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This paper aims to explore the possibilities in using such national, statutory data sets for evaluating change and the challenges of understanding service patterns and outcomes in complex cases when only a limited view can be gained using existing data. The discussion also explores how methodologies can adapt to an evaluation in these circumstances.

This paper examines the use of data routinely collected by local authorities (LAs) as part of the evaluation of innovation. Issues entailed are discussed and illustrated through two case studies of evaluations conducted by the research team within the context of children’s social care in England.

The quantitative analysis of LA data can play an important role in evaluating innovation but researchers will need to address challenges related to: selection of a suitable methodology; identifying appropriate comparator data; accessing data and assessing its quality; and sustaining and increasing the value of analytic work beyond the end of the research. Examples are provided of how the two case studies experienced and addressed these challenges.

• Quasi-experimental methods can be beneficial tools for understanding the impact of innovation in children’s services, but researchers should also consider the complexity of children’s social care and the use of mixed and appropriate methods. • Those funding innovative practice should consider the additional burden on those working with data and the related data infrastructure if wishing to document and analyse innovation in a robust way. • Data, which may be assumed to be uniform may in fact not be when considered at a multi-area or national level, and further study of the data recording practice of social care professionals is required.

The paper discusses some common issues experienced in quasi-experimental approaches to the quantitative evaluation of children’s services, which have, until recently, been rarely used in the sector. There are important considerations, which are of relevance to researchers, service leads in children’s social care, data and performance leads and funders of innovation.

The purpose of the paper is to consider the opportunities and difficulties in developing health‐promotion work in early years settings in the UK.

As the first study of its kind conducted in the UK, a multi‐method approach was adopted involving: an overview of health‐related guidance and of effective interventions in early years settings to promote health among young children; 26 interviews with key informants in the early years and health fields, regional coordinators for the National Healthy Schools Programme (NHSP) and Foundation Stage regional advisers; a survey of 145 local Healthy Schools Programme coordinators with a response rate of 75 per cent; and six case studies of early years settings representing promising practice in the promotion of health and wellbeing.

There is considerable enthusiasm for health promotion work within early years organisations, and interest in developing such work in early years settings. The study suggests that building on existing early years curriculum frameworks, developing partnerships between health and early years professionals, engaging both parents and practitioners, and adequate national and local resourcing will facilitate development of health promoting work in the early years sector.

This paper and the outputs from the study offer useful evidence for health and early years professionals who are developing health‐promoting work in early years settings.

The paper reports on the first study of its kind in which the perceptions of both early years and health professionals are brought together to consider the issues involved in developing healthy early years practice.

The purpose of this paper is to gain deeper insight into the meanings that structure and impel consumer choice by overlaying findings from a metaphor elicitation study onto the results of a traditional means‐end laddering study.

First, laddering interviews were conducted to elicit the reasons that structure the college choice decision of students. A second study using metaphor elicitation techniques surfaced additional meanings that constitute and connect students' thoughts and feelings about their experiences at the college. Together, the two modes of interviewing yield deeper insight into personal relevance and consumer choice than offered by either alone.

Combining two modes of interviewing provides views at various levels of detail. Whereas laddering interviews use direct questioning to identify consumers' choice criteria, projective techniques rely on indirect questioning to surface the enduring and ephemeral feelings that charge consumer beliefs. Panning and zooming from the general structural overview provided by means‐end research to the nuance and detail surfaced by metaphor elicitation provides uncommon insight into the drivers of consumer choice.

The time, effort, skill, and expense required for data collection, analysis, and interpretation are non‐trivial and may limit adoption of the two study approach.

The superimposition of metaphoric meanings onto consumer decision maps provides tremendous added value to managers aiming to enhance the creativity, relevance, and effectiveness of their marketing initiatives.

Melding two interview methods adds depth to means‐end research and lends structure to projective associations. The deeper insights into personal relevance and choice benefit academics and practitioners alike.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The literature on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation has been dominated by variance theories which have identified numerous lists of critical success factors (CSFs) for managing implementation but there has been relatively little research adopting a process theory approach which explains how change occurs. One such theory, the teleological process, has been criticised in the IS literature for its capability to evolve and learn due to its convergence towards an end goal. Drawing upon the field of organisational development (OD), the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the usefulness of the theory and contend that, whilst it exhibits planned behaviour, events are adaptive and learned and emerge though social construction of actors in organisations.

An in‐depth interpretive study of eight public‐sector organisations is used. During the investigation, two primary methods of data collection were analysed: survey questionnaires (2) and in‐depth interviews (38).

The data were analysed and contrasted with themes and attributes associated with teleological design. The article highlights how the central role of an agent or entity, and its interaction with eight key attributes, is critical to the success of the change process.

The article proposes benefits of applying teleological theory to the context of designing the change, pre and post project implementation. Whilst the data are based in the UK, the framework also provides a useful starting point for further research in ERP implementation in developing and emerging nations of areas likely to be problematic.

