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One of the major reasons the Japanese have been so successful in business is their ability to take a concept or idea from another culture and improve on it in a uniquely Japanese fashion. The management development programmes at the Japan‐American Institute of Management Science (JAIMS) reflect this. A pragmatic approach is adopted with a strong emphasis on computer applications, business simulations, experiential learning and on‐the‐job training. Business simulation is used as a tool to integrate two training programmes, the American Management Programme (AMP) and the Japanese Management Programme (JMP). The simulation demonstrates cultural differences, provides a basis for computer applications, allows participants to interact in an international environment and to deal with real‐world business situations and problems in that environment.

Past research has emphasised the potential for conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to disrupt services. Conversely, the literature recognises customer expectations as fundamental to service quality and customer satisfaction. However, the understanding of users’ expectations for conversational AI services is currently limited. Building upon previous research that has underscored the importance of users’ expertise, this study aims to provide valuable insights into the expectations of users with varying levels of expertise.

Forty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted, on three populations: experts, quasi-experts and non-experts from various countries including Japan, France and the USA. This includes 10 experts and 11 quasi-experts, as in professionals in conversational AI and related domains. And 25 non-experts, as in individuals without professional or advanced academic training in AI.

Findings suggest that users’ expectations depend on their expertise, how much they value human contact and why they are using these services. For instance, the higher the expertise the less anthropomorphism was stated to matter compared to technical characteristics, which could be due to a disenchantment effect. Other results include expectations shared by all users such as a need for more ethics including public interest.

The study provides insights into a key yet relatively unexplored area: it defines three major expectations categories (anthropomorphic, technical and ethical) and the associated expectations of each user groups based on expertise. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it also highlights expectations never detected before as such in the literature such as explainability.

Some of the unique changes impacting on management development throughout the world are explored and some of the creative responses which have been developed by several centres of management in reaction to these changes. Articles are briefly summarised and the reasons for their inclusion explained.

Considered going to IFLA 89 in Paris, but as noted in leading article in August, the fee of 2,200 francs would pay for a first class run around the Hexagon with SNCF for nine days with all sorts of extras and still leave enough for five good dinners. Expostulating thus to NLW's Favourite Overseas Librarian, Frances Salinié of the British Council in Paris, led her to make enquiry. Transpired, as they say, that belatedly and all unannounced one‐day registration at 300 francs was allowed. This possibility, the fact that I hadn't been to Paris this year, the near certainty that one day of IFLA would be an “elegant sufficiency” and a curiosity to see if “they order this matter… better in France” led me to the Gare du Nord clutching my 300 dirty oncers. Warning: lengthy chunk of political bias coming up. Don't bother to take reading matter on the London Dover/Folkestone railway. The swaying, clattering, noisome line makes reading, conversation or walkman listening virtually impossible. This chunk of Network Southeast is not a worthy descendant of the South‐Eastern and Chatham railway on which long dead father once drove beautiful locomotives. A pride in railways is one of the Victorian values not preached from the Downing Street pulpit. The new line promised for the Tunnel may sometime let you read in comfort, but that seems a rather drastic and expensive remedy.

North Dakota has in place a telecommunications infrastructure that is advanced and active, given the state's rural nature and large pockets of low population communities. The state is criss‐crossed by fiber‐optic cables that link the majority of telephone central offices to each other and connect clusters of high schools with interactive video networking. Public television stations are available in most communities of the state. State government is among the leaders in the state in the rapid deployment of frame relay services. The frame relay network represents the newest generation of data communication facilities in North Dakota, replacing a statewide network of dedicated leased data circuits and X.25 packet switches. The frame relay system provides each user group on the network with a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for data communications, which is transparent to other users on the network.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contextual and linguistic challenges that French business schools face when preparing for international accreditation and to shed light on the different ways in which experts facilitate these accreditation processes, particularly with respect to how they capitalize on their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning competences.

The authors interviewed 12 key players at four business schools in France engaged in international accreditations and in three specific categories: senior management, tenured faculty and administrative staff. The interview-based case study design used semi-structured questions and an insider researcher approach to study an underexplored sector of analysis.

The findings suggest that French business schools have been particularly impacted by the colonizing effects of English as the mandatory language of the international accreditation bodies espousing a basically Anglophone higher education philosophy. Consequently, schools engage external experts for their contextual and linguistic boundary-spanning expertise to facilitate accreditation processes.

The authors contribute to language-sensitive research through a critical perspective on marginalization within French business schools due to the use of English as the mandatory lingua franca of international accreditation processes and due to the underlying higher-education philosophy from the Anglophone academic sphere within these processes. As a result, French business schools resort to external experts to mediate their knowledge and competency gaps.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/03090599810204316. When citing the article, please cite: Mike Ironside, Roger Seifert, (1998), “Training and collective bargaining in European public services: a study of training-related issues in French, Finnish and UK health services”, Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 22 Iss: 2, pp. 66 - 72.

The perpose of this paper is to analyse recent changes in the management of French public hospitals, following a reform enacted in 2009 and aimed at bolstering the managerial roles of doctors.

The paper is exploratory and is based on both the analysis of French literature dealing with the results of the 2009 reform, and ten semi-directed interviews with clinical managers and top leaders in the public hospital sector.

The author reports on the major hospital management reforms of 2009 and analyse the implications for the medical profession and management. The author shows that the involvement of the classical clinical leaders has become less regulated as the units no longer have a clear legal basis. The governance of the newly introduced “medical poles” appears to be shaped by various factors: there is high correlation between centrality, prestige and “clan involvement”, which suggests that professionals holding new responsibilities obtain power and legitimacy by consolidating pre-existing networks. While it is often argued that high-quality clinical leadership is a key factor of organisational success, the findings suggest that the performance of clinical managers relies on this network and legitimacy acquired from it.

Drawing on the “sociology of translation” and actor-network theory (Callon and Latour, 1991), this paper provides a new conceptual framework for the analysis of the transformation of the role of clinical leaders, arguing that this transformation depends highly on their abilities to build and use networks. The findings challenge the French tradition of public management that presupposes a clear division of power between doctors and administrative staff.