Institutional isomorphism and whistle-blowing intentions in public sector institutions

Over the years the new institutionalism in public sector analysis has contributed significantly to our understanding of the dynamics of public sector institutions. While it has moved research away from behavioural explanations to recognizing political and cultural contexts, the focus on public sector institutions has been minimal. This research examines, by self-report questionnaire from employees in two government organizations, how institutional mechanisms shape whistle-blowing intentions within the context of a developing country. Despite the country context, findings from this study are encouraging in that participants’ intentions to blow the whistle were found, generally, to be strong.     

Relationship Marketing at the Service Encounter: the Case of Life Insurance

This article details empirical evidence to suggest that, by and large, UK life insurance salespeople fail to be client-driven in their approach to customer service. Furthermore, there is insufficient attention given to the nature of exchanges between service provider and purchaser by these staffs. Therefore, by implication, there is a deficit in relationship marketing implementation at the service encounter and workbench level.     

About the authors

It is argued in this paper that marketing theory and practice has reacted largely ineffectively to many of the fundamental challenges posed by developments in other disciplines, illustrated in recent years by total quality management (TQM) and business process re‐engineering (BPR). The urgency of addressing the need for responsiveness to paradigm shifts in other disciplines is underlined by the newest cross‐disciplinary challenge of this kind, which comes from the emergence of “lean thinking” and the conceptualisation of the “lean enterprise”. The goal in this paper is to identify the ways in which lean thinking relates to the marketing process in terms of both conflicts and synergies, and to set an agenda for a productive and timely response from the marketing discipline to the advent of lean thinking.     

Trust restoration: an examination of senior managers' attempt to rebuild employee trust

This article advances discussions surrounding the extent to which senior management can rebuild damaged trust relationships in a context where the founding principle of respect had been contravened. More specifically, our article is concerned with a senior management team's attempt to regain trust through addressing workplace bullying. The study draws on a quantitative methodology where the population of the case study organisation were surveyed (n = 206) at two points in time (2004 and 2007). The findings revealed that managements’ actions had a significant effect on perceptions of bullying. T‐tests, however, provided only partial support for the notion that trust had improved as a result of management actions. In particular, there were significant differences in the levels of loyalty and benevolent motives and also openness, whereas no significant changes were observed for other dimensions of trust (integrity, competence, consistency and respect).     

European Community Merger Policy in the Service Industries: The Second Phase

This article examines recent developments in the application of the EU Merger Regulation to services. Policy evolution regarding the jurisdictional divide between Brussels and the national authorities is highlighted as is the contrasting treatment of different types of joint ventures. Particular attention is given to the first two prohibitions of service industry transactions (in broadcasting and related telecommunications) which were among only three cases banned under the Regulation in its initial five years. These show some of the problems of ensuring competition in services where access to infrastructure plays an important role. The conditional clearance after full proceedings of the first case where a separate market for technology was defined is also considered with reference to licensing.     

Global managers and Japanese multinationals: internationalization and management in Japanese financial institutions

The paper examines the internationalization of Japanese banks in the 1980s and 1990s and the experiences of managers within them. These banks underwent a vast expansion in international activities in the 1980s, followed by an equally rapid contraction in the 1990s. Building on a series of interviews conducted in London and Tokyo in the period 1999-2001, the paper examines how this impacted on the careers and expectations of both Japanese and non-Japanese managers. The paper argues that the organizations have been fundamentally changed by these experiences and have become in varying ways ‘transnational social spaces’. The idea of multinationals as transnational social spaces is developed as a general way of linking flows (of people, practices and ideas) inside the firm to broader processes in the development of global political economy.     

Marketing and business performance

Academics and managers have struggled for many years to understand and delineate the role of marketing in explaining business performance differences between firms. Most of the theory base for any such attempts has to be informed by strategic management theory, since the primary question that strategic management seeks to answer is why some firms outperform others over time. This paper synthesizes three major streams of thought in strategic management with the empirical and theoretical literature on strategic marketing to develop an integrative theory-based conceptual framework linking marketing with firms’ business performance.     

Has the Public Sector Retained its 'Model Employer' Status?

The authors investigate whether public sector organizations can still be considered 'model employers' as they were before the late 1970s. Comparisons are made with private sector human resource management (HRM) practices to determine how closely the 'model employer' rhetoric approximates the public sector reality. The article focuses on recent changes in the core and traditional non-traded areas of public sector employment funded directly through either central or local taxation—the National Health Service, central and local government and higher education. Objective quantitative data on public sector HRM practices and flexible work patterns are examined from both primary and secondary sources. Central to the discussion is the question of which sector offers the greater job security to employees.