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Employers are slowly increasing their understanding and awareness of counselling, the services it provides and its professionals. Counselling agencies need to promote not only their services but the principles of good counselling to enable employers to make informed decisions and choices.

Teleoperations in hazardous environments are often hampered by the lack of available information regarding the state of the remote robotic device. Typically, ideal camera placements are not possible, and an operator is left with the problem of performing complex manoeuvres in the presence of severe blind‐spots. To address this dilemma, we have been investigating the use of a haptic interface, which not only allows an operator to communicate motion commands to a robot, but also allows the robot to communicate to the operator its motion when performing autonomous collision avoidance. This haptic interface provides total operator control, plus vital information that can be used to decide if and how a robot's autonomous operation should be overridden. This paper details our work in this area and presents the results we have obtained from operator/task performance experimentation with this new haptic communication approach.

The Hotel Perennial case puts students in the shoes of Dan Jameson, founder and CEO of a boutique real estate private equity firm called EL Investments (ELI), as he wrestles with the decision of whether or not to acquire the distressed Hotel Perennial, a 194-room hotel on the north side of Chicago, Illinois. When making the investment decision, Jameson (and students) must consider various factors: What is ELI's implicit investment strategy, and what are the firm's core competencies? What are Jameson's goals for growing ELI, and how might the acquisition of the Hotel Perennial fit with those goals? What opportunities and challenges might ELI face if it decides to acquire the hotel? How much would a buyer likely have to pay for the Hotel Perennial to achieve an attractive return? In addition to containing a hotel valuation and modeling exercise, the Hotel Perennial case also exposes students to several real estate industry concepts and terminologies, including those regarding the hotel sector, equity sourcing, and distressed investing. The case material assumes that students have taken an introductory real estate finance course or have relevant work experience.

-Show students how an investment decision can go beyond simply “crunching numbers” and projecting an internal rate of return to include considering an individual's or firm's strategic objectives and core competencies. Students should think through how to

Shows how the US media were very slow to spot the potential of the Internet. When they finally did they proceeded to demonize it. Examples are given of this demonization. However, the US media is on its way to incorporating and integrating the Internet rather than attacking it. A younger generation of Internet and web users, who have essentially grown up with the media, will speed the end of a lengthy period of confusing and hysteria‐inducing Internet reporting.

The merger of two giant pharmaceutical businesses inevitably affects staff motivation and morale. Whether leaving or staying, staff need support in these circumstances to enable them to cope with the effects of major change. A model for addressing this problem is explored and the beneficial results — personal commitment, job satisfaction, enhanced performance — emphasised.

Much attention has focused on the benefits of employee assistance programmes (EAPs) to companies. However, there has been little research and evaluation of how counselling affects employees who use an EAP. Focuses on a questionnaire study to evaluate present and former clients′ views of the counselling contract itself; the counsellor who dealt with the problem, and the outcome of the counselling.

This article is based on the first three of a series of seminars offered by the Association of Teachers of Management on the theme ‘New Developments in Management Development’. Held early in 1980, these were ‘Management Development in Context’ by Mel Berger and Bruce Nixon; ‘Re‐evaluation Counselling Theory and Practice in Management Development’ by Mike Simmons and Rosemary Brennan and, finally, ‘Bioenergetics’ by Ian Ratcliffe. The series was arranged by Bruce Nixon, a member of ATM's executive. Employed by Sun Alliance Insurance as a training manager, his particular interest is to develop ways of helping managers improve their performance that really work. Recently he introduced a successful management development programme in Sun Alliance which drew on research and developments in this area. Acknowledgement is made to Mel Berger, Mike Simmons, Rosemary Brennan and Ian Ratcliffe for their ideas and their permission to bring these ideas together in this article.

Executive coaching has become a popular leadership development tool over the past decade. To be effective, coaches need to reflect on the lessons from counselling research from the past four decades and on the emerging coaching research to develop coaching models that are evidenced based.

Interest in the impact of stress on employees has traditionally focused on factors occurring in the workplace. Whilst this is valid, stress has many sources not least of which are life events such as divorce, bereavement and relocation. The impact can erode individual productivity and ultimately organisational effectiveness. The employee assistance programme (EAP) is emerging as a positive and constructive response by employers to help employees manage and resolve work and personal conflicts, pressures and problems. Originating in America in the early 1960s, the EAP first appeared in the UK when the Employee Advisory Resource (EAR) was developed in 1981. EAR marked the beginning of a new strategy in human resource management which has been refined and applied to an increasing number of blue chip companies in the UK. The EAP is here to stay and many different models exist. The Employee Advisory Resource has a nine‐year track record of application and shows how the availability of counselling through an EAP can reduce individual and organisational stresses.