The emergence of a South Asian business elite in the United Kingdom

This article explores the emergence of a South Asian business elite in Britain based on primary research. It suggests that today's South Asian business elites possess the initial socioeconomic resources that are advantageous for business expansion. In addition, they have broken out of the confines of their local ethnic community to expand their business operations. They no longer rely heavily on co-ethnic labour or exclusively serve their own community's needs. Even those who started out in small-scale retailing have now diversified into more profitable businesses. These findings suggest that British Asian business elites lose some of their “ethnic” features when they own big businesses. Many strive to be regarded as British rather than Asian or ethnic entrepreneurs because they believe that integration is necessary for business success in Britain. Nevertheless, they have forged international business links and use their knowledge of different countries and cultures as leverage.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Crisis resolution and home treatment teams (CRHT) are integral to acute psychiatric services. This survey quantifies staff burnout using the MBI-HSS (Maslach Burnout Inventory) and notes sources of stress and satisfaction before (2012) and after (2013) service transformation of a CRHT in Leeds into a single point of access, with home treatment devolved to community teams. Moderate to high Burnout scores were observed over the study period, with a rise in the mean depersonalisation score from 5.8 to 7.2 over the study period. Contact with colleagues; work with patients and variety of work emerged as rewarding while themes of suicide and violence were most linked with stress, with clinicians reporting self-doubt in the face of difficult clinical decisions. Clinicians positively rated a weekly psychoanalytic reflective practice group. A pictorial representation of qualitative results uses psychoanalytic theory inconceptualising ‘skins’ around various aspects of the clinical setting, which then become semipermeable in response to a patient in crisis when clinicians feel poorly supported by the changing organisation.     

Manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and service climate: test of a model

This article conceptually and empirically explores the relationships among manager personality, manager service quality orientation, and climate for customer service. Data were collected from 1,486 employees and 145 managers in grocery store departments (N = 145) to test the authors' theoretical model. Largely consistent with hypotheses, results revealed that core self-evaluations were positively related to managers' service quality orientation, even after dimensions of the Big Five model of personality were controlled, and that service quality orientation fully mediated the relationship between personality and global service climate. Implications for personality and organizational climate research are discussed.