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The European Commission′s Executive Training Programme in Japan is introduced, explaining its contents and objectives, including the 12‐month language module and six‐month “total immersion” language and Japanese business culture exposure as a trainee working in a number of prominent Japanese companies. Describing the importance of human relationships, motivation and work ethic; not in an attempt to explain “Japanese uniqueness”, but to illustrate the challenges that face a manager taking up a senior position in Japan. A successful manager in Japan must dismiss or re‐evaluate the management techniques experienced in the West.

This chapter addresses current trends regarding how the meta-theory of critical realism (CR) frames comparative and international education research and practice. It introduces the key tenets of CR and explores how these ideas have been and can be applied in educational research. It demonstrates how CR provides a valuable alternative to the positivist, interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, and leverages elements of all three to provide new approaches to develop knowledge that is free from the dualisms embedded in their ontological assumptions. I argue that by offering a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, as well as the material and ideational dimension of social reality, CR provides an ontological framework that does not do conceptual violence to the reality we seek to research. This ontological basis is particularly valuable to the social justice agenda of educational research in general because it allows researchers to work beneath the surface of empirical research to disclose the field of possibilities for social action.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

As the construction industry strives for closer integration of the participants, more responsibility for the management of the detailed design process is being directed to main contractors and combined with their existing duties of managing the construction and pre‐construction processes. Crucially, this necessitates successful management of the interface between these processes, and this paper seeks to investigate a conceptual view of that interface to provide a foundation for improving understanding of it.

Recent and current literature is examined, and various theoretical backgrounds for the design and the construction processes are reviewed. The consequences for the understanding of the interface are discussed. The significance of conceptual frameworks is also reviewed.

A significant difference is identified in the published work between the theoretical understandings of the construction and design processes. From this a conceptual framework for the interface between these processes is developed.

The difference identified may have significant implications for further research, and for the development of management techniques applicable to the interface. Furthermore, the lack of access to specialist knowledge at the optimum time during the design process is identified as having a potentially significant impact on that process.

These findings could provide an understanding and basis for further research into the interface between the processes, and for the development of an enhanced model that would facilitate improved management of the interface and the optimisation of the process of the selection, appointment and input of specialist subcontractors.

THE PROPHETESSES of Ancient Greece, who were said to provide the Delphic oracles, claimed to have gained their inspiration by breathing a mysterious vapour that rose from a cleft in the floor. This then gave them convulsions and put them in a fit state for Apollo to make use of them to deliver his messages to mankind. The whole operation was highly suspect, since the output was in the form of mutterings, and a sort of ancient information officer in the guise of a priest was needed to interpret them to the enquirer. The end product was often sound advice, although the answer to an awkward question was given in such a way that whatever happened it could be claimed to have come true.

Farmers' markets have provided new alternatives for small producers to obtain direct distribution to consumers over the past few years. The growth has been spectacular in several countries and this paper aims to understand this growth and how value might be created by looking at participation and cooperation amongst the traders at these markets.

A survey of farmers' market members was undertaken and findings are reported with descriptive statistics and exploratory analysis to profile aspects of cooperation amongst stallholders.

Over 80 per cent of the traders at the markets were involved in some form of cooperative activity, reinforcing the idea of markets as community‐based activities with high levels of interdependence amongst participants. Cooperation could be identified in different categories and increased over the length of time trading at the market but could not be directly related to performance or the reasons traders offered for doing business at the market.

The research was designed as an exploratory study and provides potential issues for further research as opposed to testing particular hypotheses.

The categorisation of cooperation methods offers traders ways in which they might seek to more formally organise joint efforts. Monitoring the degree of cooperation between traders and linking to performance would also provide the organisers of markets with a potential way of managing aspects of competitive advantage against competing food retailers.

This is the first paper to examine value creation and cooperation in this context and it provides a potential base for working towards sustainable competitive advantage for farmers' markets.

This paper seeks to explore the rationale for, and development of, farmers' markets in New Zealand. The paper is based on and extends previous industry reports.

The research in this paper is viewed in the context of the dominance of globalised business in the food production and retailing process. Semi‐structured interviews and case studies were used to elicit the opinions, perceptions and attitudes of market managers, producers/growers, and customers.

It was found in the paper that farmers' markets provide additional outlets for entrepreneurial small‐scale farmers and producers, alternatives for consumers, and opportunities for communities, while their rapid growth is presenting challenges for some large competitors.

The paper finds that farmers' markets may be an important harbinger of the second industrial revolution where there is renewed respect for those small‐scale producers who meet the needs of discerning consumers.

ANY TIME YOU can buy a hardback Walden in good condition for sixty‐five cents, you should grab it. And so I did. Thoreau would have approved, for I contemplated just what sixty‐five cents was and whether I was likely to find another Walden for less. I set it to one side for further consideration while I browsed through other volumes in the little bookshop on 40th Street in Philadelphia. Here was a Proust for ninety cents, here was Billy Budd, here was an old edition of Hawthorne. The Proust, however, staggered under the weight of heavy inky under‐scorings; I already had a copy of Billy Budd; and the Hawthorne, I knew, existed in much better editions. Later there was a tempting French dictionary and an interesting cache of history books, but one by one Walden vanquished all comers. By the end of the afternoon it was the only possible purchase.