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This article concerns the importance of physical distribution in marketing. It should be of interest to a wide range of managers concerned with purchase, marketing and distribution of products. It highlights the importance of taking account of customers' needs to improve service and save on costs in physical distribution. Chris Clarke is a manager with A T Kearney Management Consultants and a Member of the Executive of the Institute of Marketing Engineering Group. He has also worked as a marketing manager in fast moving consumer goods.

The purpose of the research and paper is to ensure that the views of incumbent directors are not ignored. This is against a background of baying for reform from the media, politicians and badly burned investors following the wave of corporate scandals.

This research was conducted by members of the Board practice of Boyden global executive search. It comprised focus groups of incumbent directors in the USA and Australia as well as interviews in these countries and in the UK.

Directors had been holding back. They felt that new regulations and restrictions would have major impacts. There is the danger that over‐regulation in the developed world will merely drive even more business and jobs offshore to more loosely governed economies in the Far East.

The research sought the point of view of incumbent directors. One needs to consider that their comments and feedback might be self‐serving. The number of countries included was limited, though they include those to the fore in governance debate and thinking.

Regulations need to have the flexibility to be altered relatively easily lest they have deleterious effects. Those involved in Board recruitment, especially nomination committees need to be alert to the dangers of new regulation explained here.

This paper adds a different and relatively unheard viewpoint to the current public debate and regulatory climate. It sounds important words of caution to those whose knee‐jerk reaction is that tough new regulation and lots of it must be introduced immediately.

If a seller fails to deliver the correct quantity, the buyer may reject the goods in accordance with the Sale of Goods Act 1979, section 30(1). The nature of this right to reject is unclear, and whether breach by short delivery will suffice to terminate the contract is also unclear. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this area of law.

The focus is on the combined case‐law and academic commentary on the topic of short delivery, and the broader issue of termination.

The paper suggests that breach by short delivery does terminate the contract. It suggests that the right to cure cannot provide an entirely satisfactory response for victims of short delivery. The paper also proposes a reform of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 to take this into account.

This research mainly focused on the current legal position. Further research on the historical development of the rules on short delivery, which were crystallised in the Sale of Goods Act 1893, will provide valuable insights into this area of law.

The proposal for reform could have a practical benefit in terms of protecting buyers from the danger of short delivery, by providing them with a more secure remedy than what appears to be currently available.

To the extent of the author's knowledge, this is the first dedicated analysis of short delivery in the literature.

This chapter explores theory and local context of socially constructed pandemic fears during COVID-19; how material and non-material fear objects are construed, interpreted and understood by communities, and how fears disrupt social norms and influence pandemic behavioural responses. We aimed to understand the lived experiences of pandemic-induced fears in socioculturally diverse communities in eastern Indonesia in the context of onto-epistemological disjunctures between biomedically derived public health interventions, local world views and causal-remedial explanations for the crisis. Ethnographic research conducted among several communities in East Nusa Tenggara province in Indonesia provided the data and analyses presented in this chapter, delineating the extent to which fear played a decisive role in both internal, felt experience and social relations. Results illustrate how fear emotions are constructed and acted upon during times of crisis, arising from misinformation, rumour, socioreligious influence, long-standing tradition and community understandings of modernity, power and biomedicine. The chapter outlines several sociological theories on fear and emotion and interrogates a post-pandemic future.

Purpose: Since its inception in 1987, the literature on the VUCA that represents the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous nature of the business environment has progressively increased. This study systematically evaluates the vast literature on the VUCA world. Since review-based studies have been criticised as biased, this study uniquely amalgamates bibliometric analysis with content analysis, thereby taking a research triangulation discourse.

Need of the Study: This study was conducted to consolidate the literature about the VUCA environment and uncover the foundational and emerging themes for future research agendas.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study conducts a performance analysis and science mapping of 193 carefully selected articles (using PRISMA) published in various sources during 2012–2023. Articles for the study were procured from the SCOPUS database. While performance analysis focused on analysing publication and citation evolution, thematic evolution, leading publications, country publication analysis, and most relevant authors and sources. On the other hand, science mapping revealed conceptual structures (keyword plus co-occurrence analysis and thematic maps) and intellectual structures (co-authorship analysis). VOSviewer and Biblioshiny (R-tool for comprehensive science mapping) were used for this study’s choice of application.

Findings: This chapter concludes with future research agendas using content analysis of the ‘scope for the future research’ section of selected publications and bibliographic coupling (to unearth emerging themes).

Practical Implications: The work presented in this chapter will help the researchers gain a structured conceptual, intellectual, and social understanding of the vast literature on the VUCA environment.

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.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.