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This paper sets out to report on a research project investigating the academic voice in higher education quality in the UK and the Czech Republic. It aims to describe the origins and reasons for introducing quality monitoring and assurance into higher education, showing the differences and impacts on higher education quality in England and the Czech Republic, including the current practices and presenting the concerns and issues voiced by the academics and higher education leaders in both higher education systems.

The research utilised a critical event narrative inquiry method, which focuses on issues of complexity and human‐centredness in studied phenomena. In this way the method addresses issues that are frequently overlooked by quantitative research methods. It is argued that, by extracting “critical events,” the method is more efficient in dealing with large amounts of data, which often result from the use of qualitative research methods. In the presented research, “critical events” voicing important issues and concerns in higher education quality are extracted from stories of UK and Czech academics and higher education leaders.

Through extracting “critical events” in the professional practice of academics and higher education leaders, the research uncovered some similar and some culture‐specific issues voiced by Czech and UK academics and higher education leaders. The culture‐specific issues were revealed mainly in the Czech higher education context.

The research uncovered a number of issues and concerns which were overlooked in the current higher education quality practices in both the higher education systems. The paper does not present all the recommendations for educational practice and further research. These may be consulted in Mertova's Quality in Higher Education: Stories of English and Czech Academics and Higher Education Leader.

The research applied a critical event narrative inquiry methodology, which is a novel qualitative research method focusing on extracting “critical events” in the professional practice of individuals, in this case academics and higher education leaders. Even though the methodology was developed by Webster and Mertova, the study has further refined it and applied it in the field of higher education quality.

Presents 35 abstracts from the 2001 Employment Research Unit Annual conference held at Cardiff Business School in September 2001. Attempts to explore the theme of changing politics of employment relations beyond and within the nation state, against a background of concern in the developed economies at the erosion of relatively advanced conditions of work and social welfare through increasing competition and international agitation for more effective global labour standards. Divides this concept into two areas, addressing the erosion of employment standards through processes of restructuring and examining attempts by governments, trade unions and agencies to re‐create effective systems of regulation. Gives case examples from areas such as India, Wales, London, Ireland, South Africa, Europe and Japan. Covers subjects such as the Disability Discrimination Act, minimum wage, training, contract workers and managing change.

Dependence on access to European markets through subcontracting relationships with European firms has exposed subcontracting clothing and textile producers in less developed economies to the vagaries of international market competition. This paper aims to examine the problems that such exposure creates and the requirements for developing marketing activities through the concept of the alliance life cycle as a viable solution for a sample of Tunisian clothing and textile firms.

The inductive reasoning of this research was implemented through qualitative research based on a range of tools derived from a case study and a dual ethnographic approach.

The main results showed that life cycle stages of the subcontracting firms reflected Schumpeter's creation and destruction cycle of innovation. Therefore, subcontracting firms could learn from their activities with their business customers so that they developed marketing competences in innovative processes. The findings also demonstrated that some of the firms in the Tunisian clothing and textile industries were more successful than others.

This research focused mainly on subcontracting alliances with implications for future study of other alliances for different industries.

The life cycle approach could be of great interest to subcontracting managers in the post Multi Fibre Arrangement era. This approach is relevant mainly for decision makers in providing them with a framework within which they might optimise their marketing strategies and their implementations.

The research originality resides in its Schumpeterian perspective in considering business‐to‐business relationships. The value of the paper is to focus on the evolutionary aspects of relationships between contractors and subcontractors and the patterns of the marketing development within these relationships.

To provide a historical look at the development of web versions of reference materials and discuss what makes an easy‐to‐use and useful electronic handbook.

Electronic reference materials were limited to handbooks available on the web. Observations and assumptions about usability are tested with an information retrieval test for specific tasks in print and online editions of the same texts.

Recommended adoption of those elements which create a well‐designed book in combination with robust search capabilities and online presentation result in an easy‐to‐use and useful electronic reference source.

