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Pursues the concept of fit, defined as congruence between the capabilities of an operation and the characteristics sought by the market it was set up to serve. Traces the design, development and testing of the Service Template for illustrating fit in service organizations. The technique compares the actual service experienced by a customer with his/her expectations of that service and it is able to incorporate both soft and hard aspects of a service package. Reviews literature on visual representation of fit in manufacturing and service operations and examines the suitability of existing devices. Uses a case example to illustrate the mechanics of the technique which was tested in 33 situations and is now offered as generically applicable. Identifies areas for future research.

Much has been written about information gatekeepers, mostly describing how gatekeepers function within organizations. There has been less consideration of the gatekeeper's activities beyond the organization's boundary, though the gathering of external information is fundamental to gatekeeping. Stuart Macdonald and Christine Williams examine gatekeeping from an information perspective, starting with external information and following it into the organization. With only primitive networking and a range of occasional contacts in the outside world, the gatekeeper is something of a scavenger of external information. The gatekeeper certainly transfers information from the external environment to colleagues within the organization, but primary interest is in personal use of the information gathered. Seniority within the organization may allow the gatekeeper the latitude to function in ways that would not be tolerated in more junior employees. The article is wholly concerned with informal gatekeeping and concludes that organizations may condone or even inhibit such activity, but are constrained by the nature of information, and of organization itself, from encouraging it.

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to discuss approaches to decision making used in the emergency services and to relate these to decision making in service encounters in the tourism and leisure sector.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a conceptual discussion paper that canvasses a range of issues in service encounters, especially the problems of empowerment and service recovery. Although a structured approach to service recovery (often involving 100 per cent guarantees) is popular in the tourism and leisure industry, this precludes spontaneity in solving customers' problems and returning them to a satisfied state. The paper notes that managers have little guidance on how such spontaneity can be effectively accomplished.FindingsThe paper argues that much can be learned from the “naturalistic decision making” (NDM) of emergency decision‐makers. The paper therefore provides an assessment of how NDM could be utilised in the services sector.Practical implicationsTraining frontline staff in NDM is a means of improving service recovery, and this has implications for recruitment, retention, and staff training. It also provides a justification for trusting experienced frontline staff members.Originality/valueThe study offers a different perspective on decision making in service situations.

Casual employment is steadily increasing its share of total employment in Australia. This paper analyses some of the factors that have led to this situation by extending the work of Simpson, Dawkins and Madden (1997). The results, while con®rming some of their research and clarifying the role of union membership in limiting the spread of casual employment, also show that the determinants of casual employment in Australia are sensitive to the period of estimation and the form of model used. I. I n t ro d u c t i o nThe past 30 years have seen major changes in working arrangements away from the former dominant model of permanent full-time employment to non-standard forms of employment such as part-time, casual, home-working and contract-based employment. These forms of employment have increased so rapidly in importance that, for some groups such as females, they are as common as full-time work.Australia, with its tradition of strong labour unions and the presence of a union-supported Labor government for the period 1983±1996, seems an unlikely setting for such large scale changes to employment patterns. However, along with New Zealand, Australia has been affected over the last two decades by government policies designed to improve international competitiveness, including the dismantling of tariffs, the¯oating of the exchange rate and the deregulation of the ®nancial sector. It is thought that these changes, by inducing employers to seek greater labour market¯exibility, have promoted the spread of nonstandard employment from the demand side. On the supply side, there are groups of workers in the economy particularly responsive to non-standard forms of employment. Irrespective of their determinants, the changes in employment patterns have implications for labour market legislation concerning workplace health and safety, industrial relations and training, as well as for social and family life.This paper concentrates upon casual employment because this has been identi®ed as the most unstable and precarious form of non-standard employment (Mishel and Bernstein, 1995). To this end, the paper takes as its starting point the work of Simpson et al. (1997) into the determinants of casual employment and extends their model both temporally and spatially by examining the different experiences of the Australian states. In addition, the paper tests for endogeneity between casual employment and previously identi®ed key