In-service training needs in an African context: a study of headteacher and teacher perspectives in the Gucha District of Kenya

Improving the quality of teaching is an educational priority in Kenya, as in many developing countries. The present paper considers various aspects of in-service education, including views on the effectiveness of in-service, teacher and headteacher priorities in determining in-service needs and the constraints on providing in-service courses. These issues are examined though an empirical study of 30 secondary headteachers and 109 teachers in a district of Kenya. The results show a strong felt need for in-service provision together with a firm belief in the efficacy of in-service in raising pupil achievement. Headteachers had a stronger belief in the need for in-service for their teachers than did the teachers themselves. The priorities of both headteachers and teachers were dominated by the external pressures of the schools, in particular the pressures for curriculum innovation and examination success. The resource constraints on supporting attendance at in-service courses were the major problems facing headteachers. The results reflect the difficulties that responding to an externally driven in-service agenda creates in a context of scarce resources.

What is the new medicines use review ‘patient survey’ attempting to capture in the context of existing patient satisfaction with pharmacy questionnaires and a new conceptual framework?

The community pharmacy service medicines use review (MUR) was introduced in 2005 ‘to improve patient knowledge, concordance and use of medicines’ through a private patient–pharmacist consultation. The MUR presents a fundamental change in community pharmacy service provision. While traditionally pharmacists are dispensers of medicines and providers of medicines advice, and patients as recipients, the MUR considers pharmacists providing consultation-type activities and patients as active participants. The MUR facilitates a two-way discussion about medicines use. Traditional patient–pharmacist behaviours transform into a new set of behaviours involving the booking of appointments, consultation processes and form completion, and the physical environment of the patient–pharmacist interaction moves from the traditional setting of the dispensary and medicines counter to a private consultation room. Thus, the new service challenges traditional identities and behaviours of the patient and the pharmacist as well as the environment in which the interaction takes place. In 2008, the UK government concluded there is at present too much emphasis on the quantity of MURs rather than on their quality.[1] A number of plans to remedy the perceived imbalance included a suggestion to reward ‘health outcomes’ achieved, with calls for a more focussed and scientific approach to the evaluation of pharmacy services using outcomes research. Specifically, the UK government set out the main principal research areas for the evaluation of pharmacy services to include ‘patient and public perceptions and satisfaction’as well as ‘impact on care and outcomes’. A limited number of ‘patient satisfaction with pharmacy services’ type questionnaires are available, of varying quality, measuring dimensions relating to pharmacists’ technical competence, behavioural impressions and general satisfaction. For example, an often cited paper by Larson[2] uses two factors to measure satisfaction, namely ‘friendly explanation’ and ‘managing therapy’; the factors are highly interrelated and the questions somewhat awkwardly phrased, but more importantly, we believe the questionnaire excludes some specific domains unique to the MUR. By conducting patient interviews with recent MUR recipients, we have been working to identify relevant concepts and develop a conceptual framework to inform item development for a Patient Reported Outcome Measure questionnaire bespoke to the MUR. We note with interest the recent launch of a multidisciplinary audit template by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) in an attempt to review the effectiveness of MURs and improve their quality.[3] This template includes an MUR ‘patient survey’. We will discuss this ‘patient survey’ in light of our work and existing patient satisfaction with pharmacy questionnaires, outlining a new conceptual framework as a basis for measuring patient satisfaction with the MUR. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the NHS Surrey Research Ethics Committee on 2 June 2008. References 1. Department of Health (2008). Pharmacy in England: Building on Strengths – Delivering the Future. London: HMSO. www. official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm73/7341/7341.pdf (accessed 29 September 2009). 2. Larson LN et al. Patient satisfaction with pharmaceutical care: update of a validated instrument. JAmPharmAssoc 2002; 42: 44–50. 3. Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (2009). Pharmacy Medicines Use Review – Patient Audit. London: RPSGB. http:// qi4pd.org.uk/index.php/Medicines-Use-Review-Patient-Audit. html (accessed 29 September 2009).

Norms-based simulation for personalised service provision

User interfaces have the primary role of enabling access to information meeting individual users' needs. However, the user-systems interaction is still rigid, especially in support of complex environments where various types of users are involved. Among the approaches for improving user interface agility, we present a normative approach to the design interfaces of web applications, which allow delivering users personalized services according to parameters extracted from the simulation of norms in the social context. A case study in an e-Government context is used to illustrate the implications of the approach.

