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Barbara Stocking relays her experience as Director of Oxfam and draws parallels, themes and differences with her time working for the NHS and the civil service.

The Ivey Business School recently decided to outsource its printing to ProPrintR. Barbara Pokropek, Ivey Executive Development (IED), was faced with managing IED's outsourced printing jobs. There had been an increasing number of quality issues with the binder that ProPrintR prepared for IED's executive classes. While binder material errors may not sound like a big deal, for IED these materials are part of their branding and can lead to executive student dissatisfaction. This case describes the evolution of the current situation and challenges students to consider how to manage the situation.

The situation described in this critical incident is real, only the name of the print provider has been changed. Barbara Pokropek was interviewed and she provided the data and examples described. Ms Pokropek reviewed and provided input to revise the manuscript.

This case is intended for undergraduate core operations management classes. It can be used to discuss supplier relations and supply management. As such there are multiple dimensions to the case: importance of clearly delineating the work needed, defining performance expectations and metrics for a supplier, selecting quality tools to help measure performance, and centralized vs decentralized supply management.

This paper aims to review progress to date in the UK on Government strategy to increase the number of women on company boards. It includes discussion on the proposed quota system and the factors that inhibit women's progress despite the acknowledged special qualities they can bring to the boardroom.

The paper is a critical review of the current situation in the UK and rest of Europe, leading to recommendations for the way ahead.

Corporate culture in top companies is gradually changing and some, albeit slow, progress has been made. However more impetus is required and suggestions are included as to future additional strategies.

Additional suggestions, apart from the Government strategy, are given to improve women's career development in companies, in the educational system and in society in general.

The paper puts forward practical suggestions to assist women's career development and visibility to enable more qualified and experienced women to be strong candidates for board appointments.

This paper summarises the findings arising from a series of extended qualitative interviews with 14 CEOs and chairmen from leading UK corporations and international organisations. The purpose of the interviews was to try to establish the value that CEOs attach to public relations, and to get a sense of how they would assess its value and contribution to overall business and organisational performance. The study also tried to determine the role CEOs play in reputation management. The findings conclude that CEOs do not expect or look for a simple return on investment (ROI) for public relations expenditure; that public relations is used regularly to enhance and protect reputation; that public relations has become mission critical for businesses and the management of reputation; that CEOs themselves take overall responsibility for the management of corporate reputation; that the CEO's personal reputation is closely linked to that of the corporation; that CEOs' profiles and the media demands made of them have never been higher; that public relations can influence organisational strategy; and that high calibre people working in public relations are highly sought after and valued by CEOs. There are many lessons and implications for public relations practitioners.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the involvement of the U.S. public accounting profession in federal politics and to focus attention on the extent to which the profession engages with federal legislators and other policymakers to influence public policy. In the essay, I discuss and present evidence regarding the profession's use of political strategies such as making political campaign contributions and lobbying federal legislators and regulators. The profession's political efforts are then examined within the context of their self-proclaimed commitment to the public interest. I conclude that the public accounting profession's extensive involvement in federal politics works principally to protect its own professional interests and favors conservative, pro-business agendas. As a result, broader public interest responsibilities are often neglected. Although the profession deserves the right to participate in public policy debates, its parochial and patronage orientation does not resonate well with its self-proclaimed professional cornerstones of independence and integrity.

The formulated proposals for this legal principle in the trade battern of the European Community have again appeared in the EEC draft Directive. It has been many years in coming, indicating the extreme difficulties encountered in bringing some sort of harmony in the different laws of Member‐states including those of the United Kingdom, relating to the subject. Over the years there were periods of what appeared to be complete inactivity, when no progress was being made, when consultations were at a stand‐still, but the situation was closely monitored by manufacturers of goods, including food and drink, in the UK and the BFJ published fairly detailed reviews of proposals being considered — in 1979 and 1981; and even as recently as the last few months — in “Consumerism in the Community”, the subject was briefly discussed.