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It is customary these days to denounce our society for its unconscionable neglect of the elderly, while we look back romantically to some indeterminate past when the elderly were respected and well cared for. Contrary to this popular view, old people historically have enjoyed neither respect nor security. As Simone de Beauvoir so effectively demonstrates in The Coming of Age (New York: Putnam, 1972), the elderly have been almost universally ill‐treated by societies throughout the world. Even the Hebrew patriarchs admonished their children to remember them as they grew older: “Cast me not off in time of old age; when my strength fails, forsake me not” (Psalms 71:1). Primitive agrarian cultures, whose very existence depended upon the knowledge gleaned from experience, valued their elders, but even they were often moved by the harsh conditions of subsistence living to eliminate by ritual killing those who were no longer productive members of society. There was a softening of societal attitudes toward the elderly during the period of nineteenth century industrial capitalism, which again valued experience and entrepreneurial skills. Modern technocratic society, however, discredits the idea that knowledge accumulates with age and prefers to think that it grows out‐of‐date. “The vast majority of mankind,” writes de Beauvoir, “look upon the coming of old age with sorrow and rebellion. It fills them with more aversion than death itself.” That the United States in the twentieth century is not alone in its poor treatment of the aged does not excuse or explain this neglect. Rather, the pervasiveness of prejudice against the old makes it even more imperative that we now develop programs to end age discrimination and its vicious effects.

If you are 30 or older, you are middle‐aged by someone's criteria. When the college students of the 1970s declared “Don't trust anyone over 30,” did you think they would be someday talking about you? And what about those who say “Life begins at 40”? Did you ever believe them?

Continued exponential and asymmetrical growth in both population and individual economic productivity would propel world society along a path that is environmentally unsustainable, economically inequitable, and hence socially unstable. Terrorist activity in September 2001 may be vivid evidence of that instability. Revolutionary developments in communications technologies can, however, enable partnerships among scholarly disciplines and among societal institutions to harness rapidly expanding human knowledge (broadly construed) to pursue goals in both population and individual economic productivity that would lead to a sustainable, equitable, and stable world society. Such a knowledge‐based strategy could enable us to pursue the vision of a global society in which all of the basic human needs and an equitable share of human wants can be met by successive generations while maintaining a healthy, physically attractive, and biologically productive environment. Several scenarios are presented to illustrate the promise of cooperative efforts to pursue this vision, and to highlight some obstacles to that pursuit.

Retirement is a phenomenon unique to modern industrial societies. It is only within the last century, through technological and scientific advances, that industrial nations have been able to produce significant surpluses of food and goods, while simultaneously diminishing the effects of disease and raising the overall standard of living. These advances, combined with the demographic shift which accompanies a declining birth rate (a proportional increase in number of old people to total population), the development of large national bureaucracies, and sudden shifts in the industrial market, have left significant numbers of older workers with obsolete skills and have led to the evolution of a major “retired” segment of the population.

The year 1935 marked a significant change for America's elderly. In that year, Congress passed the Social Security Act, which provided federally funded old‐age benefits to workers when they reached 65. Passed in a year of deep and persistent economic depression, the Social Security Act has continued to support and sustain millions of elderly people. But its historical meaning is even more profound; its passage signified that the United States had come of age as an industrial society. The welfare of its older citizens was no longer left to individual citizens, but was recognized as a social responsibility. From the thirties through the seventies, that principle has been generally accepted and encouraged.

Topshop and Gap are important fashion retail brands targeting young style‐conscious UK consumers. However, business performance differs widely with Topshop enjoying record sales whilst Gap has recorded losses at a five year high. This paper investigated these variations in performance from a strategic and holistic view of retailer brand image, and the adoption of quality marketing orientation. Answers were sought using key image attributes as a vehicle to understanding customers’ perceptions of the retailers under study. Survey data were collected from a sample of 300 typical customers who were set the task of ranking image attributes. Factor analysis of customer responses indicated that Gap customers were offered lifestyles in advertising that were out‐of‐step with the merchandise on the shelves. This reflected a failure on the part of retail management to satisfy the target market. Topshop customers displayed high levels of confidence in the merchandise proposition but stressed the importance of atmosphere and sales staff in overall assessments. This finding reinforces the view that sustainable retailer positioning pivots on a range of marketing activities as well as matching fashion consumers to styles. The research concludes with implications for strategic retail marketing, theory and practice.

America has a long history of environmental awareness which evolved as the country grew and changed during the past 300 years. Today, an environmental concern by the people of the country is mainstream and therefore has become an integral part of corporate America. Explores the development, influence and direction of the US environmental movement. Provides background information to help understand why the marketplace is currently responding to the environmental stimulus. Looks at the marketing methods by which the country is expressing this environmental concern and traces the paths taken by those who first advocated the need for an environmental consciousness. Combines historical aspects of the American environmental movement with addressing the growing challenges facing the integration of business and environmental sensitivity.

To some persons, private gardens, public parks, and farms appear to offer a safe way to preserve all of the plants and animals the environment needs. To people who ignore the need for conservation, the idea of paving and pruning and artificially laying out our land from coast to coast seems welcome. Wiser persons perceive that the destruction so imposed on nature would ultimately endanger our existence. The wilderness, with its wealth of animals and plants, holds a treasure from which we already extract the chemicals and genes we need for agricultural breeding, for industrial products, and for healing drugs. What to the layman may look like a disorderly swamp, or a dark forest, or an uninteresting prairie, actually encompasses complicated communities of vegetation and animals of all classes, communities that are held together in a stable balance by their interdependent components. Ecologists are identifying the key principles at work in these ecosystems of wetlands and drylands, forests and prairies. In their search for understanding of how life on our planet functions, they have called attention to the overriding need to preserve and protect the biological diversity that characterizes ecosystems. They have found instances in which short‐sighted human tampering has played havoc with subtle ecological balances. Too frequently entire species have vanished under man's onslaught. Sometimes such a disappearance is an indication that an entire ecosystem is out of balance.

Organizational learning continues to be an important issue for all types of firms. Managerial accounts of organizational learning are in high demand; for example, Senge’s The Fifth Discipline (Senge, 1990a) has sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. Studies exploring the nature of knowledge creation, intellectual capital, and knowledge management have been on the rise, with recent papers being published for academics (McElroy, 2000; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Nonaka, 1994), and practitioners (Brown & Duguid, 1998; Fryer, 1999). According to some experts, the ability to transform information into knowledge through organizational learning is a critical success factor for all businesses in the current knowledge-based economy (Davis & Botkin, 1994; Lei, Slocum & Pitts, 1999).

Surveys the literature on internationalisation research and identifies a number of theoretical and practical inadequacies in terms of current theory’s ability in describing behaviour of the smaller firm. A range of internationalisation theories are discussed, from their historical provenance in economic trade theory to the more recent developments concerning the impact of technology and networking. It is concluded that the majority of frameworks fail to readily explain smaller firm internationalisation behaviour. A number of implications and recommendations are presented, including the promotion of the belief that the emerging marketing and entrepreneurship paradigm provides additional understanding of smaller firm internationalisation, where creativity and innovative behaviour can act as a competitive advantage over firms with larger resources at their disposal. This then acts as a catalyst for internationalisation development.