptions of OL researchers, identifying three key dimensions that differentiate perspectives: (1) unit of analysis—individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational; (2) cognitive/behavioral emphasis; and (3) the learning‐performance relationship.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Identifies key activities that network users can perform in order to use the network effectively. Offers recommended reading, from beginner to expert user status. Explains some commonly used terms (e.g. Turbo Gopher with Veronica!). Lists useful Internet resources.

Although a large contingency of theory and research has been conducted in the area of individual and interpersonal communication, relatively few theoreticians have focused on the broader character of communication at the organizational level of analysis. With the increasing emphases on total quality, leadership, adaptive cultures, process reengineering, and other organizational change and development efforts, however, the need to understand the process and function of organizational communication at a broader, more systemic level is paramount. The following paper attempts to address this issue by providing: (1) a comparative review and critique of three “classic” theoretical approaches to describing the importance of communication in organizations and the relationship between communication and organizational functioning (open systems theory, the information‐processing perspective, and the communication as culture framework); and (2) a new integrative framework—the CPR model of organizational communication—for conceptualizing and understanding the nature of communication in organizations based on constructs adapted from these three perspectives. The model is then used both in an applied example to help diagnose an organizational system and to stimulate suggestions for future research.

Herbert Simon introduced the term “docility” to define the tendency of human beings to get information from social channels. In this paper, we enrich this first definition with distributed cognition based arguments, and suggest that docile individuals modify the information they get, before passing it on to others. We present a simulation model of docile and non-docile individuals in organizations, where different docility attitudes (behaviors) are considered. In standard conditions, findings suggest that the above-average docile individuals remain below 20% of the number of workers in a given organization. This way, we outline potentials and limits of this intriguing concept.

This paper maps the organizational learning processes in a policy intervention program. A state department of social services designed an intervention for local agencies and implemented it with a university. A closer observation of patterns detected organizational learning in local agencies by the increase in the penetration rate-a ratio of federal to state funding. An organizational learning model is constructed to understand the organizational learning process in this particular instance. The model includes learning modes and the roles that the policy knowledge instigators had played in the process. Each mode and role is defined and the model is refined based on in-depth interviews with participants in the learning process.

Most academic work usually explains organizational learning as a simple translation of individual learning. To fill this gap, this article focuses on the analysis of organizational learning as an iterative process in which group learning level is important. In this way, the model of organizational learning and knowledge generation presented in this article integrates the ontological and epistemological dimensions of knowledge and may be useful for knowledge management in organizations.