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Total quality management (TQM) is an integrative management philosophy aimed at continuously improving the performance of products, processes and services to achieve and exceed customer expectations. This paper provides an empirical study on the identification of the critical success factors (CSFs) of TQM implementation in Hong Kong industries. Through a thorough and detailed analysis of the literature, 11 success factors with 72 elements were identified to develop a questionnaire. These items were empirically tested by data collected from 32 companies in Hong Kong. A factor analysis was carried out that identified seven CSFs with 38 elements of the implementation of TQM. These factors were shown to be reliable and valid and offer new insights into the understanding of TQM success factors in Hong Kong industries.

To celebrate the life and achievements of Felix Geyer by addressing issues of mutual interest, in a light‐hearted and informative fashion.

Adopts a polemical style that encapsulates the conclusions that will appeal to many types and affiliations of reader.

That, on the one hand, Felix Geyer is a cool dude who once smoked cigars and wore a raincoat. That, on the other hand, by walking around with “implants” in his body, and by celebrating/publicising this fact to the mass media, Kevin Warwick raised issues that remind us of the cult of the dandy.

Style, agenda, and range of concerns are unorthodox.

An element frequently missing from organisations is that of team learning. While recognised as critical, attempts to capture and apply team learning often result in only partial success. This paper (based on work carried out within a major UK automotive manufacturer) explains a methodology for capturing team learning that brings together the contribution of individuals into a team context while maintaining a focus throughout the process on the need for innovative change.

This paper aims to present an investigation of the problems concerned with delivering a variety of differing change programmes in a logically structured, repeatable and measurable manner.

Case studies were conducted on a selection of significantly different manufacturing facility programmes at GKN Aerospace where the output was a generic model more explicit and illustrative than previous approaches taken at the company.

This paper supports the idea that a strategic and tactical planning process with transferable, common key issues, can be managed in an environment of rapid change. Furthermore, discreet tailoring of the model enables differentiation of each programme type to support a standardized, repeatable and synchronous approach to change management.

This was achieved through the compilation of a single change management process termed the “5 × 5 Model” incorporating a multi‐site working document containing quantifiable, value‐added activities.

The new model presented here has been developed from previous literature and tested in practice, but requires further application to validate its applicability in different industry sectors.

A parallel structure is suggested for feedback control systems. Such a technique can be applied to either single or multi‐sensor environments and is ideally suited for parallel processor implementation. The control input actually applied is based on a weighted summation of the different parallel controller values, the weightings being either fixed values or chosen by an adaptive decision‐making mechanism. The effect of different controller combinations is a field now open to study.

This article has been written in memory of Norbert Wiener and is dedicated to him. Takes a look at how cybernetics provides an extremely useful framework for the control and operation of real‐world systems. With the true advent of computers and simple communications, many more processes can and will be viewed from a systems standpoint. Examples are given of how cybernetics can be applied to industrial processes and how it is seen as an important, integral part of future systems science.

The purpose of this paper is to consider Turing's two tests for machine intelligence: the parallel‐paired, three‐participants game presented in his 1950 paper, and the “jury‐service” one‐to‐one measure described two years later in a radio broadcast. Both versions were instantiated in practical Turing tests during the 18th Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence hosted at the University of Reading, UK, in October 2008. This involved jury‐service tests in the preliminary phase and parallel‐paired in the final phase.

Almost 100 test results from the final have been evaluated and this paper reports some intriguing nuances which arose as a result of the unique contest.

In the 2008 competition, Turing's 30 per cent pass rate is not achieved by any machine in the parallel‐paired tests but Turing's modified prediction: “at least in a hundred years time” is remembered.

The paper presents actual responses from “modern Elizas” to human interrogators during contest dialogues that show considerable improvement in artificial conversational entities (ACE). Unlike their ancestor – Weizenbaum's natural language understanding system – ACE are now able to recall, share information and disclose personal interests.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse role transition for professionals moving towards hybrid managerial roles. Specifically, the authors examine reforms to the national tax agency in the UK, focusing on attempts to shift hybrid managers away from a focus on tax compliance, to a greater customer focus. This extends understanding of the relationship between New Public Management (NPM) and the public professions, by offering greater insight into the dynamic between regulators and regulatees, as professionals are co-opted into management roles that encompass greater customer orientation.

The authors draw on documentary data relating to reform from 2003 to 2012 and 43 semi-structured interviews with senior tax inspectors co-opted into hybrid manager roles.

The findings support established accounts of the effect of NPM reform to public professions, as these professionals are co-opted into hybrid management roles. Some hybrid managers resist, others embrace the demands of the new role. Linked to a hitherto neglected aspect of analysis (the extent to which hybrid managers embrace a greater customer orientation) the findings also show a more novel third response: some hybrid managers leave the national tax agency for opportunities in the private sector. These public-to-private professionals the authors call “canny customers”. Canny customers are ideally placed to exploit aspects of NPM reform, and thereby accelerate changes in the governance of public agencies, but in a way that might undermine the function of the tax agency and tax professions.

In regulatory settings, policy reform to co-opt professionals into hybrid managerial roles may have mixed effects. In settings where a focal dynamic is the regulator-regulatee relationship, effective governance will require understanding of the labour market to temper excess influence by those hybrid managers who become canny customers, otherwise, in settings where it is easy for individuals to move from regulator to regulatee, the pace and consequences of reform will be harder to govern. This runs the danger of eroding professional values. The specific case of tax professionals reflects themes in the literature examining hybridisation for accountants, and provides novel insight into the dynamics of professionalism that extend to the case of accountants.

The contribution is to extend the literature on role transition of professionals. The authors focus on hybrid managers in the context of a regulatory agency: the UK national tax agency. Policy reforms associated with hybridisation emphasised customer orientation. The authors highlight labour market characteristics impacting the regulator-regulatee dynamic, and an as yet unexplored, unintended consequence of reform. The public professional who leaves for the private sector becomes a “canny customer” who can exploit and accelerate reform.