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Gallstone‐related illnesses are one of the most common reasons for emergency hospital admissions, often with serious complications. Standard treatment of uncomplicated gallstone‐disease is by laparoscopic cholecystectomy, which can be safely and cost‐effectively performed during a short hospital stay or as day‐case. This paper aims to evaluate the referral pattern of patients with gallstones, which treatment is given and whether patients admitted as emergency could have benefited from earlier elective referral. The management of these patients is examined in the context of payment by results to determine cost and potential savings.

The approach takens was prospective clinical audit and patient questionnaire in a district general hospital. Cost comparisons were made using secondary care income (NHS tariff) and estimated cost of hospitalisation, investigations and treatment.

Between May and July 2007, 114 patients were admitted with symptomatic gallstones, 62 (54.4 per cent) were emergencies. Cholecystectomy was performed in all 52 elective patients and performed or planned for 59/62 (95.2 per cent) emergencies. A total 17/62 emergencies (27.4 per cent) presented with complications of gallstones. 38/62 (61.3 per cent) had similar symptoms before, with 21/38 (55.3 per cent) diagnosed in primary care or by another hospital department. 11 (52.4 per cent) of these had not been referred for a surgical opinion; taking account of age, co‐morbidity and data acquired for elective admissions, the cost of their treatment could have been reduced by at least £16,194.

A large proportion of patients admitted with symptomatic biliary disease could have been referred earlier and electively. Such referral practice could improve the quality of care and reduce cost for the NHS both in primary and secondary care.

This study draws on the natural resource-based view to analyze the effects of technologies, managerial commitment, and firm strategy on sustainability performance, in terms of both environmental and social profits. It also examines how the effect of green technologies on sustainability performance can be triggered by a managerial commitment to sustainability issues, and by the adoption of a prospector strategy. Multiple linear regression was used to test research hypotheses on a sample of 426 Spanish tourism firms. The results provide important insights into the importance of the adoption of explorer strategies fostering the strategic exploitation of green technologies to obtain new efficient processes, organizational procedures, and products. This research also shows the contingent moderating effect that managerial commitment exerts on the strategic implementation of green technologies for sustainability performance.

China is a fast‐growing economy, and many multinational companies (MNCs) have found their ways to infiltrate that market. The competition among the MNCs has generated human resource management (HRM) problems. When formulating approaches in dealing with these problems, the expatriate management of the MNCs often “speak for” their local employees, as if the latter has no voice of its own. It is suspected that MNCs know partly what their local employees value. With such limited understanding, the former may be ineffective in managing their local staff. The purpose of this paper is to report a study that explores the HRM problems from local employees' perspectives. To understand Chinese employees, the conceptual lens, stemmed from Chinese philosophical traditions instead of that derived from western experience, is used.

Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with Chinese employees working in MNCs.

The findings suggest that “asymmetrical understanding” exists between expatriate managers and their Chinese employees, and that the former may know much less about the latter than it is normally assumed.

The findings, illustrated through interviews, have shed light on how MNCs could manage their Chinese employees, and how a meaningful dialogue could take place: understanding the other (Chinese employees) on their own intellectual ground to overcome “asymmetrical understanding”.

By allowing the voice of the other to come forth rather than to keep it in the background as, at best, a whisper, the study helps create a platform for a meaningful cross‐cultural dialogue between voices from the west and the other.

The spin-off of Iridium, a global telecommunications system, represented a significant business risk for Motorola, as many talented Motorola executives joined the venture in the late 1990s. This bold technology gamble suffered from numerous marketing missteps, which led to Iridium's bankruptcy in August 1999.

This paper aims to examine the impact of environmental scanning (ES) on competitive advantage (CA) through the mediation of organizational resilience dimensions within manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt.

This study adopts a cross-sectional design to collect data. This study used a self-administered questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 249 Egyptian SMEs. This study employed the Smart partial least square structural equation modeling technique to test the hypotheses.

ES positively affects CA both directly and indirectly through the mediation of organizational resilience dimensions, namely, robustness and agility. However, ES does not affect integrity; therefore, integrity does not mediate the ES–CA relationship. These results indicate that organizational resilience partially mediates the relationship between ES and CA.

The sample size was small, covering only Egyptian manufacturing SMEs. The results may be different in the service sector and other countries. The study was cross-sectional which could not trace the long-term effects of ES and organizational resilience on CA. Therefore, a longitudinal study should be conducted, based on resource availability.

Managers in Egyptian SMEs should scan their environments to build organizational resilience and, in turn, enhance their CA.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first endeavors to investigate the role of ES in building CA through organizational resilience in the context of Egyptian SMEs.