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Demonstrates that one of the most important elements required to ensure the success of any organization is to retain and motivate its employees, from the CEO down to the productionline worker. Argues that profit incentives can be a way to squeeze quality and productivity improvements from its remaining workers, while giving them greater control over their financial fates. Suggests ways to make incentive play plans work, and lists a number of types of incentive pay plans.

To say that ‘quality’ has become a fashionable word in the British National Health Service would be something of an understatement. It would be fatuous to claim that those in the NHS only took an interest in ‘quality’ as a result of the publication of the Griffiths Enquiry Report. It is however, fair to say that since the emergence of that document many more individuals have been assigned a specific brief for the topic. People with ‘quality’ in their job title, often also holding a nurse management portfolio, are a feature of the current NHS landscape.

This paper investigates the debate as to whether employee share options (ESOs) should be expensed in an entity’s financial statements as required by the IASB’s IFRS 2 – Share‐based payment (2004). The paper presents arguments for and against expensing ESOs, demonstrating that compensation of employees via ESOs is a bona fide expense in terms of the recognition and measurement criteria of the IASB Framework. It concludes that, the substance of an ESO transaction is that the entity pays an employee for his services, albeit with a different financial instrument. Consequently, the accounting treatment of such compensation should be the same as for any other payment of services of an employee.

This article discusses the pay packages of executive officers at internetrelated business. Generally, the executives’ total compensation include salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options, and other financial compensation, such as forgiveness of loans, automobile expenses, etc. The 70 to 80 percent of the CEOs’ compensations are from gains of exercising stocks. In this tumbling market, shareholders are suffering the loss from the declining stock prices. However, many CEOs are still left with a mountain of wealth. Meanwhile, the board of directors also raises the stock options to retain their top talents even to those who are under‐performing. Besides CEOs’ compensations, we will also compare the CEO pay with non‐CEO pay packages. The CEOs compensations are still the highest. Furthermore, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990, and a staggering 531 times in 2000. Many shareholders are against these out of control pay packages. We conclude that it is time to review the process of determining the CEOs compensation, and that the significant presence of pay‐by‐performance should be taken into account in any examination of the practice and regulation of corporate governance.

Takes a fresh look at the nature of the problem of allocating costs and control processes for a variable product mix. Adopts a novel approach called the “Unit of Production Effort” method. The method creates a common measure throughout the production process which can then be used in all costing, planning and comparison activities. Describes the initial stages of a practical implementation of the method to a small manufacturing company to illustrate the way in which it can be applied in a real situation. The results suggest that the method provides a radical simplification of the multi‐product environment which will be of interest to a broad cross‐section of professionals ranging from theorists to practising financial and production managers.

Three recent publications by noted authors offer valuable insights into the new directions that leadership development thinking and practice now need to take, with all of three books placing particular emphasis on the importance of character, identity and values, not just competence.

Organizational psychologist Fred Kiel’s book, Return On Character sets out to show that the strength of a leader’s character is an important driver of business success and to examine the implications for leadership development. Discover Your True North by Harvard professor and former CEO of Medtronic Bill George examines why the self-development process of discovering one’s core values and passion (authenticity) to lead is essential to becoming an engaging and empowering leader. The theme of leadership as a life-long developmental challenge is Robert Kaplan’s primary focus in What You Really Need to Lead.

Kiel’s data revealed a clear relationship between the strength of a leader’s character and demonstrated mastery of these key skills, with virtuosos “consistently” outperforming their more self-focused peers.

One of the reasons that character matters is that leaders who more consciously and persistently search for greater self-awareness over the course of their careers tend to become ever more capable of questioning “not only the ideas of others” but even their “own most cherished beliefs,” and as a result, their understanding of their life, their business, their marketplace, and the global forces that shape them “enters a state of continual growth and development.”

On every side voices are raised against the growing use of chemical additives in food; the possible hazards to health; the inadequacy of present methods of control and of stemming the rate at which the practice is growing. Not unexpectedly at the season of annual conferences, with its crop of wildish statements and scare headlines, attention appears to be focussed upon the problem as if it were something new. These platform heroics not‐withstanding, it is indeed a difficult and growing problem. Not by any means a new one, however, for additives have been used in food preparation for many years, but before the first War they were mainly natural products; large‐scale food processing had yet to come. Now synthetic products have replaced the natural and possible ill‐effects are engaging world interest.

The ISHM CAN‐AM Chapter recently organised a half‐day programme of paper presentations followed by a tour of a local hybrid facility. The event took place on 26 April at the Holiday Inn, Montreal (Pointe Claire), Quebec, with the theme of the papers concentrating on advances in hybrid manufacturing processes and some coverage of SMT.

THE first number of a new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD offers an occasion for brief retrospect and reflection. For seventeen years the magazine has appeared regularly, untrammelled by official connexion and presenting a catholic view of libraries and the library profession. It began its career at a time when discussions of methods such as open‐access, classified cataloguing, and even library bulletins, created an excitement which they rarely create now; and in these and all subsequent discussions THE LIBRARY WORLD has endeavoured to keep level with, or even in advance of, the best opinion of the day. The leading men in the profession—both living and dead—have contributed to these pages; and altogether the magazine has stood consistently for progress, for advanced methods, and for the importance and dignity of the librarian's office.