Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that too often decisions concerning change are made on the basis of partial understanding, limited data and unreflective assumptions about people and organizations. In the discussion of the Socratic dialogue the aim is to uncover a useful method...

New empirical research is presented on the human resource management implications of introducing a service excellence programme into an Australian optometry company. The case study is used to demonstrate the difficulties of changing employee behaviour and illustrates how the rhetorical hype...