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Observes that UK smoking prevention programmes have limited success. However, there is evidence that individual differences may mediate the effectiveness of such programmes. In order to measure personality, which is a major source of individual difference, a questionnaire suitable for use with English 11 to 16‐year olds was developed in three distinct phases. First, the words teenagers use to describe their friends were collected in individual interviews. Second, a subset of these terms was tested with a group of young people of various ages and qualitative analyses undertaken. Finally the factor structure of the questionnaire was explored and a 49 statement, self‐report personality instrument was constructed. The personality questionnaire was then used in a two‐wave prospective study of smoking in four English, state secondary schools. Presents the findings from matched data from 2,023 students. The personality questionnaire predicted smoking uptake above and beyond that achieved from knowledge of gender, school year, and family smoking behaviour.

The evolution of the global village during the Information Age created a huge powershift from centralized bureaucracies to small decentralized organizations formerly on the edges of power and influence, essentially a shift from the centers to the margins. This phenomenon can be seen in every part of the country, throughout the world, and in every aspect of life—economic, cultural, social, and political. Once‐dominant centers of business power and influence such as New York and Chicago are giving way to a more widely diffused and distributed pattern of power, with, for example, major banks in North Carolina and software developers in Seattle.

Many operating managers view culture and culture change as something “soft” or “squishy” and remote from day‐to‐day concerns. They're worried about “making their numbers” and say they haven't got time to think about organizational culture.

Here are five ways you can improve your company's strategic planning process.

Explores, within the framework of international research, product, distribution and price. Investigates the behaviour of large US firms with a view to identifying and difference in growth rates to their counterparts. Examines the relationship between fast growth of the corporate entity as a whole and its international marketing orientation.

This paper examines the development of operational and payment systems in a small company that has responded to the entrepreneurial challenge presented by UK legislation promoting compulsory competitive tendering. An analysis is made of the alignment of reward strategy with the business imperative. A comparison is made of the contrasting approaches relating to risk sharing, flexibility and new patterns of work between the local authority labour force, with its traditional public sector approach to providing services, and David Webster Ltd, which introduced a raft of innovative measures. Implications for the public sector are outlined and discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and European Research Press Ltd.

The development of a consultancy company specialising in executive recruitment selection is described. A computer system to handle all the jobs and applicant details is an essential requirement; and the system, its development and its advantages are described.

The credit derivatives market is both fast‐growing and increasingly complex. This brings problems for banks and the infrastructure needed to support such products. There are also sophisticated questions of regulation. The authors bring a wealth of experience to bear on the topic and suggest a variety of ways in which the problems and opportunities can be dealt with satisfactorily.

South African scholars, like most scholars in the developing world, have sold the idea that social constructivism is the gold standard of qualitative management research. In this chapter, we caution against this subordination to unquestioned conventions and offer a process relational ontology as an alternative to social constructivism that is often punted by most qualitative research programmes and textbooks. We also debunk the idea that ‘grounded theory’ exists by delving into epistemology and showing how science is ‘self-correcting’ rather than ‘tabula rasa’. Instead of boxing business ethics knowledge, as has been done by the case study gurus, we encourage business and organisational ethicists to own their indigenous heritage through storytelling science based on the self-correcting method underpinned by Popperian and Peircian epistemological thought. This chapter encourages business management researchers to move towards more profound ethical knowledge by refuting and falsifying false assumptions in each phase of the study, in a sequence of self-correcting storytelling phases. This is what Karl Popper called trial and error, and what C.S. Peirce called self-correcting by the triadic of Abduction–Induction–Deduction. We offer a novel method for accomplishing this aim that we call ‘Conversational Interviews’ that are based on antenarrative storytelling sciences. Our chapter aims to evoking the transformative power of indigenous ontological antenarratives in authentic conversation in order to solve immediate local problems ad fill the many institutional voids that plague the South(ern)-/African context.