The small sample size that was used for testing limits the ability to draw conclusions, and is used only as an indication of the differences between models. A more thorough look at difference between electronic book aggregates, such as ENGnetBASE, Knovel^® and Referex would highlight the best features for electronic reference materials.

Advantages to particular models for electronic reference publishing are discussed, raising awareness for product evaluation. Areas of development for electronic reference book publishers or providers are identified. Work in these areas would help ensure maximum efficiency through cross title searching via meta‐searching and data manipulation.

The paper presents results from some human computer interaction studies about electronic books which have been implemented in a web interface, and the positive effects achieved.

This case focuses on Cisco Systems' innovative probe-and-learn approach to using social media to launch its ASR 1000 Series Edge Router. The company had decided to eschew traditional print and TV media in marketing the new product and had decided instead to focus its efforts entirely on digital marketing and social media to attract the attention of its target market. The case discusses Cisco's bold plan to launch the ASR 1000 Series “virtually, visually, and virally” and the digital tactics employed by the Cisco Systems marketing team to accomplish this ambitious goal. Business marketers normally adopt a more serious and traditional approach to marketing its products but in this case Cisco had decided to buck that trend by exploring digital tools and social gaming avenues which its target client—the technical community—were increasingly frequenting. Cisco's challenge lay in whether this new approach and resultant value proposition would resonate with its technical audience and give the ASR 1000 Router the kind of publicity it needed to have. The case is set at a time when social media was burgeoning as a promising way to engage consumers more deeply with brands and products, but marketers were still experimenting with the tools and tactics of social media for marketing.

Understand the relevance of social media for product launches as a function of contextual factors such as nature of product, media habits, and company credibility. Learn about the applicability of social media for business marketers in terms of its uniqueness, advantages and challenges. Recognize the relationship between campaign objectives and the value proposition for the product. Understand the evolution of social media marketing from a probe-and-learn approach to a strategy-driven process. The initial test and learn approach must be enhanced and become more strategic in the future.

It's been three years since my previous survey in RSR. Superb reference books in pop music have been appearing so frequently that I've been having trouble keeping up. Let's hope “next year's” survey will only be 12 months in the making and not 36.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of transcendence as business logic and to advance value co-creation and value network thinking. The authors are looking for business logic to have wider understanding of sustainable business. Understanding how value is “networked” and “co-created” by what the authors will call “transcendent business logic” in specific contextual settings is deemed essential in securing sustainable business, which social and environmental perspectives and governance issues are embedded. The authors lay the foundation for enriching the transcendence for business logics for a sustainable business based on sustainability, stakeholder-unifying perspective and value creation network theories.

The study adopts a qualitative approach, using multiple case studies to undertake an analysis of the role of transcendence for business logics. Four case studies of private companies and parallel case studies of retail, health care and public organizations (regional public transport networks) are applied. The paper further asses a methodological approach goes beyond the positivistic paradigm in service research to understand the texts and analyze the research materials. This section presents the methodological approach based on transcendence beyond objectivism and relativism and the transformation process of transcendence business logic.

The paper demonstrates that “different business logics” contributes to securing sustainable business embedded on social and environmental perspectives on governance issues. The authors have shown this based on the idea of transcendence, which can be used from a methodological point of view based on a deeper understanding beyond objectivism and relativism. The authors argued in this paper for a methodological path beyond functionalism. The authors are providing a deeper understanding of the business logic; co-creating value for people and developing sustainability for society. The study has also shown that values form the network, and co-creation is the basis for transcending the business logics.

The paper makes original contribution to the exploring transcendence for business logics to be in lieu of guiding open source business models based on the need for understanding of the new logic in the new complex landscape. In service research, the main theoretical challenges of understand and integrating value co-creation and value networks to secure sustainable businesses are founded on the principles of steering and navigation. In this study the authors addressed the need for advancement of value co-creation network thinking and perusal for the business logic to have a wider understanding of sustainable business.