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Explores the role of the facilitator in the implementation of a total quality management or continuous improvement process. Many organizations, having planned their goals for the future, have difficulty in understanding the process of reaching them. The role of the facilitator in helping determine how to achieve these goals and bring about the changes necessary to do so is described by one of the country’s leading business improvement consultancies. The development of the world‐class company is explained in three stages: survival; prevention; and continuous improvement. Gives guidelines on: the selection of facilitators; their commitment to the role; training and skills development; how the role develops through time; and the challenges to be faced.

It is all too easy in the hectic world of business to get too involved with the day‐to‐ day managing of processes and events. When this happens it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and the automatic pilot syndrome takes over. This does not suggest that you do not know what you are doing ‐ on the contrary you are probably as switched on to whatever activity you are managing as anyone could be. What you could be missing, however, is the explanation as to why you are doing it. If this sounds familiar to you, what might be needed is a detached period from your work. By this I mean stay on the high ground for a while so you can get an overview of what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it. How many managers, I wonder, get the opportunity to question what they are doing? If you allow yourself to slip into complacency then you and your organization will soon lose competitive advantage.

It is all too easy in the hectic world of business to get too involved with the day‐to‐day managing of processes and events. When this happens it is difficult to see the wood for the trees and the automatic pilot syndrome takes over. This does not suggest that you do not know what you are doing ‐ on the contrary you are probably as switched on to whatever activity you are managing as anyone could be. What you could be missing, however, is the explanation as to why you are doing it. If this sounds familiar to you, what might be needed is a detached period from your work. By this I mean stay on the high ground for a while so you can get an overview of what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it. How many managers, I wonder, get the opportunity to question what they are doing? If you allow yourself to slip into complacency then you and your organization will soon lose competitive advantage.

The Lesley University PhD program in Educational Studies offers a new specialization in adult learning and development. This hybrid, interdisciplinary degree is geared toward mid-career professionals in higher education, community services, non-formal adult learning, and a number of other fields. Since 2008, the program has graduated 36 students whose dissertations have a strong focus on practitioner research. This case study covers the planning process of an interdisciplinary faculty team responding to the need for educators to teach and research adult learners. The guiding philosophy of adult learning and the delivery method of this competency-based curriculum are explained. Students present a research interest upon application and begin to develop a dissertation question in their first year. They attend a weeklong campus residency every semester where they work on competencies through workshops and lectures. This is followed by online course completion in dialogue with faculty mentors and peers. Students finish 45 credits before beginning the dissertation. The importance of a cohort learning community, advising as pedagogy, online support, library resources, qualifying examination, pilot study, and dissertation preparation are discussed. Data gathered from a current self-study highlight both the strengths and the challenges posed by this unique program.

At Shepparton in the Murray electorate of Victoria in 2007, the Federal Liberal Member, Sharman Stone, announced that under a returned Coalition Government, Shepparton ‘would get a stand‐alone technical college’. One year earlier, the Victorian Minister for Education, Lynn Kosky claimed that ‘We lost something when technical schools [the ‘techs’] were closed previously. Yes, the facilities were not great but we lost something that was important to young people’. This article explores the development and demise of ‘South Tech’, Shepparton South Technical School, 1966‐86 to identify the ‘something’ that Kosky claimed was lost, and to argue that technical education is essential in a reconstituted system.

Partnerships have become more prevalent in the delivery of public services, particularly in relation to non‐traditional sectors such as culture, arts and leisure. This paper presents a synthesis of research on partnerships and their relevance to local museums in the light of recent government policy. The relevance of partnerships to this sector is explored through a case study of four local authorities in Northern Ireland that partnered to form a regional museum service. Qualitative interviews revealed that despite the small scale of the partnership, a number of benefits have been delivered and that the partnership mechanism can work for organisations with little in the way of resources. Much of the success of the case study partnership can be attributed to the skills and leadership of the appointed member of staff. Further research is recommended to map the type, scope and purpose of museum partnerships in order to develop a typology for this sector and to evaluate current government policy.

This purpose of this paper is to respond to calls for further research into consumer pre‐purchase decision‐making, and investigate the factors that cause a customer to make a decision to save for retirement.

Exploratory research using eight focus groups was undertaken in Sydney, Australia with a total of 55 participants. The data were analysed using the approach suggested by Cresswell and includes coding into chunks, development of themes, interpreting, and validating findings.

Three key findings emerged from the research. First, there are certain internal, external, and risk factors that have a major impact on propensity to save for retirement. These are: involvement level, motivation, needs and wants, family influence, marketer influence, competitive options, financial risk, functional risk, and psychological risk. Second, no clear and universal gender differences in the pre‐purchase decision‐making process emerged during the focus group discussions. Finally, alternative options for spending and addressing risk negatively influence pre‐purchase decision‐making and therefore the desire or ability to save.

This study is constrained by its exploratory nature. Consequently, future research could utilise quantitative methodology to confirm findings and allow generalisation of results. Also, a study incorporating ethnicity would add breadth to the findings.

Managers and policy makers benefit from understanding that marriage and turning 40 years old are highly influential to a consumer's likelihood to save for their retirement. This information is particularly useful for the development of marketing and communication campaigns.

This is the first exploratory study of pre‐purchase decision‐making which researches the triggers for buying complex financial services associated with saving for retirement.

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 paper considers the classifications produced by application of the single linkage, complete linkage, group average and Ward clustering methods to the Keen and Cranfield document test collections. Experiments were carried out to study the structure of the hierarchies produced by the different methods, the extent to which the methods distort the input similarity matrices during the generation of a classification, and the retrieval effectiveness obtainable in cluster based retrieval. The results would suggest that the single linkage method, which has been used extensively in previous work on document clustering, is not the most effective procedure of those tested, although it should be emphasized that the experiments have used only small document test collections.

This index accompanies the index that appeared in Reference Services Review 16:4 (1988). As noted in the introduction to that index, the articles in RSR that deal with specific reference titles can be grouped into two categories: those that review specific titles (to a maximum of three) and those that review titles pertinent to a specific subject or discipline. The index in RSR 16:4 covered the first category; it indexed, by title, all titles that had been reviewed in the “Reference Serials” and the “Landmarks of Reference” columns, as well as selected titles from the “Indexes and Indexers,” “Government Publications,” and “Special Feature” columns of the journal.