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Details the Management Challenge competition, run by the British Institute of Management, which aims to encourage links between education and industry. It teaches the fundamentals of running a business through the use of a computer‐based simulation of a medium‐sized company. Describes what 1991 competition winners learned from the exercise.

Professor Don Morgan's account of the social, economic and, above all, moral context in which American education has developed — together with the history and structure of the education system — makes depressing reading for Western European educationists. Where we are going, they have been. Where they are, we wish to be. The dilemmas we hope to resolve by arriving remain — for the Americans — starkly unrelieved.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of ebrary's e‐books at Staffordshire University.

Details are provided of the history of Staffordshire's involvement with ebrary as a supplier of e‐books as well as methods of searching for information in the ebrary collection as well as other e‐book collections used by Staffordshire University.

In a split‐site university such as Staffordshire, and with many students never visiting campus libraries, the provision of course material and readings in e‐format is essential. ebrary provides an “instant library” solution, and the possibility of adding individual texts to this core collection strengthens this provision. The ability for students and researchers to search across the full content of 30,000 e‐books in one “go” and then capture that information quickly and easily is also very valuable.

The paper provides information based on some years of practical experience in providing access to e‐book collections.

Reviews many of the published studies of the application of action‐learning strategies to management and executive development in North American organizations. Concludes that there are few meaningful examples of action learning that have been analysed for their organizational or developmental effects. Examples that are published seem to assess action learning more for its team‐building applications, with little attention being paid to using this process to facilitate individual or organizational learning.

Many organizations now utilize action learning, and it is applied increasingly throughout the world. Action learning appears in numerous variants, but generically it is a form of learning through experience, “by doing”, where the task environment is the classroom, and the task the vehicle. Two previous reviews of the action learning literature by Alan Mumford respectively covered the field prior to 1985 and the period 1985‐1994. Both reviews included books as well as journal articles. This current review covers the period 1994‐2000 and is limited to publicly available journal articles. Part 1 of the Review was published in an earlier issue of the Journal of Workplace Learning (Vol. 15 No. 2) and included a bibliography and comments. Part 2 extends that introduction with a schema for categorizing action learning articles and with comments on representative articles from the bibliography.

It is widely recognised that stimulating research and development is the best route to stimulating an economy; and that nurturing R&D is a vital element of economic policy. Yet the “intensity” of R&D in UK organisations in most but not all industries falls well below those of US and Japanese companies and of many other countries.

Frank cases of scurvy are easily recognised and are satisfactory to treat. Even in Western Europe cases are met with under ordinary conditions of life, but mostly in poor countries among those living alone and not caring for themselves properly. It has been advanced that while frank scurvy is admittedly practically unknown in civilised countries, yet minor degrees of vitamin C deficiency are responsible for much vague ill‐health and disease other than scurvy. This theory is difficult to prove, and proof is lacking.

This inspiring article describes a series of activities that have taken place in the UK over the past year (2001) aiming to generate interest in user/survivor/consumer‐run social enterprises. The writers want to let others know about these activities, about the survivor‐run businesses in Ontario, and hopefully to create more interest in this type of work/community initiative. As editor of this journal I hope that the article will provoke those of you already running user/survivor‐led businesses in the UK to rise to the challenge and write about your work for future issues. Can't let the Canadians have things all their own way… Bob Grove.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the historical contributions of complex innovations (both creative and tactical components) in a formative period in a major Australian department store, David Jones Ltd.

The study uses a context-specific lens to examine complex retail innovation. The study adopts a longitudinal design with the focus on a single firm, which met the inclusion criteria. Data collection was predominately from company archival materials and publicly available documents, including newspapers.

An in-depth analysis of two complex innovations demonstrates the retailer’s successful management of both marketing exploration (innovation) and marketing exploitation of that innovation. Effective marketing requires operational, tactical marketing exploitation to dovetail marketing exploration.

The study is limited to one successful department store. Notwithstanding, there are expectations that the lessons extend to many other retailing organizations.

The practical relevance is clear, with the emphasis on retail innovation (and especially complex innovation) as a basis for both surviving and thriving in an ever-changing marketing environment.

The use of a complex innovation approach is a novel way of examining marketing history. The study concludes that both marketing exploration and marketing exploitation are essential for retail longevity.