Academic literature on the topic 'The Inimitable Jeeves'

Purpose This study aims to assess how innovative organizational culture and innovative leadership generate market flexibility for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the service sector to enhance their competitiveness. Both organizational culture and leadership are seen as firm-level resources capable of influencing the flexibility of the firm in periods of market turbulence. The study argues that SME service firms must use their internal resources to develop their flexibility capability which is more valuable, rare, inimitable and not substitutable. Design/methodology/approach SME service firms from Ghana are used to test the study’s hypotheses through robust standard regression analysis. A sampling frame was developed from an online database of small and medium enterprises operating in the service sector. Findings The findings suggest that although organizational culture and leadership may influence a service firm’s competitiveness, it is more viable to use these firm-level resources to create market flexibility capability to amplify the effect. This means, when culture and leadership propel the flexibility drive, the service firm is able to connect, coordinate and synchronize functional units to take advantage of new product and market opportunities. Additionally, market flexibility emanating from organizational culture and leadership wields enough power and resource support to tackle the turbulent market conditions better than firms with less support. Practical implications The managerial implication from this study is that firms should use their organizational culture and leadership to create flexible organizations that afford them the opportunity to adapt to the environmental dynamics. If both leadership and culture work together, they are able to create strong market capabilities such as flexibility which determines how well the firm will respond to the competition, customer demand and all other external pressures. It is, therefore, the view of this paper that SMEs should use their organizational culture and leadership to build a market-flexible organization to create a competitive advantage. Originality/value This paper shows how internal resources/assets such as culture and leadership generate the needed flexibility to create a competitive advantage for SMEs. This paper explains the two dimensions of Volberda’s flexibility from a firm-level resource perspective and highlights flexibility as a second-order capability whose cultivation and effectiveness are dependent on a firm’s culture and leadership. Evidence of how a firm’s market flexibility is fuelled by organizational leadership and culture is demonstrated. Finally, this paper shows how resource-poor SMEs in emerging African economies can enhance their market competitiveness through internal systems and processes.

Abstract My aim for this paper is to analyse the character Jeeves' obsession with perfect clothing in     P. G. Wodehouse's The Inimitable Jeeves (1923). My method has been to study the historical context of the British aristocracy at the time of the first publication of the book in 1923, as well as the previous four decades during which the author grew up and decisive changes in the British class society took place. This paper studies sources on the significance of clothing in general, and examines its importance at the time in particular. For my analysis I have borrowed elements from new historicism. The norms, traditions and values of the aristocracy lost in importance during this time, and the aristocracy was divided into individuals who were willing to adopt to these changes and others who fought to defy them. My conclusion is that Jeeves considers the strict dress codes to be an important symbol of the old aristocratic values that he has to defend, in order to legitimize his own position, as he is profoundly devoted to his calling of being a first class valet faithful to the old traditions. Wooster, then, acts as Jeeves' opponent on the matter as he embodies the part of the aristocracy willing to embrace the changes instead.