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Nowhere in industry is the trade‐off between profitability and growth more critical than in high technology companies. In an embryonic company, market acceptance of a new technology fires growth. Before long the company's success begins to be noticed by others, competitors enter, and the battle for market share begins. Then comes the problem of making pricing decisions—should the new company price for profit or for market penetration? And this is where current economic uncertainty forces new technology companies to make difficult strategic decisions.

The high, volatile inflation forecast for the 1980s will make costs difficult to manage. Price increases will be necessary, but they invite market share raids from growth‐hungry competitors. Without price increases, cost inflation will destroy margins. A strategic cost analysis can identify the effect of inflation on a company's own costs and on its competitors' costs. Company planners can then formulate an explicit strategy for coping with the decade's slow, cyclic growth and high, volatile inflation.

Although this autumn sees the recovery of the economy well underway, the form this upswing is taking is very different from previous ones. The recession of the early 1980s has been more severe and more long lasting than any since the Great Depression. There has been no sustained economic growth from 1980 to 1983, and despite two recent quarters of surprisingly high GNP growth, that three‐year gap will not soon close.

The economy of the 1980s presents significant problems and no easy promises for business. In a slow‐growth, high‐inflation environment business will have a difficult time making profits grow faster than inflation. Developing strategies to do so, however, is the art of strategic planning.

Concepts award market share the key position in the determination of competitive profitability. However, the strategic planning concepts of the experience curve, the market share/profitability correspondence, and the growth/share matrix were developed during pre‐OPEC years. While the Strategic Planning Institute and The Boston Consulting Group have taken their applications far beyond the initial concepts, it is simplified theories, not their more sophisticated elaborations, which are being popularized and used in many of today's planning processes.

Let us start the year with some figures which clarify how ‘electronic’ the scene has become in three different respects.

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

Dubai Quality Award (DQA) is one of the quality awards that has been implemented in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the purpose of improving organisational performance. The objective of this study is to determine whether receiving the DQA has positive impacts on Human Resource Development Practices (HRDP) and organisational performance (OP) of the award-winning companies.

Secondary data relating to DQA scores were collected from the Department of Economic Development archive of UAE and primary data relating to HRDP and OP were collected from the individual DQA recipients. Data elicited were subjected to statistical analyses by using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. This was to identify the nature of relationships existing between DQA criteria and organisational performance outcomes through the mediating effect of HRDP.

The results indicated that winning of DQA significantly enhances organisational performance and that HRDP is a statistically significant mediator between DQA and OP. Based on the findings of this study, a model has been developed by linking the DQA criteria, HRDP and organisational performance.

Despite few of its limitations, this study is first of a kind in UAE that investigated the relationships among DQA criteria, HRDP and OP. The findings are expected to help the UAE companies to adjust their management policies and practices for enhancing their organisational performance. The findings can also be applicable to companies in other countries, especially Gulf countries that have similar awards such as DQA.