The 1990s have seen the emergence and development of professional doctorates in the UK and, in particular, the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). This article identifies the rationales offered for DBA programmes and their intended learning outcomes. Research findings are based on programme documentation produced by the 16 universities offering the DBAs in 1999. Analysis of these documents shows that these programmes have been designed to provide research‐based career development for experienced and senior professionals in management positions. Whereas the PhD is aimed at developing professional researchers, the DBA aims to develop researching professionals. Rather than viewing research as an end itself, the new DBAs have placed research at the service of the development of professional practice and the development of professional practitioners. The learning outcomes of the DBA programmes identified in this paper are appreciably broader than the intended learning outcomes of the traditional PhD in business/management.

A huge upsurge in the growth of e‐mail is expected but there has been relatively little published advice on how to take a corporate view of electronic mail, despite demonstration of its operational benefits and of the consequences of its misuse in economic, human and lately in legal terms. This article contributes to formation of such advice. Employing a mix of questionnaire and interview methods, a set of disparate organisations was studied – a global financial services company, an upmarket hotel group, a well‐established mobile‐telecommunications company, and three universities. The results were used to devise a multi‐dimensional “positioning” model, for practical use by managers to understand their organisations’ present use of e‐mail on four dimensions: information management, people influences, corporate culture, and knowledge management. Shows how an organisation can find/change its present position on the model.

This paper presents Val’s idiographic account of her life as a service-worker. Val’s oral history is important as it reminds service business academics not to dehumanise service-workers as part of their reified interpretations of human activities. Rarely is a service-worker’s personal interpretation of their world heard directly within management academia. Val’s personal account goes someway towards addressing this issue. She juggles the competing pressures of multiple life-worlds and demonstrates how their nature, boundary and importance are fluid depending upon her current construction of the situation. Her story as a service-worker provides insight into the complexity and sophistication of her interpretations and reminds us of the risks of reification and simplification

PurposeThe investigation reported here aims to: adapt existing recruitment theory to add to tools available to small business recruiters for job matching; provide job‐specific scoring methods to help employers in recruitment processes; and enhance the consideration of reasonable adjustment issues in the possible employment of disabled individuals.Design/methodology/approachA total of 32 interviews were conducted on‐site with managers to devise and test templates combining person specifications with job characteristics, based on managers' judgements of what is important. The methods devised and used are an original adaptation of repertory grid principles. Where there were disabled employees, indications of the employees' success and difficulty were elicited.FindingsA simplified derivative of repertory grid method to give a combined abilities/tasks matrix was found usable and clarifying by respondents.Research limitations/implicationsThe investigation was confined to hotel and leisure small to medium‐sized enterprises in Sussex, UK. As they stand, the methods could be used in business sectors beyond the sector to which the research reported in this paper has been confined, but further work is needed on resource consequences, and on the implications for state benefits and related support in the case of disabled applicants.Originality/valueResults of the analysis could be used almost immediately by a company: for future applicants, the company could make direct use of the completed matrix by scoring the applicant on the matrix variables, superimposing the applicant matrix on the requirements matrix, and calculating the percentage of desirable scores met.