Management innovations (MIs) are widely adopted, but their influences on organizational performance are little researched in public settings. Positing that the MI-performance relationship is complex and is conditional over other characteristics of the organization, we examine the influence of MI on organizational performance both directly and indirectly through performance management (PM). PM is an important organizational process characteristic arising from public management reform and in itself influences performance. We test our hypotheses using structural equation models with data from three sources in English local governments. The findings indicate that the impact of MI on performance is not direct; it is mediated by PM. We also find that PM positively affects organizational performance. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.

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Many planning domains have to deal with temporal features that can be expressed using durations that are associated to actions. Unfortunately, the conservative model of actions used in many existing temporal planners is not adequate for domains which require more expressive models. This paper presents a temporal planning approach that combines the principles of Graphplan and TGP and uses the information calculated in the planning graph to deal with a non-conservative model of actions that include local conditions and effects. In this approach, we propose two strategies for search. The first one is based on the Graphplan backward search. The second one is based on a least-commitment and heuristic search, and it attempts to overcome the main limitations of a chronological backtracking search when dealing with large temporal problems. This search has proved to be beneficial in the scalability of the planner and the experiments show that a planner using this new search is competitive with other state-of-the-art planners w.r.t. the plan quality 1 .

Browning reactions in fruits and vegetables are a serious problem for the food industry. In mushrooms, the principal enzyme responsible for the browning reaction is polyphenoloxidase (PPO). Microwaves have recently been introduced as an alternative for the industrial blanching of mushrooms. However, the direct application of microwave energy to entire mushrooms is limited by the important temperature gradients generated within the samples during heating, which can produce internal water vaporization and associated damage to the mushrooms texture. A microwave applicator has been developed, whereby irradiation conditions can be regulated and the heating process monitored. Whole edible mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) were blanched by conventional, microwave, and combined heating methods to optimize the rate of PPO inactivation. A combined microwave and hot-water bath treatment has achieved complete PPO inactivation in a short time. Both the loss of antioxidant content and the increase of browning were minor in the samples treated with this combined method when compared to the control. This reduction in processing time also decreased mushroom weight loss and shrinkage.