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What employees want in a leader is someone who articulates the values the company stands for and models his or her behaviour on those values in matters large and small.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of contracts on general practise in the UK National Health Service. In particular, it is concerned with the response of practitioners to the apparent flexibilities offered in the new contract with its focus on outcomes rather than processes.

Ethnographic studies of two general practices, using non‐participant observation, documents and interviews with staff over a five‐month period.

Conclusions suggest that the new contracts, far from encouraging flexibility and responsiveness from general practitioners, have tended to strengthen bureaucratic forms in the way the contract is implemented.

The new contract has introduced greater clarity regarding roles and responsibilities within practises. At the same time, when operating in financially tight conditions, the contract can make rationing more explicit. Decisions are made not in accordance with the targets but in light of local pressures and constraints, causing tensions between primary and tertiary care.

An aspect of prospect theory posits that decision‐makers, when making decisions in the face of risk, make their decisions with respect to a pre‐existing reference point or ‘frame’ (the statusquo bias). We utilize data from the Australian version of the TV game show, Deal or No Deal, to explore whether risk aversion varies with a change in reference point in a context where stakes are real and high.We achieve this by exploiting a special and unique Australian feature of the Deal or No Deal lottery‐choice setting, namely, the existence of the Chance or the SuperCase rounds (supplementary rounds). These rounds reverse the decision‐frame that was obtained in earlier (normal) rounds. We fit and estimate a complete dynamic decision‐making model to our dataset and find that the risk aversion estimate of contestants who participated in both the normal and the supplementary rounds indeed differs depending on the nature of the round, a result consistent with the operation of the existence of a framing effect.

A summary of the project examining the impact of general management on the NHS, based on field work in England and Scotland between 1986‐1989. Implications of further change and clinical audit are discussed.

Strategy. The interpretations keep pouring in.

Outlines and analyses critically the changing nature of the administration and management of universities, particularly in Australia. Special attention is given to the emerging corporate and commercial character of universities, taking into account principles of economic management. Changes in economics as taught at university‐level are discussed along with the declining status of many economics departments. Strategies which I have used to counteract threats to university economics are outlined. Just as globalisation has been increasingly stressed in recent years as an imperative for business, it has become a dominant theme of Australian universities, partly for commercial reasons. This “new” emphasis is, however, ironic, as explained. Following some critical comments on the approaches of Australian universities to internationalization, the essay outlines some of my substantial international activities in the last two years.

Ethnography produces accounts; the critical reflection of accounts produces accountability. Ethnography requires accountability if meaningful conclusions and/or observations are to be made. Accountability requires ethnography if is to address lived experiences. Virno argues that the principles of “languaging” make ethnographies and accountability possible. This papers aims to describe an instance of the circularity of accountability and use this to explore Virno’s insights. Doing this helps us to see the connections between accountability and ethnography, and reflect on the nature of these interconnections.

Inspired by Paulo Virno’s philosophy, the authors assert that an ethnographer typically produces an account of a chosen “Other” in which this “Other” is held to account. But at the same time, the ethnographer needs to be held to account by the very same “Other” and by the “Other” of the (research) community. Furthermore, ethnographers are accountable to themselves. All these moments of accountability can endlessly circle, as responsibilization of the researchers by their Other(s) continues. For ethnography to function, this must be tamed as a (research) account ultimately has to be produced for an academic project to be considered complete. Drawing on Virno’s principle of the “negation of the negation” by the “katechon,” by the “katechon,” the authors propose a potentially valuable intervention that would enable ethnography – and by extension, ethnographers – to prosper.

The authors apply Virno’s philosophical reflections to propose a positive feedback cycle between ethnography and accountability. Virno’s ideation centers on two key concepts: (i) the multitude of social relatedness and (ii) the ontology of the languaging of individuation. Hereby, a positive circle of causality between ethnography and accountability can be realized, whereby the authors can respect but also break the causal circle(s) of ethnography and accountability. This might be achieved via a reflection on Virno’s concept of the “katechon.”

The authors illuminate the accountability–ethnography dynamic, providing an illustration of the circularity of ethnography and accountability and showing how Virno provides us with tools to help us deal with it. Hence, ultimately, the paper focuses on the accountability as ethnographers.