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Social constructionist perspectives are becoming increasingly influential in organisational and management studies. Evaluates an experientially based personal development module on a management diploma that was re‐designed according to social constructionist ideas about learning and managerial activity. In particular, the paper assesses whether storytelling and argument analysis are viable elements in experientially based teaching, and considers how they mediate the processes of learning and action. It is concluded that storytelling and argument analysis are viable techniques, that they facilitate multiple perspective taking and negotiation and help in the creation of intelligible solutions in joint action with others. While accepting that there are a number of difficulties with the approach, we suggest that it provides management educators with another method of experiential learning, and that it is particularly appropriate to those wishing to encourage managers to explore and develop social constructionist perspectives in a practical and action orientated way.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings arising from a three year research project which investigated a major system-wide change in the design of the NHS in England. The radical policy change was enshrined in statute in 2012 and it dismantled existing health authorities in favour of new local commissioning groups built around GP Practices. The idea was that local clinical leaders would “step-up” to the challenge and opportunity to transform health services through exercising local leadership. This was the most radical change in the NHS since its inception in 1948.

The research methods included two national postal surveys to all members of the boards of the local groups supplemented with 15 scoping case studies followed by six in-depth case studies. These case studies focused on close examination of instances where significant changes to service design had been attempted.

The authors found that many local groups struggled to bring about any significant changes in the design of care systems. But the authors also found interesting examples of situations where pioneering clinical leaders were able to collaborate in order to design and deliver new models of care bridging both primary and secondary settings. The potential to use competition and market forces by fully utilising the new commissioning powers was more rarely pursued.

The findings carry practical implications stemming from positive lessons about securing change even under difficult circumstances.

The paper offers novel insights into the processes required to introduce new systems of care in contexts where existing institutions tend to revert to the status quo. The national survey allows accurate assessment of the generalisability of the findings about the nature and scale of change.

The new management paradigm states that managing people is about managing feelings. For many people, change is a very personal and emotional issue, and can be difficult, especially when it involves their work environment. Employee resistance can pose significant obstacles to the planning and development of an office space relocation, particularly for projects that attempt to change the way in which people work. The relocation of employees is expensive, in terms of both operational costs and investments. This paper deals with both the psychological as well as the economic impacts of introducing a change. It is intended to equip facility managers who are delivering projects to understand not only the change process, but also more importantly, to discern why employees resist change and provide them with a multifaceted approach to facilitating the change process. One key element for managing the resistance to change is the use of effective, ongoing and varied communication vehicles. This paper includes an inventory of recommended communication tools that have proved to be both effective and successful. It will share experiences through ‘lessons learned’, that will demonstrate how ‘skipping steps’ in the process can jeopardise the success of the project. It is hoped to establish that time and resources expended towards the management of the resistance to change equate to time and effort well spent and can make the difference between success and failure.

This case has multiple theoretical linkages at the micro-organizational behavior level (e.g. job enrichment), but it is best analyzed and understood when examined at the organizational level. Students will learn about shared entrepreneurship, high performance work systems, shared leadership and virtuous organizations, and how they can develop a sustainable competitive advantage.

The case was prepared using a qualitative approach. Data were collected via the following ways: literature search; organizational documents and published historical accounts; direct observations by a research team; and on-site audio recorded and transcribed individual and group interviews conducted by a research team (the authors) with organization members at multiple levels of the firm.

John Lewis Company has been in business since 1864. In 1929, it became the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) when the son of the founder sold a portion of the firm to the employees. In 1955, he sold his remaining interest to the employee/partners. JLP has a constitution and has a representative democracy governance structure. As the firm approaches the 100th anniversary of the trust, it is faced with multiple challenges. The partners are faced with the question – How to respond to the environmental turmoil?

This case has environmental issues – How to respond to competition, technological changes and environmental uncertainty and an internal issue – How can high performance work practices provide a sustainable competitive advantage? Both issues can be examined in strategic management courses after the students have studied traditionally managed companies. This case could also be used in human resource management courses.

Large numbers of organizations are taking great interest in the idea of knowledge management and many are launching knowledge management initiatives and programmes. A large proportion of such initiatives will fail. Yet, despite the injunctions to “learn from failure”, little detailed attention has been paid to why and how these apparently popular initiatives run into difficulties. The purpose of this article is to examine, in some unusual detail, a significant example of a failed knowledge management initiative in order to analyse what went wrong and to identify the key learning points.

In this article, David Johnstone describes an innovative community mentoring service in Devon that is delivering a personalised service to people over 50 who have experienced some kind of downturn in their lives, alongside community capacity building activity that is providing opportunities for many excluded older people in Devon.

Bernard Malamud said “…a short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime. The drama is tense, happens fast, and is more often than not outlandish. In a few pages the story portrays the complexity of a life while producing the surprise and effect of knowledge…” According to Helen Haines, “The short story may be, perhaps, best defined as the equivalent in fiction to the lyric in poetry and the one‐act play in drama: the intensified, concentrated expression of an idea or theme…It demands greater, but less sustained, mastery of style than does the novel…The brevity of the short story, while it limits, also makes for freedom…” The freedoms it allows include posing problems without solutions, ignoring logical development to a conclusion, and referring to vague ideas which are never detailed. These allowable omissions of the short story lead to its great power for the reader. For a short story is only completed through the interaction of its reader. “The readers are forced into active collaboration: they flesh out the story through memory, sympathy, and insight, and they feel its truth as immediately as a toothache.”