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The purpose of this paper is to explore how far plans to “modernize” hospital management in China are converging toward a global model of new public management (NPM) or represent a distinctive pathway.

This paper draws on a systematic review of available secondary sources published in English and Chinese to describe both the nature and trajectory of hospital management reforms in China.

In China, while public hospital reforms bear many of the hallmarks of the NPM, they are distinctive in two key respects. First, the thrust of current reforms is to partially reverse, not extend, the trend toward marketization in order to strengthen the public orientation of public hospitals. Second is a marked gap between the rhetoric and reality of empowering managers and freeing them from political control.

This paper develops a framework for understanding the drivers and obstacles to hospital management reforms in China that is useful for managers, clinicians and policy makers.

In China, few authors have considered NPM reform in relation to healthcare. This paper contributes in better understanding current reforms taking place in China’s expanding healthcare sector and locates these within broader theoretical and policy debates.

Lasers are currently the technological flavour of the month. The dazzling versatility of light at work tends to blind the onlooker both in its deficiencies and the availability of credible alternatives. This paper compares laser cutting and plasma cutting technologies. It concludes that careful appraisal of manufacturing requirements would probably reveal that equally satisfactory productivity was possible, and higher acceptable dimensional accuracy and edge finish, by opting for high definition plasma profiling. In doing so a lot of money would be saved.

This paper will investigate some of the theoretical and methodological problems associated with the way ‘culture’ is defined and studied in organizational settings. In short we raise the fundamental question of how culture is understood and explained, i.e., how does one actually ‘discover’ the culture of an organization? The paper will consider these issues in the context of research conducted by the authors on organizational mergers in which culture is defined as a network of communication rules/norms.

The Employment Research Unit at the Cardiff Business School (University of Wales, Cardiff) is this year dedicating its annual conference to the question of change in the management of the public sector. Under the title of ‘The Contract State: The Future of Public Management’ 45 papers will be presented in three streams (organisation and markets; quality and professionals; industrial relations). The papers are drawn from a range of disciplines, showing how the issue of public sector change is emerging as a vital research agenda. Such is the complex nature of change within public services that the issues being raised appear to require a multi‐disciplinary approach. Furthermore, the development of quasi‐market relations within the public sector are also necessitating a more analytical and critical perspective due to the discourses of managerialism that are concurrently being developed. It is for this reason that the Employment Research Unit has, in line with its tradition of attempting to evaluate key developments in the spheres of management and industrial relations, decided to focus this year's conference on the question of the contract state and the future of public management.

Within discussions of the “new public management” (NPM) it is suggested that professionals increasingly face managerial initiatives that are designed to reduce their autonomy and monitor their work. This paper draws on study data from the local authority children’s homes sector to assess Power’s predictions regarding the “colonisation” and “decoupling” of management audits within professional state agencies. The findings suggest that the introduction of a managerial audit in children’s residential social work has involved a complex, negotiated and uneven process in which older patterns of autonomy have proved to be resilient. A key outcome has been the sometimes ritualistic and partial implementation of the audit process.

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 uses a microanalysis of interaction approach to study how interactive service workers collaborate with one another in conversations to construct their professional identity in the face of the rapid contextual change. The data consist of (1) a complex written exchange downloaded from an Internet listserv and (2) a mechanically recorded conversation and detailed transcript showing the exact sequence of turns in the conversation, overlapping utterances, laughter, and speech errors. Everyday descriptions in these conversations reveal how knowledge workers produce and reproduce professional identity and a shared culture in the ways they: (1) categorize themselves and other workers, (2) amend or collaborate on each other's characterizations of clients, and (3) negotiate local policies and rules as they intersect with professional values and emotional boundaries. The results demonstrate a need for opportunities to integrate the increasing complexity of interactive service into professional identity as a response to technological and social change.

The purpose of this paper is to expose the errors of existing common evaluation frameworks such as Kirkpatrick and to suggest superior approaches.

The paper is based on work done in a variety of organizations as well as existing research evidence.

The paper finds that evaluation of learning and development can be both more rigorous and simpler.

The paper has real practical implications for leaders/managers and learning and development professionals, as it shows how to overcome the limitations of existing approaches to evaluation. By proposing an alternative approach to Kirkpatrick's model it encourages practitioners to be clearer about evaluation activity.

The paper will be of value to managers and learning specialists as it raises important issues about how to evaluate learning and development activity.