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Examines the developing importance of the quality issue in the service sector and highlights common barriers to the successful implementation of total quality management principles (TQM). Such information provides managers in complex service organizations such as the National Health Service (NHS) with valuable lessons for improving quality standards. Illustrates how TQM principles could and in a few cases are already being applied to the NHS in the light of the 1989 Government proposals for reform. Such efforts are in the early stages of development and therefore guidelines are proposed to assist management in sensitive areas for implementing change.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of skilled immigrants’ lived experience of using information to learn about their new setting.

Thematic analysis was conducted on a qualitative data set collected through 16 semi-structured interviews with newly arrived skilled immigrants in Australia.

The study uncovered six different themes of experiencing using information to learn among skilled immigrants. The themes, presented as a framework, explain skilled immigrants learn about their new life through: attending to shared stories by others; getting engaged; researching; comparing and contrasting past and present; being reflective; and being directly educated.

The study presents the theory-to-practice translation approach of “information experience design” that enables the enactment of theoretical understanding of information research.

The study invites, encourages and enables information professionals to take part in interdisciplinary conversations about integration of skilled immigrants in their host countries. Using the presented framework in the study, information professionals will be able to explain skilled immigrants’ learning about their new setting from an information lens. This provides information professionals an opportunity to work with immigration service stakeholders to help them incorporate the presented framework in their real-world practice and service. Such practice and services are of potential to support newly arrived skilled immigrants to become more information literate citizens of the host society who can participate more fully in their host society.

In this chapter, we explore to what extent storylines about the internet and social media are absent or marginal in The Archers. In particular, we examine these storylines to better understand how the inhabitants of Ambridge interact online and how their online activities intersect with their real-world experiences. We compare what happens in The Archers with the moral panic that often characterises narratives of technology use and find a striking contrast that we argue supports a broader way of understanding and characterising practices of online safety and security. We analysed four social media-related Archers’ storylines from the last 24 months. Our analysis shows that The Archers storylines enable us to look at human–computer interaction in relief so that instead of only looking at how people use technology we can also see the context in which it is used and the usually unseen support structures. The Archers narratives also provide a rich picture of how the fixed space of the physical world interacts with virtual space. In the broader context, the social media storylines provide us with an understanding of how connecting, care receiving and care giving take place in both fixed space and virtual space, and how these co-connected relationships of care receiving and care giving contribute to a form of security more expansive than technologically enabled data protection.

Women and marketing have had a complicated relationship for a considerable time. They have often been involved with marketing‐type practices for longer than we have appreciated to date. Against considerable odds, some have carved out careers in academia and practice that have to be admired. The purpose of this paper is to explore the work of two pioneer contributors to marketing.

This paper engages in a close reading of the work of two female contributors. Their writing is placed in historical context which helps reveal the obstacles they had to overcome to succeed.

Female teachers, lecturers and practitioners had an important role to play in theorising consumer practice and helping people to successfully negotiate a complex marketplace replete with new challenges, difficulties and sometimes mendacious marketers seeking to profit from the limited knowledge consumers possessed.

This paper explores the writings of a practitioner and scholar respectively whose work has merited only limited attention previously. More than this, it links the arguments that are made to the papers that appear in the rest of the special issue.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This study aims to explore the experiences of peers working in a range of roles within a single NHS mental health service. This study also aims to provide evidence of the impact of existing support, organisational structure and culture around peer working and provide recommendations for a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working. Peer roles require lived experience of mental health conditions and/or services. While the impact on them of using their own lived experience is not fully understood, anecdotal evidence suggests that peer workers may experience a greater emotional impact than other mental health workers. Burnout and retention are particular concerns.

This was a two-stage study using focus groups and reflexive thematic analysis in Stage 1. The key themes formed the basis of the Stage 2 workshop, which provided recommendations for a Good Practice Guide. The study team consisted of peer researchers with lived experience, supported by a Lived Experience Advisory Panel.

There is a perceived lack of support and an increased peer burden for peer workers. Recommendations included relevant ongoing training and development; support and supervision; and organisational cultural change.

Working within a peer-led co-production framework, this study contributes to the development of the evidence base for peer emotional labour. Based on the findings, a Good Practice Guide for Peer Working is being developed to promote good practice for the development of future peer worker roles.

This paper aims to introduce the notion of investigative research on the internet (IRI) and conceptualise its processes through the principle of streaming. It seeks to discuss the similarities and differences between IRI and netnography and considers various aspects of the IRI process, including site selection, sampling, data collection and analysis.

Investigative internet‐based research uses the techniques of ethnography and netnography, including variations of participant observation and analysis of visual and textual material. Three international empirical cases are used to illustrate the application of IRI and streaming in research on international workers, consumer cultures and on emerging business phenomena.

IRI has a number of potential applications for hospitality management academics and practitioners. Streaming can help to understand the processes involved in conducting netnographic research, and streaming is a more appropriate way to conceptualise some internet‐based studies that do not conform to netnographic or ethnographic ideals.

The three empirical cases highlight the processes of streaming in practice, which can be applied elsewhere. Principal limitations are the ethical dimensions of conducting undisclosed research and the sampling bias resulting from adopting an unobtrusive role and focusing on active internet users.

The paper highlights several issues, identified through streaming, that can be used to design human resource, marketing and operational strategies.

The paper demonstrates the application of streaming. Streaming can help researchers conduct netnographic studies; it is also a more appropriate way to describe broader types of investigative internet research. Moreover, it demonstrates the applicability of streaming in research on hospitality management and public policy issues.

This paper synthesises peer-reviewed published journal articles on augmented reality in retail settings to ascertain the current foci of academic research in this nascent area and develop a conceptual framework to form the basis for a future research agenda.

Thematic analysis was conducted on a sample of 76 papers published between 1997 and 2020 identified through a systematic search of high quality peer-reviewed papers.

Three major research avenues and theoretical bases emerged: AR adoption-based factors with technology acceptance models, AR user experience design and features that influence consumer behaviour, and AR shopping experience and value theory. The resultant S-O-R-based conceptual framework highlights the functional and experiential elements needed for an effective consumer AR experience, which could be implemented by retailers seeking to engage consumers with an augmented shopping experience and make AR applications financially viable.

This is the first systematic literature review on AR in retail settings to include multiple disciplinary perspectives (HCI and marketing/management) and research methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors which influence individuals to take up international assignments in hostile environments (HEs). Using an intelligent careers (IC) perspective, an expanded framework of expatriation drivers to work in hostile contexts is developed that comprises individual, organizational and location-specific factors. In addition, the understanding of career capital acquisition and transfer is refined.

A “deviant” case study method to challenge the underlying assumptions of career capital maximization and transfer in global careers is used. To investigate the case, 25 individuals in an international development organization who had to decide whether to work in HEs were interviewed.

Five insights into decision drivers and career capital effects associated with postings to HEs are presented. These span all three levels of individual, organizational and location-specific decision factors.

Due to the case study approach, the usual limitations of qualitative case-based research with respect to generalizability apply. In the conclusions three theoretical implications for the IC framework with respect to career capital acquisition, utilization and temporal effects are outlined.

A range of practical implications in relation to the selection, talent management, performance and reward approaches as well as repatriation and family considerations in global mobility are explored.

The insights help organizations to design global mobility policies for HEs. In addition, individuals and their families benefit from greater clarity of global mobility drivers in the context of high risks.

The drivers of individuals to accept assignments to HEs are under-researched. This paper operationalizes and applies a holistic decision to work abroad framework, expands the literature on of the motivations of individuals and develops valuable insights to nuance the IC framework.