Memories and musings of the long ago reveal revolutionary changes in the world's food trade and in particular, food sources and marketing in the United Kingdom. Earliest memories of the retail food trade are of many small shops; it used to be said that, given a good site, food would always sell well. There were multiples, but none of their stores differed from the pattern and some of the firms — Upton's, the International, were household names as they are now. Others, eg., the Maypole, and names that are lost to memory, have been absorbed in the many mergers of more recent times. Food production has changed even more dramatically; countries once major sources and massive exporters, have now become equally massive importers and completely new sources of food have developed. It all reflects the political changes, resulting from two World Wars, just as the British market reflects the shifts in world production.

The purpose of this paper is to establish implicit consumer attitudes towards whole grain foods, following criticisms of explicit enquiries revealing an attitude-behaviour gap. For products considered to have social desirability (e.g. ethical and “health” products) bias may be observed, as respondents may provide responses that present them in a positive light, rather than those reflecting their actual attitudes, intentions or behaviours.

The research employed an indirect measure, the shopping list method, analysed quantitatively in this case using factor analysis and regression, to examine the impression respondents form of whole grain consumers, using three discrete shopping lists and two discrete cover letters. Following a pilot survey to 79 people using Snowball sampling, the survey instrument was distributed to 3,000 UK households using a purchased mailing list.

The findings demonstrated that respondents considered whole grain consumers to exhibit positive attributes of respectability and self-efficacy compared to their counterparts. These findings countered the negative, product attribute-based views of respondents when queried explicitly about their attitudes to whole grain foods.

The research provides an original perspective on whole grain consumer attitudes, using a methodology which – whilst well-established – has been used less frequently in a quantitative manner. It provides particular value to food retailers and manufacturers looking to promote whole grain products, but also to policy makers seeking to change consumption habits towards whole grains – which have established health benefits compared to refined alternatives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of service flexibility in addressing consumer vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers within the funerary context.

Using phenomenological philosophy and a grounded approach, data was collected and analyzed through 12 depth interviews with funeral service providers, coupled with observations and photographs of three second-line funeral processionals.

Study results include the following three primary roles of service providers in supporting chronically-traumatized consumers: the role of service fluidity in addressing trauma, mitigating vulnerability via service providers as community members and alleviating suffering through compassionate service. Service flexibility and value co-creation efforts were executed through an expansive service ecosystem of vendors.

When consumers experience vulnerability that demands reliance upon service industries, service providers can intentionally implement fluidity and agility in service design, adopt understanding and altruistic practices, and operate with empathy and compassion to orchestrate mutually-beneficial service outcomes.

Rooted in transformative service research, providers are advised to consider modifying services to improve well-being and mitigate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers via fluidity, community and compassion.

This study contributes originality to the body of service marketing literature by illustrating how service providers alleviate vulnerability for chronically-traumatized consumers through three adaptive service strategies.

This paper aims to explore how and why the emerging literature in clinical psychology on the “successful psychopath” precedes the escalating middle class framing of the contemporary corporation as a monster and points towards an increasingly credible version of systemic psychopathy.

Discourse analysis is used to isolate three distinct but interrelated argument forms in which the basic assertion is that “the corporation is a psychopath”. All three argument forms insist that the corporation lacks a conscience and point to a toxic schism on the boundary between the organization and its stakeholders or publics.

In Argument Form I, successful psychopaths enter and rise to prominence in the flexible, hypercompetitive context of the contemporary corporation. Once ensconced within the corporation, in Argument Form II, the psychopath creates the conditions for a scam which, when detected, gives rise to a flurry of breathless and very public corporate scandals. Argument Form III follows from II. In it the rogues and scoundrels – those increasingly caught in the high beams of a corporate scandal – once in positions of power and authority seek out allies, stifle those who would oppose them and begin to legitimize their scams as “business as usual.” Systemic psychopathy emerges when the appeal to “business as usual” conceals scams and supports conscienceless behavior.

This paper explains why increasingly, members of the middle class, those who in the past stood behind the corporation, are less than shocked to hear it characterized as a psychopath. The paper concludes with the implications of the intensifying portrayal of the dark side of the corporation for researchers studying the changing relationship between society and business.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a profile of a financial criminal, with special emphasis on their psychological attributes. The objective is to determine if such a profile can provide a valuable tool for detecting perpetrators of financial crime and for implementing risk-reduction strategies.

The approach involved a review of various personality disorders and other mental health issues, as well as an analysis of a number of cases involving serious financial crime, to ascertain whether the behaviour of the perpetrators was consistent with certain psychological challenges. In addition, the study examined various motivators for the commission of the financial crime.

The research revealed some key commonalities among the perpetrators of financial crime and that their behaviour was often consistent with that of a person afflicted with a personality or other psychological disorder.

The study provides a comprehensive analysis of various personality and other psychological challenges afflicting a number of offenders involved in financial crime. It also provides some critical findings that could be valuable for those charged with establishing measures to prevent and detect financial crime.