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Examines the factors which underpin the success of industry‐academic partnerships in management development. Uses data drawn from an in‐depth case study of Cummins Engine Company Limited. Reviews the literature on company‐university partnerships and work‐based learning in management development and provides information on the background of the case‐study organization. Reports on the experience of developing management training programmes for supervisors and middle managers. Concludes by discussing the practical implications of forging closer links between industry and academia.

Start‐up Driver's Mart applies the latest management ideas to a much maligned business.

A family business founded by Chinese immigrants grew into a $133 million toy and costume maker by exploiting seasonal niche segments in the highly competitive, global toy industry. Sales of traditional toys stagnated when replaced by game consoles and electronic toys. Unable to compete in high tech toys, MegaToys moved instead toward seasonal products. In 2007, brothers Peter and Charlie Woo were about to pitch what they hoped would be $63 million in Easter basket sales to Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart took the full order, it would come to represent over half of MegaToys' revenue.

The company was faced with the dilemma of how to grow, and at what pace. Charlie Woo knew that MegaToys could continue to grow as long as it was able to satisfy Wal-Mart's demands. Peter Woo wondered if this was the smartest way to grow the business. “Growth is a good thing as long as you don't sell your shirt to get it,” he noted. Should MegaToys continue to increase its sales to Wal-Mart, or would dependence on Wal-Mart eventually threaten the firm's success? Were there other, untapped opportunities for MegaToys that were well aligned with its strengths, resources, and capabilities?

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Few would argue with the proposition that socially, economically and politically, the United States is in a period of turbulence and uncertainty. We are navigating the rapids, and white water is all around us. In the daily struggle to keep the boat afloat and on course, we have little inclination and less time to look ahead. Perhaps we fear that the future holds more of the same, that our present troubles constitute a new normalcy to which we must inure ourselves. In a remarkable turnaround from traditional American optimism, there is now a pronounced feeling abroad in the land that the present is worse than the past, and that the future will be still worse than the present.

Previous studies on non-standard employment relations have analyzed how firms’ use of non-standard work arrangements are explained by variables related to numerical flexibility. Here, the purpose of this paper is to explore how firms respond to changes in the external environment through reduction in staffing. Since the firms combine employees and external consultants, they are confronted with a dilemma between laying off employees or terminating consultant contracts.

The empirical context is the petroleum sector in Norway. The data consists of 11 interviews with managers at different levels in three firms.

The authors found that firms terminated over 80 percent of the consultant contracts, while around a forth of employees were downsized. A core-periphery strategy and union power are vital drivers of the prioritization of employees. However, some consultants were retained due to their knowledge of unique aspects of the firm and their role in development and innovation. The authors also found that the firms differed in their emphasis on seniority vs competencies criteria in deciding “survival” among employees.

A main contribution of the study is thus the identification of variables and mechanisms that influence the two interrelated choices of downsizing in such multi-employment contexts. The main limitation is the number of firms analyzed (three), which restricts statistical generalization.

Better understanding of circumstances and criteria of downsizing choices in employees/external consultants’ constellations.

This study is one of the first to analyze two interrelated issues of downsizing in such constellations lying off employees vs terminating consulting contracts, and whether seniority or competence criteria were prioritized when laying off employees. A main contribution of the study is the identification of variables and mechanisms that influence the two interrelated choices of downsizing in such multi-employment contexts.

Drawing on the authors’ experiences at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside (ULH), this autobiographical narrative explores the development of distance learning strategies for management and business studies students. The authors discuss their own particular experiences and their role in pursuing innovations. Having considered the pedagogical issues involved in working with students at a distance, the paper goes on to discuss innovations to facilitate learning at ULH. This includes the design of text‐based materials for distance learning, increasing access via work‐based learning, and the university’s involvement in both the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme, (TLTP) and the Extended Learning Environment Network (ELEN) projects. Early evaluations of these projects identify a tension between the apparently boundless technological possibilities and students’ need for the “human” dimension in learning. Developing high quality H(E)‐education may depend in some part upon managing that tension.