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The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a short research study that introduced a group of busy managers, in an organisation in turmoil, to Stafford Beer's Viable System Model (VSM) through the use of a personal construct, developed by Allenna Leonard.

This study, designed as systemic action research, was a final project towards an Open University Masters in Systems Thinking in Practice. Initially managers were introduced to the personal VSM and invited to design their own VSM as systemic action learning. This was followed by an introductory collaborative inquiry to enable the managers to use their VSM learning to interrogate their organisational domain through the VSM lens.

The managers engaged well with the personal VSM (PVSM). All the managers reported that the PVSM was a useful learning tool and provided beneficial professional development to help clarify activities, priorities and their roles. They reported that the collaborative meeting was a very useful means to help them see others' perspectives and work towards gaining a shared understanding of the issues and challenges within the organisation through the VSM lens.

The VSM is not well understood or routinely used in current management thinking. This method of introducing the VSM to managers has wide implications for providing managers with an introduction to systems thinking and an opportunity to engage openly with a valuable tool that will help their understanding of modern organisational complexity.

Using the personal VSM with managers has not been reported before and this study provides new opportunities to develop a means to introduce complex conceptual systems models to busy managers.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Researchers recommend a reorganization of the medical profession into larger groups with a multispecialty mix. We analyze whether there is evidence for the superiority of these models and if this organizational transformation is underway.

We summarize the evidence on scale and scope economies in physician group practice, and then review the trends in physician group size and specialty mix to conduct survivorship tests of the most efficient models.

The distribution of physician groups exhibits two interesting tails. In the lower tail, a large percentage of physicians continue to practice in small, physician-owned practices. In the upper tail, there is a small but rapidly growing percentage of large groups that have been organized primarily by non-physician owners.

While our analysis includes no original data, it does collate all known surveys of physician practice characteristics and group practice formation to provide a consistent picture of physician organization.

Our review suggests that scale and scope economies in physician practice are limited. This may explain why most physicians have retained their small practices.

Larger, multispecialty groups have been primarily organized by non-physician owners in vertically integrated arrangements. There is little evidence supporting the efficiencies of such models and some concern they may pose anticompetitive threats.

This is the first comprehensive review of the scale and scope economies of physician practice in nearly two decades. The research results do not appear to have changed much; nor has much changed in physician practice organization.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

This is an invited 75article for Tourism Review addressing tourism employment, past and future.

Conceptual analysis of tourism employment with a focus on paradox.

Inherent paradox which underpins tourism employment.

A wholly original take on tourism employment.

The current national patient safety strategy for the National Health Service (NHS) in England states that actions need to be taken to support the development of a patient safety culture. This includes that local systems should seek to understand staff perceptions of the fairness and effectiveness of serious incident management. This study aims to explore the perspectives of patient safety professionals about what works well and what could be done better to support a patient safety culture at the level of Trust strategy and serious incident governance.

A total of 15 professionals with a role in serious incident management, from five mental health trusts in England, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Thematic analysis and qualitative description were used to analyse the data.

Participants felt that actions to support a patient safety culture were challenging and required long-term and clinical commitment. Broadening the scope of serious incident investigations was felt to be one way to better understand patient safety culture issues. Organisational influences during the serious incident management process were highlighted, informing approaches to maximise the fairness and objectivity of investigation findings.

The findings of this study offer original insights that the NHS safety system can use to facilitate progression of the patient safety culture agenda. In particular, local mental health trusts could consider the findings in the context of their current strategic objectives related to patient safety culture and operational delivery of serious incident management frameworks.

With reference to the report of the Annual General Meeting of the Pure Food and Health Society of Great Britain, which was published in the February issue of THE BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and to the speech delivered by MR. GOSLIN upon the proper handling and purveying of meat, an article which has subsequently appeared in The Standard is of considerable interest. It is pointed out that no one who gives the matter serious consideration can approve of the present methods. “Many years ago Oxford made its protest against carcasses or joints being exposed in open‐fronted shops. It is just possible that when the powers that were objected to and forbade this proceeding they thought more of the æsthetics than the science of it, but they most certainly did a good thing when they took flesh foods away from the contamination of street dust and the variations of temperature that are dependent on every gust of wind or every moment of sunlight or shadow.”