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In the summer of 1993, a faculty team from the College of Business at Northern Illinois University began working to develop a cross‐functionally integrated undergraduate business principles core curriculum. This paper describes the integrated curriculum, which is comprised of a nine‐hour integrated lecture covering business principles and a three‐hour applications seminar. Both of these courses,which are team taught, are described in the paper. The aper also discusses numerous lessons and issues that should be taken into consideration throughout comprehensive integration efforts.

Many articles and books have been written about building, measuring and managing brand equity – primarily from the perspective of the marketing function. However, the management of the “internal touchpoints” necessary to deliver on the brand promise has received less attention. The paper aims to study these.

A two‐wave e‐mail survey was administered to business seminar participants. Multi‐item measures and a six‐point Likert scale were developed and analyzed to better understand the perceived involvement of human resource (HR) in internal branding efforts and the relationship between HR involvement and the incorporation of the brand message into work activities and attitude toward the brand.

In spite of well‐documented internal branding initiatives, there appears to be room for improvement among HR departments in terms of successfully delivering the corporate branding message. However, there does appear to be a strong personal attitude toward the brand among US professionals, and a strong relationship exists between HR involvement in internal branding and the incorporation of the brand into work activities.

Employees seem to have a more positive attitude toward the brand and are more likely to incorporate this image into their work activities when there is some degree of HR involvement in the internal branding process.

The successful promotion of the internal branding doctrine may be as dependent on HR initiatives as on those developed in the marketing department. By involving HR in internal branding projects, firms can better use internal communications to give employees a deeper understanding of the brand and the role that they play in enhancing the brand promise.

The purpose of the paper is to address the following question: What can novels reveal about what leadership nonfiction sources miss or obscure?

The paper reviews the benefits that are derived from the use of literature in the examination of leadership, compares and contrasts three novel experiments in the examination of literature and leadership, and examines the impact of one approach as reflected in student assignments and exit interviews.

Student reflection papers morphed from descriptive reviews to reflections expressed through poetry, artwork and personal experiences. Students also deepened their views on what leadership is and means. Exit interviews revealed student significant reflection on personal views in a number of areas. The longitudinal follow up of students expanded their flexibility and ability to listen and understand how and why people approach leadership in different ways. They also felt it increased their openness to new or different approaches and encouraged them to think more independently.

One implication of the approach of this class is how the authors embraced questions to guide the students and faculty. Instead of listing topics and assigning categorical meaning, the approach of the class was organized around questions, such as, “is leadership real or imagined? Am I ready to take responsibility?

The power of storytelling is unmistakable. The value of storytelling is that it allows the reader to escape from the day-to-day challenges we face to find how others are facing challenges sometimes very similar to our own.

The article compares and contracts three experiments in the examination of literature and leadership. The paper then examines one approach to literature and leadership in terms of the impact on students (papers, exit interview and longitudinal follow-up). Findings are assessed with the works of Gardner, Bennis and Hartley stressing the possibilities of storytelling as a unique approach to studying and practicing leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to present a business process reengineering (BPR) framework of process and data integration with patient journey as the basis for process evaluation and the improvement of patient-flow.

A BPR framework is developed using a mixed-method research design, which incorporated a case study to demonstrate a healthcare scenario with associated processes and data elements, using process models based on event-driven process chain methodology as well as patient and data models, based on unitary structuring technique. The framework includes key processes including patient booking and rebooking, and associated inputs, outputs, and control parameters. In this case, the framework is demonstrated through application to computed tomography (CT) services in a hospital to improve patient-flow, with numerical simulation of CT data collected over time.

The framework supports flexible patient scheduling and the associated planning of healthcare operations and logistics – this in turn helps to improve patient-flow. Furthermore, mathematical modelling and simulation precisely reveal the impact of booking and rebooking on the performance of the CT department.

This innovative framework has potential value for other services, within and beyond the hospital setting.

The proposed framework of process modelling, data, and patient journey addresses the lack of a holistic approach to monitoring and evaluating service performance in hospital settings. Patient journey modelling is an integral part of process and data models that can be implemented in an integrated system environment such as an enterprise resource planning system for real-time monitoring of patient-flow under dynamic conditions.

