Context and Action in the Transformation of the Firm: A Reprise

This article returns to address the strengths and limitations of Pettigrew 1985 and 1987. It then responds to two of the main deficiencies of those publications. These are the failure to link context to process to outcome in those studies and in process scholarship more generally and the limited treatment of the method of process analysis offered by Pettigrew in 1985 and 1987. The article then compares and contrasts the methods of five additional process scholars – Mintzberg, Burgelman, Langley, Van de Ven, and Eisenhardt – to highlight developments in the conduct of process research since the mid and late 1980s, and to identify a set of pointers for the conduct of future process research.     

Shaping strategic change ‐ The case of the NHS in the 1980s

This article explores the question of why the management of change has become an issue in the National Health Service (NHS). It reports the results of a study which explored reasons for variability in the observed rate and pace of strategic service change in the NHS. The metaphor of ‘receptive’ and ‘non‐receptive’ contexts for change is introduced and eight ‘signs and symptoms’ of receptivity outlined. Some examples are presented. These results give us a logic and language which may enable us to understand processes of change in the NHS.     

The changing place of fraud in seventeenth-century public debates about international trading corporations

Abstract

This article surveys the changing role of fraud (dishonest and immoral commercial practices) in public justifications for corporate management of overseas trade in England across the seventeenth century. It argues that the perceived likelihood of fraud in international commercial settings played a critical role in public justifications for trading corporations at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The article suggests that these justifications were challenged from the 1690s. It explores three aspects of this challenge: first, the ways in which agents of the East India Company convinced the Company to liberate private trade (an activity previously defined as fraudulent by the Company and the Courts); second, the arguments from the 1680s that depicted the joint-stock corporation as an unaccountable, soulless entity whose claim to public trust looked less credible; third, how decades of accumulated experience of international trading contexts (and interactions with non-European merchants) prompted pamphleteers to promote the possibility (and reality) of unregulated trade in those settings. All three helped to erode the former association between private individual trade in international contexts as likely to encourage dishonesty, immorality, and fraud. This change therefore led to the corporate body itself becoming a possible vehicle for fraud rather than the individual international merchant (who the corporation was meant originally to regulate). The article analyses public deliberations about fraud and corporations to make interventions in the history of economic thought, the history of trading companies, and the history of economic crime (and especially its rhetorical role in debates about the regulation of trade).     

Psychosocial Influences on Children's Food Consumption

This exploratory study generated a grounded theory of factors influencing children's diets, particularly those that contribute to suboptimal eating and ultimately child obesity. The study involved 124 children (aged 6–12 years) and 39 of their parents from three separate junior schools (including a lower, middle, and higher socioeconomic school). Research methods included (i) interviews with children and parents and (ii) observations, drawings, and lunchbox audits with children. The findings suggest that children and parents prioritize psychosocial needs over physiological needs during food selection and consumption. This tendency toward psychosocial eating appears to be strongly reinforced by food advertising.     

Partnerships in the provision of services by multi-agencies: four dimensions of service leadership and service quality

This paper explores the relationship between four key dimensions of service provision through adopting different partnership approaches. These dimensions are identified to describe partnerships as mandatory or voluntary and service provision based on contract or trust. Propositions about the nature and interaction of these variables are presented and combined as a heuristic suggesting complying, constraining and creating modes of partnership-working and service delivery. Examples are provided of these modes in practice. The paper concludes that this heuristic is a useful tool for practitioners to locate their form of partnership-based service delivery within the spectrum identified.     

Place as a site and item of consumption: an exploratory study

While places are recognized as sites of consumption within the field of consumer behaviour, they have yet to be generally accepted as forms of consumption. This study investigates the idea of place as a consumption object by comparing conceptions of city and country within a cross‐cultural sample. Thirty‐six consumers living in the US, the UK and Australia were interviewed to explore their thoughts and feelings relating to the cities and countries in which they reside. The findings provide empirical support for key conceptualizations of place in the sociology literature and extend consumer behaviour theory to include considerations of the physical, social and cultural aspects of place that impact upon consumption. In addition, the findings portray places as entities that are assessed, selected and experienced in comparable ways to products.