Ethical Issues in Contemporary Human Resource Management (Management, Work and Organisations) [Paperback]

I eventually got the book from another source. SBD sent me the wrong book and endeavouring to have my original order fulfilled has revealed an interesting problem of systemic service-blindness. Amazon is not interested; Professor Jean Woodall (the only surviving editor of the book) is not interested; SBD is not interested and Palgrave doesn't appear to be interested either. Read on ...

The book I received from SBD in satisfaction of my order is 'Education in Britain 1750 - 1914' by WB Stephens. I contacted SBD by email but only received a no reply email from them in response, inviting me to log on to another of their websites to advise them of my problem. I tried unsuccessfully to do this. My attempt was unsuccessful because I could not supply a ZIP code in the login screen. Whilst we have adopted many of the nuttier excesses of American life here in New Zealand, I doubt we will ever adopt American ZIP codes for New Zealand postal zones.

I phoned SBD and made an interesting discovery in my conversation with the operator I spoke with. In a conversation worthy of an exasperated Victor Meldrew, the operator and I discovered that Palgrave, the publisher of both Ethical Issues in Contemporary HRM and WB Stephens' worthy history had, in fact, allocated the same ISBN to both books.

I found this a bit difficult to believe so checked the documentation available for Ethical Issues in Contemporary HRM on the Amazon site. Sure enough, when I went to the entry for this book and clicked on the 'Look Inside' button, there it was on the inside page. The ISBN is given as 0-333-73966-3 in the publication details for Ethical Issues in Contemporary HRM. The ISBN printed on the WB Stephens digital reprint sitting unwanted on my desk as I write this is 0-333-73966-3. If you check the information available online at Amazon, you will be able to confirm my discovery. I offerred to scan the back of the Stephens book and send it to everyone I have written to about my problem, in order to verify my claim, but after a month nobody has taken me up.

It seems that Palgrave is responsible for my problem, but they are uncontactable, being insulated from the consequences of the mayhem they have created by the same service blind technology I complained of above. I feel constrained not to threaten their local representative to rescind my orders for all Palgrave titles I have prescribed for next semester over what is essentially a personal inconvenience, but I am tempted.

SBD will refund the purchase price if they receive it back within one month of the despatch date. As the book was despatched on 2 June 2011, and took the better part of 3 weeks to reach me in New Zealand, I was not optimistic about getting it back to them by 2 July. Furthermore, I feel I should not be bound to a returns policy when the item I would be returning had never been the object of my order. Sadly, it seems unlikely that I will ever have the opportunity to share this elegant argument with SBD as their front line personnel do not seem to be empowered to optimise what Americans refer to as 'the customer experience' and contacting a decision-maker by telephone is beyond my financial resources; the rates for phone calls between NZ and the USA being only slightly lower than I imagine calls between this life and the hereafter will be when technology finally cracks that one. I did not order the WB Stephens book and, other than starting another career as an education academic, I fear I will never have any use for WB Stephens' work. Whilst I must agree that SDB's blame is slight compared with Palgrave's, they should have processes to ensure that the right book has been sent as the title and author are far more visible than the ISBN and I am sure a darn site more reliable than the ISBN which is much easier to misread or record incorrectly than the title and author. But the fundamental problem is Palgrave's error in recycling an ISBN.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review  5.0 out of 5 stars