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In this article, David Johnstone describes an innovative community mentoring service in Devon that is delivering a personalised service to people over 50 who have experienced some kind of downturn in their lives, alongside community capacity building activity that is providing opportunities for many excluded older people in Devon.

MR. DENIS HOWELL, M.P., Minister for Libraries, who was to have told Conference how public libraries had progressed since the Act, had to withdraw and so we did not find out how the responsible minister felt about us.

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of audit pricing and the competitiveness of the audit fee market by examining audit fee stickiness.

The authors explore the price behavior of audit fees in response to changes in the variables that are usually seen as their determinants, such as size, complexity, and risk in order to examine audit fee stickiness and the competitiveness of the market for audit services.

The authors find that audit fees are sticky, i.e. audit fees do not immediately or fully adjust to changes in their determinants. Audit fees also respond to changes leading to an increase more quickly than they respond to changes leading to a decrease. The difference between positive and negative fee adjustments declines over periods longer than one year and is no longer significant when four-year periods are considered.

The study is limited to companies in the USA from 2000 to 2008. Future research should examine this issue in other settings and periods.

The results suggest that the audit market is competitive, at least in the medium term.

The study helps to explain why the audit fee model does not fully explain the level of audit fees; why audit fees are more likely to be too high than too low; and why auditor switches are commonly associated with larger changes in audit fees. The findings provide evidence that may be useful to managers and audit committees when managing their audit fees, auditors when considering the risks and opportunities associated with changes in the determinants of audit fees, and regulators concerned with the competitiveness of the audit market.

In the previous article, Louise Close described a workable way forward for social care in the UK. In the first of two articles, Ceri Jones sets out the case for social enterprises: firstly, Ceri explains why they should be the ‘business model of choice’ because of their focus on personalised and cost effective services, and not profit.

This paper aims to better understand how accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations and specifically, what makes employees act in a Swedish local authority. This aim moves beyond the prevalent external face of accountability in social and environmental accounting research by observing how employees understand and act upon their multiple accountability demands.

This paper adopts a single case study approach within a Swedish local authority, drawing from qualitative data including semi-structured interviews, site visits and governing documents.

Sustainable action is not only the product of hierarchically enforced structural accountabilities and procedures but often must be reconciled with the personal perspectives of the public sector employees involved as part of an accountability dynamic. Additionally, the findings reveal that hierarchical accountability, rather than serving to individualise and isolate employees, acts as a prompt for the more practical and personal reconciliations of accountability with the ethics and experiences of the individual involved.

Greater consideration to employee socialisation processes in public sector organisations should be given to reinforce organisational governance systems and controls, and thus help ensure sustainable behaviour in practice.

Employee socialisation processes are important for the development of sustainable practices both within and beyond organisational boundaries.

This study considers the interrelatedness of hierarchical and socialising accountability measures and contributes towards the understanding of the relationship between these two accountability forms, contrary to previous understandings that emphasise their contrasting nature and incompatibility.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss improvement of the business of health care delivery through the application of systematic problem solving. This was strengthened by recurrence prevention through standardization at every level transforming into culture.

The methodology utilized is set derived from the true fiber and fabric of Toyota, the Toyota Business Practice (TBP) or eight-step problem solving and its translation into health care thinking by aligning to the process of clinical diagnosis of patients. The methodology that gives energy and direction to TBP is Hoshin Kanri, a Japanese approach to strategic planning. When you combine focus and purpose through strategic direction alongside a culture of systematic problem solving you get results.

The application of the Toyota mindset resulted in a cultural shift which built on the strength of the current organizational culture. This approach had a broad impact on the program impacting leadership and management roles, improved employee engagement, complete visibility of organizational priorities, improved system performance, visibility and awareness of the vision and defined measures that drive the health care system. This has also resulted in cost diversions of approximately five million dollars CDN.

A grass roots application of real-time problem solving through strategic alignment.

ON TUESDAY, 3 December 1878, there was held within the premises of Mr Dowell at 18 George Street, Edinburgh, an auction of the library of Andrew Jervise, Esq., F.S.A.(Scot.). Jervise, a bachelor, had died almost eight months before at the age of 58. In his library was a two‐volume edition of Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, edited by John Johnstone, published by Wm. Tait in 1840–41, and printed at the University Press (Messrs. Stevenson's), then in Thistle Street. This was sold for the sum of £3 3s. to an unnamed buyer. In 1967 in ‘The Book Cellar’, a newly‐opened secondhand bookshop in Dundas Street, Edinburgh, it was to appear again. This time it was broken‐backed and apparently of undistinguished origin.

Young people’s choice of higher education institution and subject are often assumed to take place in a social vacuum, ignoring the influence of family and friends. Despite a shift away from state funding of undergraduate higher education towards a cost-sharing model (Johnstone, 2004), little research has been carried out on family attitudes to debt, particularly in Scotland where home students do not pay tuition fees. This chapter explores how higher education decisions are made by Scottish domiciled students in the context of their families and the ways in which such decisions are mediated by social class.