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As the Journal of Tourism Futures celebrates its 10th Anniversary, Dr Ian Yeoman (Hotel Management School Leeuwarden) interviews Dr Daniel Wright (University of Central Lancashire) about the future genre of science fiction and his publications.

A personal interview.

Science fiction research is about asking difficult questions, the questions we feel uncomfortable asking and answering. Science fiction is a powerful medium to imagine the future, which students love as it is provocative. In the interview, Dr Wright reflects upon his own writing from immortality to the end of the world.

The power of science fiction, as a genre of transformation, skepticism and thinking out of the box, is often missing in futures studies and scenario planning.

I would like to ask a question first to Mr Ian Day and later on to the gentlemen representing the project KAREN‐PEWEX.

When in‐plant and college‐based courses are run for supervisors and managers, it is conventional to use a U‐shaped seating arrangement in the training room to promote participation and discussion. However, at each class session, people will tend to sit with the same companions habitually, which may be more comfortable, but less productive than if they sat with different people each time.

IN THESE recessionary times it is encouraging to be able to record some library expansion. After several years of anticipation (by turns eager and nervous, according to the state of rumour at both the national and local levels in the higher education world), the City University Business School moved into imposing new premises on the uppermost floors of the emerging Barbican Arts Centre.

I should like to start by thanking the organizers of this conference for the chance to give what I suspect may be one of the first papers concerned with this particular branch of information management ever given to a Polish audience.

Traditionally, the information profession has been compartmentalised into groups of people called records managers, archivists, librarians and IT specialists, each group having some similar and some distinctive knowledge and skills and offering some similar and other specialist information services. Information users, however, do not necessarily identify these different compartments when they need to find and access information, and it is unreasonable to expect them to know who to go to. Since all of the groups of information specialists are what might be described as ‘business’ or corporate information providers then there would seem to be an opportunity for them to integrate their services and improve the service they provide to their customers. This article discusses the potential for integrating information services, the reasons for doing so, the benefits to be gained and the challenges such a strategy presents for all of the information specialist involved. It suggests that whilst records managers will need to maintain and develop their core skills they are in pole position to lead the integration process.

In forensic mental health wards, patients spend more time with healthcare assistants (HCAs) than qualified nurses. Despite this, there is no universally utilised standardised HCA training. The purpose of this paper is to assess the HCAs’ experiences in the HCA role in order to better understand how to build on the HCA role to ensure safe practice, and enhance staff well-being.

HCAs working on low and medium secure NHS forensic mental health units were recruited through purposive methods. HCAs engaged in a semi-structured interview, with questions surrounding their support needs, clinical decision making and perception of risks in the role. Template analysis was used, applying an a priori template based on the existing literature to interview transcripts.

The participants described the HCA experience to be defined by two master themes: “HCA factors” and “organisational factors”. HCAs valued a holistic patient view which prized patients’ experiences. The participants described a lack of role clarity which may be defined through ward expectations and professional experience.

HCAs seek a holistic view of the patient; however, some overlooked patient offences in order to do their job. Future research should address how looking past offences impacts security and HCAs’ well-being long term.

International strategy; finance; corporate innovation and technology management.

MBA/MA.

This case's subject is global/international strategy and how investment decisions are made to enter new markets by global companies such as Vodafone Group Plc. The case follows the executive team that is assigned the task of recommending a course of action to invest in various mobile telephony businesses globally and how to set the criteria and strategy for investing.

The case targets graduate students in MBA and technology management programs and can be used in courses in Global Business, Strategy and Policy, Finance, Corporate Innovation and Technology Management. The learning outcomes are expected to be a clearer understanding of the broad political, technical, economic and socio-legal issues to be addressed as well as the firm level strategies employed by transnationals to expand into developing countries.

The case includes teaching materials as well as financial statements, explanations of technologies and demographic data for use in analysis.