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Delighting customers should be a compelling business strategy. Details The Ten‐step Approach to Delighting Customers on which Northern Telecom Europe and Oracle Corporation UK based their customer‐driven programmes. Identifies perception as the fifth P of marketing management that distinguishes a customer‐driven organization.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief and partial overview of some of the issues and authors that have dominated British industrial relations research since 1965. It is cast in terms of that year being the astronomical Big Bang from which all else was created. It traces a spectacular growth in academic interest and departments throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and then comments on the petering out of the tradition and its very existence (Darlington, 2009; Smith, 2011).

There are no methods other than a biased look through the literature.

These show a liberal oppression of the Marxist interpretation of class struggle through trade unions, collective bargaining, strikes, and public policy. At first through the Cold War and later, less well because many Marxists survived and thrived in industrial relations departments until after 2000, through closing courses and choking off demand. This essay exposes the hypocrisy surrounding notions of academic freedom, and throws light on the determination of those in the labour movement and their academic allies to push forward wage controls and stunted bargaining regimes, alongside restrictions on strikes, in the name of moderation and the middle ground.

An attempt to correct the history as written by the pro tem victors.

Twenty‐five years on, the Director of Research of Britain′s Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers′ Associations (1968) reviews subsequent events in pay and incomes policies, analyses their contemporary relevance, particularly over the need for an “effective incomes policy”. From the starting point of the need for stable internal pay structures, the analysis covers the “cascade effect” of uncontrolled pay drift. Felt‐fair inequities (especially at management levels) are shown as a prime cause of pay inflation and (as a consequence) of high unemployment. Concludes with a four‐point agenda for change which tackles and differentiates the private and public sectors, and concludes with an indictment of performance‐related pay.

This paper aims to investigate whether organisations in developing economies legitimise their level of profit.

Organisations’ level of profit is evaluated against the readability of sections of information available in the corporate annual reports. These sections include the Chairman’s Report, the Chief Executive Officer Report and the Notes to the Accounts.

More profitable organisations report more readable information in their corporate annual reports. Information in the non-mandatory sections of the report (Notes to the Accounts) is more readable compared to the information in the mandatory sections of the report (Chairman’s Report). Larger organisations report more readable information. Public Enterprises report more readable information compared to the Publicly Listed Companies.

Organisations in the developing economies are aware of their role in their society. They respond to instances of possible violation of the implied social contract by sharing information in ways that relays news in certain ways.

Evidence of presence of legitimising activities by organisations would imply the need to strengthen the regulatory and monitoring guidelines to ensure efficient use of society’s resources and a fair rent charge for the utilities.

There is a greater need to monitor and question organisations’ level of earned profit to ensure it is necessary to maintain their operations.

This study is the first attempt to investigate organisations’ immediate legitimising activities in relation to their reported profit.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to assess frailty, geriatric conditions and multimorbidity in people experiencing homelessness (PEH) using holistic evaluations based on comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) and draw comparisons with general population survey data.

Cross-sectional observational study conducted in a London-based hostel for single PEH over 30 years old in March–April 2019. The participants and key workers completed health-related questionnaires, and geriatric conditions were identified using standardised assessments. Frailty was defined according to five criteria in Fried’s phenotype model and multimorbidity as the presence of two or more long-term conditions (LTCs). Comparisons with the general population were made using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the Health Survey for England.

A total of 33 people participated with a mean age of 55.7 years (range 38–74). Frailty was identified in 55% and pre-frailty in 39%. Participants met an average of 2.6/5 frailty criteria, comparable to 89-year-olds in the general population. The most common geriatric conditions were: falls (in 61%), visual impairment (61%), low grip strength (61%), mobility impairment (52%) and cognitive impairment (45%). All participants had multimorbidity. The average of 7.2 LTCs (range 2–14) per study participant far exceeds the average for even the oldest people in the general population.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first UK-based study measuring frailty and geriatric conditions in PEH and the first anywhere to do so within a CGA-type evaluation. It also demonstrates the feasibility of conducting holistic evaluations in this setting, which may be used clinically to improve the health outcomes for PEH.

This study investigates the development of absorptive capacity. Using an integrated cognitive learning perspective, this study provides empirical evidence about the conceptual absorptive capacity model through examining the full process step by step. Two groups of moderating variables were studied—namely, social integration and appropriability—to examine their impact on the process.

This study employed a longitudinal study from a community service program (Kuliah Kerja Nyata) at Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, by using surveys at the beginning and the end of the project. Of 492 teams from 2,444 students participated in the study. Each individual within a team had at least one project assigned to him/her during the project. The absorptive capacity process was examined through six consecutive models and analysed using hierarchical linear modelling. The moderating variables were tested using the Moderated Regression Analysis and Wald tests.

The study confirms the full cycle of absorptive capacity as an independent, dynamic and complex process; it involves acquiring, assimilating, transforming and exploiting sequencing variables from the individual level to the team level and vice versa using feed-forward and feedback mechanisms adopted from the 4I framework of organisational learning. However, the roles of the moderating variables are still inconclusive due to some possible factors, which were also reflected by the U-phenomenon.

This study provides vital support to the learning theory as well as to the organisation learning concept. This study also reveals empirical evidence about the unsupported moderating variables behave during a project cycle, such as what they function, how they evolve and what we should do about the moderating factors during a project. The findings of this study provide practical suggestions and highlight areas for future research.

Mixed emotions (i.e. consumer ambivalence) play a central role in approach‐avoidance conflicts in retailing. In order to assess how consumer ambivalence impacts shopping behaviour, this paper seeks to conceptualize and investigate the multi‐dimensional antecedents of approach‐avoidance conflicts, experienced by shoppers in changing retail environments, and the importance of approach‐avoidance conflicts for consumers' decision to stay and complete their purchase in that particular shopping channel.

Using a cross‐country study, which compared online and offline consumers, the paper tested the influence of the situation, product, and reference group on shoppers' intentions; and identified how consumers' mixed emotions influenced approach‐avoidance conflicts in different retail settings.

Whereas some distinctions could be drawn between online and offline contexts when examining the impact of market‐related, product‐related and social factors on consumers' decision to shop (H1, H2, H3 and H4), no clear distinction could be drawn between online and offline channels in terms of mediating effects of mixed emotions (H5, H6 and H7). Mixed emotions (ambivalence) did mediate the impact of certain product‐related, market‐related and personal factors on consumers' intention to purchase.

Retailers need to reduce the impact of consumers' emotional responses to the retail setting where mixed emotions are likely to lead to consumers leaving the stores. For online shops, those retailers are successful who are able to induce behavioural reactions that make consumers return and explore the web site and not use it for search only.

Responding to calls for further research on mixed emotions and their consequences, the paper captures the complex impact of consumers' mixed emotions on approach‐avoidance conflicts, and thereby extends earlier work on consumer ambivalence.