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The purpose of this paper is to understand if accounting is an un‐Australian activity, contrasting the notion of the bush and bushman present in popular Australian poetry and cultural myth with the notion expressed by Maltby of the link between the soul of the middle class and the practice of bookkeeping. The paper aims to explore the notion of a tension between what might be seen as indigenous values and the values of Western capitalism.

The paper presents an analysis of Australian poetry to identify in this culturally significant media how the city and the technologies of accounting are negatively contrasted with the bush and the bushman. Since many Australians migrated from European countries, we might expect bookkeeping to claim a foundational place in the Australian soul.

This literature shows bush dwellers as being exploited by those from the city, and city professionals such as the accountant and the lawyer as having lost their sense of self and soul. The sense of “other” reflected by the concept of the bush in Australian literature represents a tension between a structured and ordered European sense of self expressed by Maltby and an archetypical sense of self implied by the character of the bushman and connected to the Australian landscape, with its inherent but little acknowledged debt to the Aboriginal. In this landscape the absence of both accounting and the associated rhetoric of economic rationality allow other forms of rationality to emerge.

This is the first time that poetry has been examined in relation to accounting. It shows a deep insight into the place of archetype of the accountant in Australian cultural identity. In addition it argues that responses to accounting can reflect underlying rhetorics of rationality.

Utilising qualitative research methodology, this pilot study of telecottages/business resource centres in South‐east England interviewed 13 centre managers to identify problems, needs, models and ideas that could be related to enterprise televillage development. The research also aimed to improve the quality of management guidance and the long‐term future for these centres. Questions were posed to identify the extent to which centre managers perceived their business strategies to be entrepreneurial and innovative, as they attempted to decrease dependence on public funding by generating additional business income. Emergent strategies, networking, telecommunications and building partnerships with both private and public organisations allowed some centres to expand and to move from total reliance on public funding to a mix of private and public sources of income. Although initial public funding is seen as an important factor in reducing the early vulnerability of business resource centres, the ability of opportunity‐seeking managers to develop an innovative range of services, including a mix of those offered free and those that required fees, was an important factor in survival. Two detailed case studies (private and mixed) are presented as generic prototypes.

This paper aims to advance the view that, as organizations realize the limitations of working in isolation and accept the need to develop partnerships and coalitions, they seek a new type of leadership model in which the charismatic individual who, by sheer force of personality, drives through changes and makes thing happen – the hero – is replaced by a type of leadership in which all managers are leaders.

Provides a case example of how Lancashire County Council's Directorate of Community Services introduced this new leadership through management development.

Describes the origins and implementation of the directorate's executive‐coaching initiative, and how this was rolled out to the next tier of management through learning sets or management‐development groups facilitated by management consultants. Following this, the program focused on the 300‐plus first‐line managers, by using the management‐development groups facilitated by volunteers from the top 30 managers working in pairs.

Reveals how management development in the Directorate of Community Services is being used to equip managers for the fast‐changing world of local government.

Highlights the way in which two management consultants have been used over four years, in contrast to the usual model of hiring consultants for short‐term assignments.

The ability of manufacturing companies to adapt to their changing environment is frequently a key to long‐term success. As a consequence the strategic flexibility of manufacturing operations has become an increasingly important issue for organisations. There have been much theoretical work and some case studies in this domain. This paper reports part of a major study in the area. A key stage in this work has been an empirical study of UK manufacturing to investigate a broad range of issues surrounding manufacturing operations and strategic flexibility. In part this has been carried out through a questionnaire survey. This paper summarises some of the principal findings. These include respondents’ descriptions of their business strategies, the part played by manufacturing, the interfaces with customers, and the role of the information system and its contribution to manufacturing. This is complemented by a summary of 32 interviews/case histories which allow these issues to be explored further and which provide the input to the subsequent stages of the overall project.

Managers often lack the skills and confidence to deal with issues of everyday management such as poor attendance, failure to meet agreed deadlines or to reach required standards of work when these issues involve a racial dimension, or staff respond with counter complaints of harassment due to their sexuality or accusations of insensitivity to their disability.This is a case study of how a large complex social care organisation went about designing and implementing a leadership development programme to equip managers with the skills and confidence necessary to effectively lead a diverse workforce. The case study shows how Lancashire County Council has used executive coaching, management learning sets and mentoring, linked with equality and diversity training and exploiting the potential of the intranet to deliver a co‐ordinated management leadership development programme. The success of this approach has implications for all organisations that have a diverse workforce.

THIS month usually sees the estimates adopted that must govern public library spending for the year to come. It is likely to be a testing time for many librarians and we look forward with much interest to their experiences this year. The international rearmament programme, which authority has told us will not radically change our economic position, must have its repercussions on all municipal activities; expansion, so badly needed and so often deferred, is not likely to come immediately. However, as we remarked last month, dismal prophecies have so often been confounded by the subsequent facts that we hope 1951 will not be an exception. The defence programme may have some Staff effects, especially if the Z reserves are called again to the Colours. There is much that we may hope and much we should plan for in the months immediately ahead.

Birding, the active seeking out and identification of birds, is a wide‐spread and fast growing avocation on this continent, and indeed throughout the world. Jon Rickert's A Guide to North American Bird Clubs lists 17 national/continental organizations for both professional ornithologists and amateur birders and 844 state, provincial, and local associations. In addition, there are those legions of “unorganized” bird watchers and occasional, inquisitive discoverers of backyard birds. Members of this diverse congregation of birders have at least one thing in common — the need for a reliable identification tool enabling them to correctly label the just‐seen, unfamiliar bird. A field guide is just such a tool.

“The organisation of any library depends on the men and women who work there. They have a very important job. They are the indispensable middle‐men of culture and science, and in opening this library we ought to remember that its success will depend on them as much as on what is in it.”—The Duke of Edinburgh, opening the Scottish Central Library on November 5th, 1953.

ALL the auguries for the Bournemouth Conference appear to be good. Our local secretary, Mr. Charles Riddle, seems to have spared neither energy nor ability to render our second visit to the town, whose libraries he initiated and has controlled for thirty‐seven years, useful and enjoyable. There will not be quite so many social events as usual, but that is appropriate in the national circumstances. There will be enough of all sorts of meetings to supply what the President of the A.L.A. describes as “the calling which collects and organizes books and other printed matter for the use and benefit of mankind and which brings together the reader and the printed word in a vital relationship.” We hope the discussions will be thorough, but without those long auto‐biographical speeches which are meant for home newspapers, that readers will make time for seeing the exhibitions, and that Bournemouth will be a source of health and pleasure to all our readers who can be there.

THERE are, believe it or not, more public libraries in New York than there are poolrooms. To point this statement a little, it must be said that the libraries only just have the edge. It has always been implied, particularly by evangelical politicians and librarians alike, that libraries were or would be an improvement on gin‐shops, poolrooms or public houses. “Build a library” they proclaim, “and the indolent workers will leave the dens of iniquity”. There is, of course, not a jot of evidence that public libraries have had any effect on the sobriety or inebriety of the British, the Americans or the Swedes (three communities which have most felt the extended activities of librarianship). The licensing laws of this country and the (?) pro bona publica magistrates have effectively reduced public intake if not private surfeit. Our public houses are not reeling from the blows of dynamic librarianship, but from those of television.