Books received

The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of various sources and types of information used by purchasers in a specific context; the purchase of public relations services. This paper discusses the particular characteristics of public relations services that affect the information available in the pre‐purchase phase and the various sources of that information. The research concludes that both the type of information used and the sources of that information are affected by both the public relations product variant and the availability of in‐house public relations specialists.     

Transformative travel as a sustainable market niche for protected areas: a new development,marketing and conservation model

Many protected areas worldwide are mandated to provide visitor enjoyment and sustainable heritage conservation but face growing challenges and competition. To satisfy modern aspirational markets, parks must design meaningful experiences delivering long-lasting participant benefits that cultivate visitation rates and a conservation constituency. Transformative travel can deliver such benefits through participants’ psycho-physiological transformation but market insights critical for experience development in parks are lacking. Our systematic quantitative review of 126 transformative travel articles provides those insights, linking experiential characteristics, participant traits and motivations to experience outcomes according to five transformative travel typologies pertinent to parks: health and wellness, nature-based physical activity, spiritual, cultural and volunteering travel. We identified 35 travel motivations, 14 participant traits and 23 experience characteristics linked to transformation and 28 purposefully or incidentally realised benefits. Transformative travel improved participants’ psychological, physiological, social, economic and environmental conditions, as well as satisfaction with and destination loyalty towards parks. Socio-demographic characteristics and propensity for independent versus social travel shaped choice of travel experience. Our results are uniquely conceptualised in a transformative travel framework and transformative market niche model which we apply to sustainable experience development and marketing in parks. We identify implementation possibilities and areas for future research and monitoring.     

The construction of managerial knowledge in business networks: Managers' theories about communication

In this article we regard managers' knowledge as a nuanced construction of reality that produces particular ‘espoused theories’ about the self as a practitioner and the environment in which they practice. Everyday managerial practices take place within the context of these theories. We argue that a subtle analysis of managerial talk can enhance the study of inter-firm relationships by revealing the espoused theories on the basis of which boundary spanners act. To demonstrate the construction of managers' knowledge, we introduce and explore materials collected in interviews with marketing and purchasing managers in several industrial contexts. We restrict our focus to talk about instances of communication to explore in depth how this talk establishes perceived ‘facts’ about inter-firm communicative work. We identify key discursive repertoires that are deployed to establish the range of communicative work, the difficulty in managing the directionality of communication and the complexity of managing in sometimes ambiguous situations — managerial ‘facts’ that are absent in some communication research. At the same time, discursive repertoires are deployed to establish the self as an able practitioner and a capable participant in communication. Our study has implications for boundary spanners and their organizations. We consider how boundary spanners' understandings of communication may be better deployed by the organizations that employ them and also in management education and training.     

Feminist economics as a Postmodern Moment

Wicksell saw economics as a way to effect social change. In addition to academic writings, he produced a steady stream of pamphlets, newspaper editorials, and public lectures that brought theoretical economics to bear on social policy. In this paper, consideration is given to this wider variety of Wicksell's writings, and his unanimity rule for public goods decision making is examined within the context of his social philosophy. We argue that the unanimity rule, rather than being narrowly focused on efficiency concerns, operated as a practical mechanism to achieve Wicksell's larger goal of social justice. This stands in contrast to the interpretation of Wicksell commonly presented in the public choice literature.     

Employment relations and labour market indicators in ten industrialized market economies: Comparative statistics

The acceleration of the internationalisation of business and the division of labour has been led by improvements in technologies and communications, decreased barriers to trade, increased competition and the growth of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Employers, government organizations and unions, practitioners and academics are increasingly concerned with locating comparable statistics. This article reviews employment relations and labour market data for ten major industrialized market economies (IMEs) and discusses some of the challenges in the measurement and interpretation of such data. For a fuller discussion of such data, and of the ten IME, see Greg J. Bamber and Russell D. Lansbury (eds) International and Comparative Employment Relations 3rd edn, to be published by Sage, London, and Allen & Unwin, Sydney, in mid-1998.     

The Sociomaterial Negotiation of Social Entrepreneurs’ Meaningful Work

This research examines the role of digital technology in the constitution of meaningful work. Adopting a sociomaterial perspective, we argue that meaningful work emerges as an outcome of a complex negotiation between individuals and their digital devices. This process was explored through video diaries and interviews with social entrepreneurs, capturing moments of their everyday meaning‐making and encouraging reflexivity. Accounting for their sociomaterial practice led participants to reaffirm their work as uniquely meaningful, produce more nuanced accounts of meaningfulness and/or make pragmatic adjustments to their meaning making. Whilst authenticity was a key meta‐narrative in these accounts, it also produced tensional knots which, in their unravelling, required the adoption of more practicable meanings of work. The paper concludes by urging scholars to de‐centre the human from their analysis to provide a more complete account of meaningful work.     

PERFORMANCE-RELATED PAY FOR TEACHERS: An examination of the underlying objectives and its application in practice

Performance-related pay (PRP) is being introduced for schoolteachers in England and Wales at a time when policy makers are concerned with the ‘mission to modernise’ and the requirement for ‘change’ to take place in the public sector (Cabinet Office 1999: 4). In a number of recent government publications, public sector pay has been heralded as an important mechanism that will ensure public services are ‘efficient’ and of ‘high quality’. Kessler and Purcell (1992) examine the managerial objectives underlying the current application of PRP in organizations and provide a useful framework to explore and evaluate PRP systems. Their framework has been adopted to consider the implications of implementing PRP for teachers.     

The Impact of the Internet on Professional Relationships: The Case of Health Care

This paper considers the impact of the internet on professional services, specifically healthcare services which have been characterised as asymmetrical in information and power distribution. For complex professional services the internet is primarily an information resource offering perceived parity with professionals. Based on interviews with healthcare professionals and website managers, this paper considers how professionals perceive the internet to be changing patterns of professional–consumer interaction and the nature of professional–consumer relationships. Manifest at service encounter level and health policy level, professionals perceived the evolving parameters of the consumer role to be generating a requirement for a fundamental revision of models of service delivery and professional roles.