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Discusses training, development and quality cultures in organizations. Contends that deskilling the workforce in order to improve efficiency and productivity is at odds with creating a quality culture. Explains why a quality culture is important and how one may be achieved.

Raises the question why society relies on ranking and grading from the first day of school, through the educational system, into the working environment. Goes on to discuss the effects of extrinsic forces on intrinsic attributes and describes and assesses the concerns/views of theorists such as Deming, Latzko and Bramham. Ranking affects us all throughout the whole western world. Indeed it is pervasive throughout the world. Ranking is a fundamental cornerstone of the present education system and is being further developed within organizations by means such as performance appraisal, target setting, merit system, etc. Suggests that ranking should be replaced by co‐operation and that recognition of the need to change is required. This may require government legislation. It also has to be encouraged by those who develop education and training policies.

The insurance industry often experiences criticism for unethical and frequently illegal activities. This document suggests that insurers operate in an uncompetitive environment and that the nature of insurer operations leads otherwise ethical individuals in the direction of questionable ethical decisions throughout the operations of an insurance company.

This paper aims to identify organizations’ information security issues and to explore dynamic, organizational culture and contingency theories to develop an implementable framework for information security systems in human service organizations (HSOs) based soundly in theory and practice.

The paper includes a critical review of global information security management issues for HSOs and relevant multi-disciplinary organizational theories to address them.

Effective information security management can be particularly challenging to HSO because of their use of volunteer staff in a borderless electronic environment. Organizations’ lack of recognition of the need for staff awareness of information security threats and for training in secure work practices, particularly in terms of maintaining clients’ privacy and confidentiality, is a major issue. The dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation, organizational culture theory and contingency theory were identified as the most suitable theoretical perspectives to address this issue and underpin an effective information security management framework for HSOs.

The theory-based framework presented here has not been tested in practice. Such testing will be carried out in further research.

Currently, there is no framework for information security systems in HSOs. The framework developed here provides a foundation on which HSO can build information security systems specific to their needs.

The purpose of this paper is to study the thermal behavior of radial porous fin surrounded by water-base copper nanoparticles under the influence of radiation.

In order to optimize the response variable, the authors perform sensitivity analysis with the aid of response surface methodology (RSM). Moreover, this study enlightens the applications of artificial neural networks (ANN) for predicting the temperature gradient. The governing modeled equations are firstly non-dimensionalized and then solved with the aid of Runge–Kutta fourth order together with the shooting method in order to guess the initial conditions.

Numerical results are analyzed and presented in the form of tables and graphs. This study reveals that the temperature of the fin is decreasing as the wet porous parameter increases (m₂) and the temperature for 10% concentration of nanoparticles are higher than 5 and 1%. Physical parameters involved in the study are analyzed and processed through RSM. It is come to know that sensitivity of temperature gradient to radiative parameter (Nr) and convective parameter (Nc) is positive and negative to dimensionless ambient temperature (θ_a). Furthermore, after ANN training it can be argued that the established model can efficiently be used to predict the temperature gradient over a radial porous fin for the copper-water nanofluid flow.

To the best of our knowledge, only a few attempts have been made to analyze the thermal behavior of radial porous fin surrounded by copper-based nanofluid under the influence of radiation and convection.

Previous research has not considered the impact on human frontline employees (FLEs) of altered employee–customer relationships in the presence of a service robot (i.e. an intrusion challenge), nor how FLEs may respond. The purpose of this study is to explore the task allocation strategies by human frontline employees’ (FLE) work well-being responses within the intrusion challenge.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, whereby an in-depth qualitative study (Study 1, n = 15) is followed by a quantitative field study (Study 2, n = 81).

Results indicate that FLEs experience the intrusion challenge, impacting social, purpose, physical and community well-being. Study 1 reveals that while service robots trigger this challenge, FLEs use them for task allocation to maintain their initial work well-being state. Study 2 shows that using robots instead of colleagues positively affects FLE work well-being.

Service robots, as a task allocation strategy by FLEs, can be used to empower FLEs by assisting them to preserve their work well-being within the intrusion challenge.

This study is one of the first to involve FLEs from a live service robot site, where data is based on personal lived experiences rather than anticipated experiences. This is the first study to investigate how FLEs respond to the intrusion challenge.

Corporate social responsibility is one of the earliest and key conceptions in the academic study of business and society relations. This article examines the future of corporate social responsibility. Bowen's (1953) key question concerned whether the interests of business and society merge in the long ran. That question is assessed in the present and future contexts. There seem to be distinctly anti‐responsibility trends in recent academic literature and managerial views concerning best practices. These trends raise significant doubts about the future status of corporate social responsibility theory and practice. The vital change is that a leitmotif of wealth creation progressively dominates the managerial conception of responsibility. The article provides a developmental history of the corporate social responsibility notion from the Progressive Era forward to the corporate social performance framework and Carroll's pyramid of corporate social responsibilities. There are three emerging alternatives or competitors to responsibility: (1) an economic conception of responsibility; (2) global corporate citizenship; and (3) stakeholder management practices. The article examines and assesses each alternative. The article then assesses the prospects for business responsibility in a global context. Two fundamentals of social responsibility remain: (1) the prevailing psychology of the manager; and (2) the normative framework for addressing how that psychology should be shaped. Implications for practice and scholarship are considered.

This chapter highlights some of the tensions and most promising points of convergence between the strategic management and stakeholder theory literatures. We briefly examine the early development of both areas, identifying some of the background assumptions and choices that informed how the fields evolved, and how these factors led the two fields to engage in scholarly pursuits that seldom intersected for a period of years, followed by a renewal of interest among strategists in themes that are central to stakeholder theory. From this discussion, we develop a larger agenda with specific topics as examples of areas that offer promise for integrative research that can advance knowledge in both fields. Our vision of the future is one in which the larger aspirations of scholars in strategy and stakeholder theory are more fully realized with human purposes, broadly defined, as the focal point.

The relationship between stakeholders and organizations has been gaining more focus in strategic organizational management. The scenario of increased accountability required by society and by the competitive business environment itself demands ethical, fair, and sustainable practices from companies. In this sense, effective and fair stakeholder management becomes relevant. Thus, stakeholder theory proves to be a valid theoretical perspective for this challenge. In its conceptualization, stakeholder theory has pointed out different issues for strategic management practices, and how to treat the stakeholder fairly has been one of the concerns of the proponents of the theory (Bosse, Phillips, & Harrison, 2009). In this regard, principles of organizational justice have been incorporated into stakeholder management models. The authors argue that organizational justice, including its basic dimensions of distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice, can positively impact the bottom line of organizations through synergy in value creation and by encouraging reciprocal behavior between the firm and stakeholders.

This paper considers the East India Company’s emergence as a territorial power from the 1760s until the revocation of most of its commercial functions in 1834. While this period has been a key episode for historians of the British Empire and of South Asia, social scientists have struggled with the Company’s ambiguous nature. In this paper, I propose that a profitable way to grasp the Company’s transformation is to consider it as a global strategic action field. This perspective clarifies two key processes in the Company’s transition: the enlargement of its territorial possessions; and the increased exposure of its patrimonial network to intervention from British metropolitan politics. To further suggest the utility of this analytic perspective, I synthesize evidence from various sources, including data concerning the East India Court of Directors and the career histories of Company servants in two of its key administrative regions, Bengal and Madras, during this period of transition.