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Describes how the Business Expansion Scheme (BES) was extended to assure tenancy housing rental companies in 1988. Presents results of a study of the assured tenancy companies established in 1990/91. Suggests that strategic changes sustained the flow equity capital into the BES but increased the livelihood that the additions to the private rented housing stock would not last beyond the end of the BES period. Presents a summary of the results of research into the first two years, followed by the third year findings, where emphasis is placed on strategic changes. Concludes that the BES moved further away from the government′s original aim of boosting the long‐term supply of private rented housing.

The purpose of this paper is to identify why many training programmes, which are designed to provide a higher level of skills continue to fail to deliver the results companies are looking for.

The paper studies the approach of Huthwaite International, an external training company brought in to administer training.

It is found that Huthwaite achieved success by establishing a support and reinforcement process to ensure that the behaviour change becomes permanent. If effective skills training courses are designed and the correct people to attend, this will have an immediate effect, but will not last. However, if the effect is to be sustained, it needs to be backed up with support.

Only one company's approach to training and sustainable change is studied.

The paper demonstrates how bringing in an external training consultancy can be more effective than working in house.

Insights are offered into how to deliver practical, relevant and sustainable training.

Many companies have customer service departments which act as a barrier between the company and the customer. Is customer service represented at the top? How credible is a customer satisfaction index? What effect does this have on customer service? This article discusses a tool for assessing the degree of customer focus within an organization’s culture and provides a series of checklist questions.

Deplores the apparent ignorance of English and other literatures displayed by many library staff. Early public librarians showed a great awareness of classical books and authors, but a century ago technical problems supplanted literary articles in the library press. In 1927 R.D. McLeod founded the Library Review. This, and other journals, prompted a reappearance of bookish librarians. But when library schools began to flourish, literary history disappeared from the Library Association syllabus and is no longer taught in the schools. This has led to the emergence of library science at the cost of literary knowledge. Claims it is time for a change.

Resource integration is a central idea within service-dominant logic (S-D logic), but there has been little scholarly research on this aspect of theory. This paper aims to explore resource integration between marketing agencies and their clients.

In total, nine case studies have been developed using a dyadic approach of interviewing clients and members of their agency teams. This is followed-up with presentations and workshops with over 200 practitioners who validated the findings and added new perspectives.

The key operant resources in the client/agency context have been identified. The ways the operant resources of the actors developed during the course of resource integration, building potential resources for future co-creation are shown. The differing perspectives of the actors to each other’s contribution are highlighted.

This study suggests that resource enhancement and development, as a result of integration, is important. For agency/client research, resource integration and development brings new perspectives complementing existing relationship approaches to research. The findings have implications for relationship marketing theory across business-to-business (B2B) contexts.

The findings suggest a resource integration approach that could be jointly addressed between agency and client in improving the way they work together. The discourse of co-creation suggests a way for them to talk about how to work together effectively. Suggestions are made for teaching.

This study develops the S-D logic theory through exploring resource enhancement and development in a B2B co-creation context. The dyadic nature of the research is novel in studying how marketing agencies and clients work together and new perspectives emerge from the approach.

The paper is centred through an examination of a short piece of recorded talk between managers and shop stewards within a UK National Health Service (NHS) Trust, relating to the manner in which one of the shop stewards attempted to get the managers to accede to a request he made for changes to the wording of a section of the Trust’s disciplinary procedure. In examining this piece of talk, the paper first contextualises the Trust through the decentralisation process of the early 1990s. The decentralisation process clearly did not introduce formal negotiation into NHS units, but instead increased the scope of formal negotiation encounters. The paper argues that there was an increased importance for persuasion as the need to gain others’ assent on industrial relations matters at the local level was significantly increased. The paper analyses the dynamics of one particular negotiating encounter between two managers and two shop stewards. In analysing this, the paper focuses through rhetoric. In coming through a rhetorical framework, the paper highlights the need for managers, when negotiating, to be alert to the implied elements of the arguments of those across the negotiating table. Concludes by also understanding the rhetoric of the encounter in the light of the marketisation of the NHS during the 1990s.