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Explores the reliability of Webster’s (1990) instrument for measuring the marketing culture of an organization. Uses data from 1,400 western Australian employees of a large public sector service organisation to create a detailed analysis of Webster’s six dimensions, service quality, interpersonal relationships, selling task, organisation internal communication and innovation. Highlights methodological concerns that in the present study some items on Webster’s (1990) battery moved to different factors, resulting in a lower alpha reliability for the service quality dimension. Suggests that some items require rewording to make their intended meaning more explicit.

We outline the design and development of a diagnostic tool for use in health care organisations to assist in benchmarking the management of human resources. Key areas of focus were the way in which employees perceived their work roles, work loads, satisfaction with their work life and their views of clients, peers, front line supervisors and senior management. Using a cross-section of metropolitan and regional health services, the study used focus groups and large-scale survey research to capture data on these employee perceptions. Principal component analysis identified a series of ‘factors’ associated with the key elements found within human resource management (HRM) frameworks. The diagnostic tool we developed offers a way of measuring employees’ perceptions of their work environment and offers managers within large health care service organisations a potentially useful tool for benchmarking human resources.

This paper attempts to provide a number of strategic reference points for individuals and organizations seeking a clearer view of the future. These reference points plot a course that starts with the surfacing of underlying philosophies and ends with the melding of foresight with strategy. Underpinning these reference points is the belief in achieving balance between our understanding of “the inner self” and external drivers of change. This paper draws together a number of well‐developed theories and concepts as a way of linking both insight and practice.

Having set the school‐leaver on the correct course of education and employment, too often there is insufficient co‐operation between college and employer. This is particularly the case with the less academic students, engaged as apprentices. Below is outlined a scheme operating in Liverpool which succeeds in raising this co‐operation to a very high level.

We hope this research volume will change the way scholars and managers think about health care management in two fundamental ways. First, we want to challenge the superficial separations between national and international health care management. To dissolve these distinctions, the “not-invented-here” or “who cares about a Belgian, Indian, or Thai medical center,” or “that won’t work in our policy system” attitudes must change. Second, we want scholars and managers to learn how to transfer innovative ideas and management practices across cultures and around policy barriers. Cultural, language, and policy differences present formidable barriers, but we believe lessons about managing human resources, informatics, quality, services, and strategies in health care organizations can be transferred.

The purpose of this article is to explore the role of information and communications technologies (ICT) in creating cities that are attractive, healthy and prosperous places to live, work and visit.

Considers technological developments in information and communications technologies in the short‐ and medium‐term and their application in the urban environment.

IT is developing faster than ever and will be a useful tool in the redevelopment of cities. Short‐term developments such as wireless LANs may be unglamorous but have large potential for opening up new areas of opportunities, both in social and business uses. In the mid‐term, these networks will combine with ambient intelligence to make a smart digital air overlay, making every part of a city electronically enabled. The result will be big improvement in public transport and city architecture. Other IT developments will improve health, governance and security. If managed well, future urban society will be happier, less lonely, more prosperous, healthier and more involved in decision making.

Offers a personal view of the ways in which advances in information technologies can make a positive contribution to urban environments over the next ten to 15 years.

The chapter intervenes in the debate among scholars of legal impact about the extent to which law can change society. Reformers, aims are frustrated when targets of law respond with resistance to court decisions, especially where mechanisms to enforce case law are weak (Hall, 2010; Klarman, 2006; Rosenberg, 1991). Even when law’s targets abide by a law, however, other important studies have demonstrated that organizations can leverage ambiguous language to craft policies in compliance that further their aims (Barnes & Burke, 2006; Edelman, 2016; Lipson, 2001). This chapter examines a case in which a state constitutional provision banning affirmative action was written in relatively unambiguous language and one of its targets announced its intention to comply. Through extensive interviews with University officials, this chapter examines the University of Michigan’s use of financial, technological, and political resources to follow the language of the law while still blunting its impact. These findings suggest that to understand law’s impact on society, we need to reconceive compliance and not only take the clarity of the law and its enforcement mechanisms into account but also attend to the goals, resources, and practices of the groups it targets.