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Action Research (AR) is presented as an interpretive conceptual framework through which an understanding of management systems can be achieved. The proposed interpretive framework is briefly described and examined as a comparative management framework. The merit inherent in AR as an interpretive comparative management framework is illustrated through an initial comparative analysis of US and Japanese management practices.

Quality of work life (QWL) has become an increasingly popular cross‐cultural field of theory and practice. An examination of the current state of the art revealed that the inquiry paradigm is one of the areas that leads to the contradictory and mostly disjointed state of QWL knowledge. A phenomenological‐based approach is proposed and utilized in an exploratory study that examines MBA students′ QWL experiences in the USA and Hong Kong. Discusses the learnings both in terms of the approaches used and the QWL knowledge gained.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Police officers are frequently confronted with moral dilemmas in the course of their job. The authors assume new police officers need guidance, and need to be taught at the police academy how to deal with these situations. The purpose of this paper is to obtain insight into the impact of socialization on police recruits’ knowledge of the code of ethics and their moral reasoning skills.

The study applied a longitudinal mixed methods design, using two methods. The first method was a qualitative observation of integrity training sessions at five police academies in Belgium. The second method was a quantitative survey-measurement of recruits’ knowledge of the code of ethics and their moral reasoning skills at three points in time: the beginning of their theoretical training, before their field training and afterwards.

The analyses show differences between the police academies in their integrity training sessions. Some of these differences are reflected in different levels of knowledge of the code of ethics. As for the development pattern of recruits’ moral reasoning skills, the study found almost no differences between the academies. Perhaps this is because recruits already have relatively high scores when they start, leaving little room for improvement during the one year training program. This suggests an important role of the police selection procedure.

Previous research on socialization and police culture has focussed on recruits being socialized in a negative police culture where misconduct is learned. This is a negative interpretation of police integrity. A positive one refers to ethical decision making generally, and moral reasoning specifically. The impact of the socialization process on recruits’ moral reasoning is empirically understudied.