Stakeholder-defined corporate responsibility for a pre-credit-crunch financial service company: lessons for how good reputations are won and lost

This paper presents a study that identifies a stakeholder-defined concept of Corporate Responsibility (CR) in the context of a UK financial service organisation in the immediate pre-credit crunch era. From qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with employees and customers, we identify, in a wide-ranging stakeholder-defined concept of CR, six themes that together imply two necessary conditions for a firm to be regarded as responsible— both corporate actions and character must be consonant with CR. This provides both empirical support for a notable, recent theoretical contribution by Godfrey (in Acad Manag Rev 30:777–798, 2005) and novel lessons for reputation management practice.

Exploring unanticipated consequences of strategy amongst stakeholder segments: the case of a European Revenue Service

This article applies FIMIX-PLS segmentation methodology to detect and explore unanticipated reactions to organisational strategy among stakeholder segments. For many large organisations today, the tendency to apply a “one-size-fits-all” strategy to members of a stakeholder population, commonly driven by a desire for simplicity, efficiency and fairness, may actually result in unanticipated consequences amongst specific subgroups within the target population. This study argues that it is critical for organisations to understand the varying and potentially harmful effects of strategic actions across differing, and previously unidentified, segments within a stakeholder population. The case of a European revenue service that currently focuses its strategic actions on building trust and compliant behaviour amongst taxpayers is used as the context for this study. FIMIX-PLS analysis is applied to a sample of 501 individual taxpayers, while a novel PLS-based approach for assessing measurement model invariance that can be applied to both reflective and formative measures is also introduced for the purpose of multi-group comparisons. The findings suggest that individual taxpayers can be split into two equal-sized segments with highly differentiated characteristics and reactions to organisational strategy and communications. Compliant behaviour in the first segment (n = 223), labelled “relationships centred on trust,” is mainly driven through positive service experiences and judgements of competence, while judgements of benevolence lead to the unanticipated reaction of increasing distrust among this group. Conversely, compliant behaviour in the second segment (n = 278), labelled “relationships centred on distrust,” is driven by the reduction of fear and scepticism towards the revenue service, which is achieved through signalling benevolence, reduced enforcement and the lower incidence of negative stories. In this segment, the use of enforcement has the unanticipated and counterproductive effect of ultimately reducing compliant behaviour.

The changing nature of UK construction professional service firms

Professional services firms (PSFs) have been the subject of much attention in the literature in recent years, ranging across a number of distinct but related disciplines including economics, sociology, organization and management studies. Analysis has tended to concentrate on law and accounting firms in particular, and although there is a growing academic interest in construction/built environment professional services firms (CPSFs), these have received much less scrutiny. However, many of the changes taking place among PSFs – in particular, growth in firm size, moves towards external ownership and greater service/geographical diversification – are also taking place among the larger CPSFs. The CPSF sector is not especially well documented and there is little understanding of the motives for, and implications of, these changes in the firms, their clients and wider society. CPSFs are reviewed in the context of the more general PSF literature and a set of questions is posed for future research on CPSFs. These questions include the need to understand the implications of firm type on performance, the form of ownership that might confer the greatest financial benefits for different stakeholder groups, and the wider societal consequences of continuing growth in size and diversification of CPSFs.

Service oriented approach to facility management using extended building information modelling

Facility management (FM), from a service oriented approach, addresses the functions and requirements of different services such as energy management, space planning and security service. Different service requires different information to meet the needs arising from the service. Object-based Building Information Modelling (BIM) is limited to support FM services; though this technology is able to generate 3D models that semantically represent facility’s information dynamically over the lifecycle of a building. This paper presents a semiotics-inspired framework to extend BIM from a service-oriented perspective. The extended BIM, which specifies FM services and required information, will be able to express building service information in the right format for the right purposes. The service oriented approach concerns pragmatic aspect of building’s information beyond semantic level. The pragmatics defines and provides context for utilisation of building’s information. Semiotics theory adopted in this paper is to address pragmatic issues of utilisation of BIM for FM services.

A conceptual framework for service system interaction

There is a growing research concern on how service ecosystems form and interact. This research thus aims to explore the service ecosystem formation and interaction as well as its underlying nature of value co-creation. This work develops an initial conceptual framework for assessing service system interactions that includes the various stages of value co-creation within ecosystem context. How the conceptual framework will further be developed and future plan are also presented.