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AbstractThis article argues that psychosocial theory can enhance understanding of intersubjective dynamics between workers and young people involved in crime and violence. After introducing some conceptual tools from psychoanalysis and post‐structural theory, a case study follows a worker's efforts to bring about a young man's desistance (including the worker's use of self‐disclosure) and how this is stymied by systemic failings in a homeless hostel in the UK. The article concludes that professional work in services targeted at young people with multiple support needs requires a deep sensibility to intersubjective and unconscious dynamics within professional relationships and organisations.

This article explores trust in children&rsquo ; s relationships with professionals in the context of safeguarding concerns. With exception, existing research with children about trust in professionals often fails to unpick trust. Using sociological conceptualisations of trust, most often considered in relation to adults, this article unravels this complex concept. It arrives at a conception of trust as socially situated, an attribute of relationships, and a combination of interpretation (knowledge and experience) and faith. This conceptualization of trust is examined in the context of interview accounts from children that were aged 8&ndash ; 10 in an English primary school. Interviews invited their perspectives on three fictional vignettes about peer conflict, domestic abuse, and child sexual abuse. My analysis, although small-scale, argues that focusing on the process of trust in children&rsquo ; s professional relationships and the social, cultural, political, and relational contexts that shape this process, is a lucrative way to gain enhanced understandings of how trust is generated and what facilitates and undermines trust. It sheds light on children&rsquo ; s interpretations of existing relationships and imagined interactions with professionals, revealing the knowledge that they hold and what they do not yet, or cannot know, and how this knowledge (or lack of) influences their trust. This analysis is socially situated attending to children&rsquo ; s biographies, which offers insights that provide good grounds for improving children&rsquo ; s relationships with professionals.

Abstract
This qualitative study explored how professionals and parents with mental illness experience their relationships with each other, what aspects of interaction promote a constructive relationship and the role of wider organisational and systemic factors. A purposive sample of 30 adult mental health and children's services professionals, and 21 parents completed semi-structured interviews. Professionals' transparent, non-judgemental, empathetic and positive approach and ability to form partnerships and to share power with parents were keys in building trusting relationships with them. Professionals' capacity to use limited self-disclosure of their own personal experiences (i.e. parenting) enabled them to develop constructive relationships with parents. Equally, important was parents' willingness to form partnerships with professionals and to accept a whole family approach to service delivery. Professionals' limited understanding of mental illness and focus on administration hindered their relationships with parents. An understanding of what constitutes a constructive relationship between professionals and parents and how it develops may help professionals to reflect upon how they engage parents and to do it well. It may also assist organisations to develop the necessary structures and resources to create the conditions for promoting constructive engagement between professionals and parents.

Als Entgegnung auf die ethischen und professionellen Überlegungen im Zusammenhang mit der Durchführung einer großen qualitativen Studie (BLODGETT, BOYER & TURK, 2005) weise ich hin auf die Wichtigkeit von Authentizität im Forschungskontext, auf die für die Forschung wertvollen Interaktionen und auf die ethischen Charakteristika der Studie. Ich schlage einige alternative Standpunkte vor, was spezifische Aspekte der Untersuchung angeht, wie etwa die Konstruktion von Wissen durch Forschung, das "in den Schuhen anderer gehen", den Umgang mit vulnerablen Bevölkerungsgruppen und mit Insider-Outsider-Interaktionen.

"In diesem Beitrag werden Erkenntnisse aus Gruppendiskussionen zu den ausgewählten Aspekten Körperkontakt und Macht in professionellen Beziehungen dargestellt, die in dem Forschungsprojekt "'Ich bin sicher!' - Schutzkonzepte aus der Sicht von Jugendlichen und Betreuungspersonen" erhoben wurden. In dem aus Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung finanzierten Projekt wurde danach gefragt, was Kinder und Jugendliche, die in stationären Settings betreut werden, unter Schutz verstehen, ob und wo sie sich (un-)geschützt erleben und auf welche konkreten Maßnahmen Professionelle zurückgreifen, um nachhaltigen Schutz herzustellen. In den Gruppendiskussionen, die in Heimen, Internaten und (Kur-)Kliniken mit Kindern bzw. Jugendlichen und Betreuungspersonen geführt wurden, kam der Aspekt des Körperkontakts zwischen Betreuungspersonen und Kindern und Jugendlichen vielfach ins Gespräch. Angesprochen wurden Berührungen zwischen Kindern bzw. Jugendlichen und ihren Betreuungspersonen. Dies wirft die Frage auf, wie Körperkontakt zwischen diesen Parteien zu gestalten und/oder zu regulieren ist, sodass ein grenzwahrender und Macht reflektierender Umgang in Beziehungen gewährleistet ist. Dieser Beitrag rahmt zunächst das Thema Körperkontakt in professionellen Beziehungen theoretisch, es werden dann Themen aus den Gruppendiskussionen gebündelt, um daraus Herausforderungen für die Praxis herzuleiten." (Autorenreferat)

Purpose
– Business to business (B2B) professional services depend on inter-firm cooperation for the co-creation of value. Such cooperation rarely happens overnight; it requires time for the relationship to develop. The purpose of this research is to investigate how different performance attributes of a professional service differ with the tenure of the relationship.


Design/methodology/approach
– This exploratory study utilizes seven years of longitudinal customer data provided by a B2B professional service firm. The firm's customers assess satisfaction, value, loyalty, performance quality and their image of the firm after each project.


Findings
– Data were classified into three tenure related groups – i.e. transactional, emergent and mature relationships. MANOVA and post hoc contrasts of the average attribute scores of the three groups were conducted. The data support the conclusion that high performance in professional services is evident in mature relationships.


Research limitations/implications
– Data come from company archives and reflect the firm's efforts for tactical management of client relationships, not independent informant reports from randomly selected accounts.


Practical implications
– Satisfaction surveys can be employed tactically by professional service providers to develop stronger relationships with their clients en route to co-creating extraordinary value from high levels of service quality and the client's high regard for the provider's professional qualities, such as expertise, customer focus and initiative.


Originality/value
– To the authors' knowledge, no one has shown empirically the dramatic performance advantage stemming from relationships. This is important because theory suggests that customer relationships hold strategic value. Because they are immobile and inimitable, they represent a potential sustainable competitive advantage. However, relationships take time to develop. This begs the question of whether they are worth the time and effort to develop. In the professional service context, where buyer and seller seemingly must collaborate to co-create value, mature relationships indeed yield higher performance, compared to transactional and emerging relationships.

AbstractThe study aims to create an understanding of the embeddedness of individual expertise in the customer relationships of professional business service firms. A theoretical pre‐understanding based on discussions of professional service business relationships in general and the role of individual experts in customer relationships, in particular, is assessed through a case study of a professional business services provider and four customer organizations. The study suggests that the embeddedness of individual expertise within professional services in business relationships manifest itself in four ways: (1) expertise embedded in knowledge of the service context, (2) expertise that can be transferred between organizational contexts, (3) expertise embedded in personal relationships, and (4) expertise embedded in the personal interactions that enable knowledge‐sharing. Each has implications for various activities performed by the parties and relationship management practices, which are also scrutinized in the present study. Also, the adoption of a new concept of personified service in business relationships is put forward. The study highlights that the reliance on personal expertise is not only a challenge for relationship management, as often suggested, but can also generate effectiveness in both customer and supplier relationship management.