Bookmakers and a Duty of Care: Customers' Views in England.

This paper focuses on customers' views on the extent that bookmakers and individuals are responsible for a duty of care. 72 participants from seven bookmakers in one city in England were interviewed that illustrates customers expect bookmakers to take 'reasonable steps' to avoid exploiting all customers. However, the customers' views recorded in this paper illustrate a range of views on what a duty of care should actually comprise with differences of opinion on the level of bookmakers and individuals level of responsibility, dealing with intoxicated customers, illegal gambling, prevention of excessive and problem gambling and self-exclusion.

Recalling the past: probation officers work with drug misusers during the 1960s.

AIMS: Britain's first wave of non-therapeutic drug users during the 1960s were more likely to come into contact with the criminal courts than previous, therapeutic, drug users. This paper recounts the untold history of probation officers' work with drug misusing offenders in the United Kingdom during the 1960s. METHODS: Using 'snowballing' to source participants (in which study subjects recruit future subjects from among their acquaintances) and in-depth interviews as a means of eliciting information, probation officers who had supervised drug users during this time were interviewed about their experiences. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and a thematic data set produced. RESULTS: Front-line probation officers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s had considerable contact with drug-misusing offenders. In explaining drug addiction, officers tended to draw upon a psychotherapeutic interpretation, and in terms of intervention they relied heavily upon the psychiatric services to deliver treatment. Probation officers did not always make the connection between addiction and an increase in criminality. CONCLUSION: In Britain's first wave of non-therapeutic drug users in the 1960s, probation officers appear not to have made a connection with criminality, which may have limited how far they developed a formalized approach to applying the expertise of the Probation Service.

High performance HRM: NHS employee perspectives.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to examine National Health Service (NHS) employee perspectives of how high performance human resource (HR) practices contribute to their performance. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The paper draws on an extensive qualitative study of the NHS. A novel two-part method was used; the first part used focus group data from managers to identify high-performance HR practices specific to the NHS. Employees then conducted a card-sort exercise where they were asked how or whether the practices related to each other and how each practice affected their work. FINDINGS: In total, 11 high performance HR practices relevant to the NHS were identified. Also identified were four reactions to a range of HR practices, which the authors developed into a typology according to anticipated beneficiaries (personal gain, organisation gain, both gain and no-one gains). Employees were able to form their own patterns (mental models) of performance contribution for a range of HR practices (60 interviewees produced 91 groupings). These groupings indicated three bundles particular to the NHS (professional development, employee contribution and NHS deal). PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: These mental models indicate employee perceptions about how health services are organised and delivered in the NHS and illustrate the extant mental models of health care workers. As health services are rearranged and financial pressures begin to bite, these mental models will affect employee reactions to changes both positively and negatively. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The novel method allows for identification of mental models that explain how NHS workers understand service delivery. It also delineates the complex and varied relationships between HR practices and individual performance.