Forty years ago the so‐called “theory movement” took root in educational administration because it so fundamentally broke with the past, replacing trial‐and‐error experience with analysis and research in an effort to improve our understanding of educational organizations and how to manage them. Fuelled by support from private foundations and, eventually, the US federal government, this landmark development in administrative and organizational theory altered the way in which universities taught educational administration. In the educational reform movement of the 1980s, however, the established and time‐honoured theoretic concepts of the past four decades – with their emphasis on mathematical proof and ways of thinking borrowed from laboratory science – gave way to newer, richer ways of understanding organizations and thinking about them. Describes the emerging new directions in organizational and administrative theory and where they are taking us.

Do these reference requests sound familiar? “I need to know what has happened on this day in history. Can you help me?” Or, “I'm doing a paper on Thornton Wilder. He was born on 17 April. Can you tell me who else was born on that day?” Or, “Are any national or regional anniversaries coming up next Friday?” These questions call for a special type of reference work—a book of days. A book of days (or day book) lists important events that have occurred on each day of the year throughout history, and is arranged by month and day. These works often include not only historical, cultural, and literary events, but also the dates of the births and deaths of notable people, commemorative days of saints, and special anniversaries. A book of days, for example, can reveal that historians Will and Ariel Durant were married in New York City Hall on Halloween in 1913, or that Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway were born on the same day in 1899 (21 July). This article will review some of the more useful books of days that are often found in reference collections—works that are uniquely suited to answer questions about each day of the year.

The purpose of this paper is to add new theoretical insights on the employee‐organization relationship (EOR) in the context of corporate entrepreneurship (CE), specifically in collective entrepreneurship.

The paper presents a brief overview of the content of each of the articles included in this special issue.

In the last decades, the study of the EOR has become an integral part of the literature as an approach aimed to provide the theoretical foundations to understanding the employee and employer perspectives to the exchange. Also, the greater complex environment and the higher level of innovativeness have pushed firms to become more entrepreneurial in order to identify new opportunities for sustained superior performance. In this context, emerges CE and involves not only formal activities to enhance product innovation, risk taking and a proactive response to environmental forces, but also organizational learning, driven by collaboration, and commitment. Specifically, different EORs and specific human resources management practices are required in the light of collective entrepreneurship, understood as work among entrepreneurial teams within the organizations and collaboration among employees.

The paper provides an overview of the EOR in collective entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between internal branding (IB) and employees' brand commitment and analyze how transformational leadership (TFL) moderates this relationship.

Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 394 employees in Indian telecommunication sector. The hypotheses and conceptual model were tested by structural equation modeling (SEM), using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS).

The results suggest that employees' brand commitment is higher when organizations implement IB supported by transformational leaders. Results also indicate that impact of IB on affective commitment (AC) and normative commitment (NC) is greater than its impact on continuance commitment (CC).

Consistent with the brand commitment dimensions, the findings present an empirically tested comprehensive and integrative model of IB moderated by TFL. This study provides scholars a deeper understanding of relationship among IB, employee's commitment and TFL. Though multicollinearity is addressed, presence of cross-sectional data is a limitation in the study.

The study would help practicing managers to gain a new perspective to manage their internal brand mechanisms through TFL style by stimulating change among employees and create emotionally committed brand advocates.

This paper suggests an empirically validated framework of IB tested for moderation effect by TFL. It adds value to literature by reinforcing the effect of IB employees' AC and NC, especially among customer contact employees who represent brand during customer service delivery in telecommunication sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore ISO 10001:2007 in planning, designing and developing a customer satisfaction promise (CSP) intended for inpatients care.

Through meetings and interviews with research participants, who included a program manager, unit managers and registered nurses, information about potential promises and their implementation was obtained and analyzed. A number of promises were drafted and one was finally selected to be developed as a CSP.

Applying the standard required adaptation and novel interpretation. Additionally, ISO 10002:2004 (Clause 7) was used to design the feedback handling activities. A promise initially chosen for development turned out to be difficult to implement, experience that helped in selecting and developing the final promise. Research participants found the ISO 10001-based method useful and comprehensible.

This paper presents a specific health care example of how to adapt a standard’s guideline in establishing customer promises. The authors show how a promise can be used in alleviating an existing issue (i.e. communication between carers and patients). The learning can be beneficial in various health care settings.

To the knowledge, this paper shows the first example of applying ISO 10001:2007 in a health care case. A few activities suggested by the standard are further detailed, and a new activity is introduced. The integrated use of ISO 10001:2007 and 10002:2004 is presented and how one can be “augmented” by the other is demonstrated.