The nature of consumer ethnocentrism in Australia is examined through the application of the CETSCALE to a total of 377 respondents from Victoria. Two groups of respondents — members of the Australian Owned Companies Association (AOCA) and a comparable sample from the general population were used to assess ‘known group validity’ of the scale. The results suggest that the CETSCALE is a reliable measure of consumer ethnocentrism in Australia and offers evidence of ‘known group validity.’ Two underlying dimensions of ethnocentrism, termed emotional and reasoned ethnocentrism, were detected and found to be invariant across the two groups. Awareness and knowledge of three Australian made logos was found to be lower than expected for both groups.

Organisation theory makes extensive use of analogies to encourage diversity in thought and explanation of complex phenomena. Analogies are able to provide insights about the internal and external behaviour of organisations of organisations. This is readily observed in the use of the systems concept in the description of organisations.

Systems thinking is often seen as unifying; spanning the physical, biological, and social sciences. The term systems theory is perhaps a misnomer in that in its general form it is neither testable, falsifiable nor predictive. However, most of the theories or laws describing the physical universe use the concept of a system. It can be argued that it fits Kuhn's concept of a paradigm.

People are routinely described as the most important asset of an organisation. There is, however, considerable evidence that people are managed poorly in many workplaces. This paper explores the importance of the fair and effective management of people at work and suggests some benchmarks to assist in the assessment of HRM in organisations. It surveys workplace experience and indicates some common barriers to good HRM, concluding with some suggestions for strategy to embed high quality people management in our workplaces.

The growing trend towards IT outsourcing within the United Kingdom (UK) public sector is analysed. Factors influencing the degree of success experienced in a range of IT outsourcing deals are detailed, and then used as a framework for analysing and discussing two case histories — of selective and large-scale IT outsourcing — drawn from different parts of the public sector. Both examples demonstrate how distinctive public sector contexts influence the direction and degree of outsourcing. At the same time, they highlight a range of managerial and organisational issues raised by moves towards contractual, core competence forms of organising. Selective outsourcing is revealed as effective provided key decisions and actions are taken. The large-scale outsourcing case raises a number of critical issues not just for how it can be conducted in public sector contexts, but also about the efficacy of such arrangements in terms of cost savings, possible over-dependence on a few suppliers, and ability to respond flexibly to changing political requirements and legislation.