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This article considers the work of an adult education project, second chance learning (SCL), in helping its clients not only to try to stop smoking, but also to examine the place of tobacco in their lives. SCL undertook this work as one of three projects funded by the Argyll and Clyde Health Board in response to the 1998 publication of Smoking Kills, by the Department of Health. SCL is based in a relatively deprived area and has a strong tradition of working with (rather than for) its users, within a clear and open management structure. The activities of the tobacco group were determined by its members, and the success of the group was marked not only by the fact that some members did manage to stop smoking, but also that members felt they had a better understanding of why they smoked. Higher levels of self confidence were evidenced by the increasing diversity of the activities undertaken by the group.

In this book chapter, I focus on the epistemological, ontological and axiological practice traditions that help to reveal the taken-for-granted assumptions about the management of trust funds in First Nation communities. Informing this chapter is a qualitative research study involving 11 First Nation community members in Canada who were interviewed. Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing and the theory of practice architectures are used to identify the cultural discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that enable and/or constrain practice. The findings reveal that Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing collide adversely with trust account decision making due to the duties and obligations guiding trust settlement agreements. The ways in which trust account practices can be transformed to ensure greater alignment with Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing are outlined.

FORTY YEARS have elapsed since the idea was first mooted; now it looks like happening. The Booksellers Association is to establish a UK Book Trade Promotion House.

Describes the use of outdoor management development exercises in relation to the issue of personal competences. Presents findings of a pilot study by the University of Glasgow Business School, which is researching the relationship between traditional and vocational models of learning. Finds that in general, there are potential personal benefits for participants to explore their managerial skills through outdoor development exercises, but that research needs to continue to ensure a greater emphasis on self‐confidence, drive, personal learning and development.

ON AVERAGE FIGURES, all coutries in the developed world (but, regrettably, not in the third world) are able to increase their national output year by year. Examined in isolation, statistics associated with such growth (e.g. output per worker) demonstrate a comforting trend — even though the vertical scales of graphics might have been selected with that purpose in mind! The simple step of making cross‐country comparisons can, however, quickly remove some of the complacency.

I HAD FORGOTTEN, in recent years, just how much dull donkey‐work there is about publishing books. My erstwhile firm eventually possessed just enough slaves to shelter me from the most boring and repetitive of the numerous jobs in a publishing house.

I WAS lunching recently with a friend who reckons he has about ten more years to go in libraries before retirement, and he raised an interesting question. Given the realisation that one will not, at his age, now be likely to make chief, what can a senior and experienced librarian do by way of interesting alternative to just serving out time?

During choir rehearsals, a conductor continuously holds choir members accountable for what they do and how they sing. Hence, members are held accountable through action. This allows a conductor to emphasize his/her expertise and underline his/her authority. Choir members typically respond in certain ways when this is done, for instance by commenting on the feedback they receive or by trying to improve their singing. The interplay between these accounts, how they develop over time, and what they (do not) accomplish in terms of human relatedness are the focus of this study. We use Bauman's (1993) conceptualization of social space to investigate these issues.

By providing reasons for their conduct and behaving in a certain way, a conductor and choir members, but also a choir's management, can alter their position in social space. Thereby, they solidify or change how they relate to other individuals in the choir. Bauman assumes that processes of social spacing require so-called “misunderstandings”. We examine seven misunderstandings that occurred in a particular rehearsal of a top-level amateur choir, analyzing their impact on human relatedness. Video analysis methods, interviews and photo-elicitation are the main research methods used.

We find both short-term and long-term effects of misunderstandings on human relatedness, and offer two extensions of Bauman's (1993) conception of social space. Firstly, we assert that there is a reflective side to processes of social spacing that needs to be taken into account when changes in human relatedness are discussed. Secondly, we find that the emotional impact of accountability on how individuals behave ought not to be underestimated, as this can have lasting effects on how people relate to one another.

This research makes two contributions to the extant literature. It is shown how accountability through action unfolds when people engage in leisurely activity, and how this affects the way they relate to one another – in sometimes unintentional and unpredictable ways. It also extends a well-known theoretical framework on social space that has seen little application in the accounting literature. This framework is adapted so that it may be used more fruitfully in future accounting studies.