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A FEW MONTHS ago we were listening to a management consultant who had arrived here from the USA, though he was originally an Israeli. We did not agree with all the things he said. One of his audience, in fact, asked a question based on one of his statements that he seemed to have difficulty in answering. Certainly it did not seem to satisfy his questioner.

In 1993, an innovative working time agreement was achieved at the Volkswagen (VW) Company. Its major aim was to save 30,000 jobs in VW's six German plants, which were endangered because of a severe crisis of the car manufacturer. The 2‐year agreement included as its major point a reduction of the weekly working hours by 20% to 28.8 hours/week without complete financial compensation for the employees. In the years following, the original agreement was renewed and amended several times whereby the amendments mainly included a considerable flexibility of the working time structures at Volkswagen. This paper discusses the different agreements and presents some findings of a representative empirical study among the VW employees about the effects of the 28.8‐hour per week agreement. Finally, the question will be answered whether the VW model could serve as a general model to redistribute an existing volume of work among more employees in order to reduce unemployment.

Offices usually operate five‐days‐a‐week from Monday to Friday, with employees following the standard five‐day workweek. Unlike scheduling employees in seven‐days‐a‐week or round‐the‐clock operations, (e.g. hospitals and utilities), scheduling office employees seldomly presents problems – an office opens from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, and employees go to the office from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. While scheduling office employees is not seen as a problem, office operation might be improved using compressed workweeks, which call for fewer workdays per week, but usually a longer workday.

The past twenty years or so have seen remarkable social and economic changes. In the industrialised countries in particular, vast improvements in the techniques of production and distribution have made possible a substantial increase both in gross national product and in real income per head. However, many people wish to share in the benefits of technical progress not only through higher real earnings but also through an improvement in the quality of life and, in particular, through an easing of the strains and stresses of the daily round. This desire has led to a reconsideration of the proportion of time spent on paid work. The duration of the working week has in fact been reduced in recent years in most of the industrialised countries in which it had not already been brought down to about 40 hours and the International Labour Office has been urged to provide further information on the nature and extent of this development.

Explains that the idea of the compressed work week is already a familiar one and much has been written on the subject in trade and academic publications. Presents an annotated bibliography compiled from many years of research.

Executive education is no longer a perk—it's a strategic tool. Corporations are using education to adapt to a changing business scene and to implement new strategic directions.

THE wealth of any country is made up from the sum of the goods and services it produces. But as far as Britain is concerned, successive governments seem to have done their best to stifle this. They have, in fact, drained away the whole—or the greater part—of the manufacturing potential. Profit today is much more likely in the speculative field. By legislation manufacturing has become so restricted that it is almost impossible to start a new business or to continue profitably to run an existing one. To do so is fraught with danger. The chance of success is far too small to attract neither capital nor workers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the barriers perceived by consumers to lowering their meat consumption levels and adopting a plant-based diet, which means a diet that includes mainly non-meat foods, yet it can contain both vegetarian and meat meals.

The prevalence of different barriers for following a plant-based diet is addressed, as well as consumer profiles considering socio-demographics, values and meat consumption frequencies. The data were collected in 2010 by a survey questionnaire, sent to 4,000 randomly selected Finns (response rate=47.3, n=1,890).

Different types of barriers are perceived to hinder the adoption of a plant-based diet, including meat enjoyment, eating routines, health conceptions and difficulties in preparing vegetarian foods. These barriers are strongly correlated, indicating that consumers may not make qualitative difference between different barriers. Furthermore, there are distinct socio-demographic, value and especially meat consumption frequency elements that strengthen the barrier perception, these being male gender, young age, rural residence, household type of families with children, low education, absence of a vegetarian family member or friend, valuation of traditions and wealth and high meat consumption frequency.

High meat consumption is related to many environmental and public health problems. The results call for multifaceted policy implications that should concentrate on different barriers and certain socio-demographic, value and meat eating groups. Importantly, focus should be not only on the group with the strongest barrier perception but also on those particularly willing to make changes in their meat consumption patterns. One practical implication could be to increase the availability of vegetarian foods in public cafeterias or school canteens, as a decrease in meat consumption frequency is strongly correlated with the alleviation of the barrier perception.

Information about differences in socio-demographics, values and meat consumption frequencies between consumers provide opportunities for focussing policy actions to aid the adoption of a plant-based diet.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe an accounting ethics course whose purpose, in part, is to short circuit the process that leads to foolish ethical decisions by professional accountants. In addressing how to make ethical decisions, the course deliberately includes processes intended to develop wisdom and to impede reflexive decisions that reflect the five fallacies of thinking. The approach described represents an active, engaging approach to increasing dialogical and dialectical reasoning in students’ pursuit of wisdom through individual selection of outside reading, engaging speakers, and the use of ethics accountability groups. The course is adaptable to large and small class settings where the professor desires extensive interaction among students, and it creates an environment designed to help students develop self-chosen principles to guide their professional lives. Students take responsibility for developing self-determined principles to guide their professional lives. Clearly identifying these principles provides students a basis for resisting ethical compromises in their careers. The course focuses students on developing wisdom and recognizing the weaknesses in a purely calculation-based moral reasoning.

This paper aims to explore how mid‐career professional mothers perceive themselves in relation to their work and family roles, how they experience these roles, how they merge their work, family and individual self, and what meaning they make of this integration.

The study used in‐depth qualitative interviews with 18 participants aged between 37 and 55 with at least one dependent child under the age of 18, in dual‐earning/career households.

The study reports that a complex relationship of work‐related dynamics and personal factors shaped the meaning for these women amid competing priorities of work, family and individual lives. Organisation and co‐ordination of multiple activities with support from various sources was fundamental to finding balance. A deep sense of motherhood was evident in that their children were their number one priority but career was of high importance as they sought stimulation, challenges, achievement and enrichment in their work. Now, in mid‐career transition, the respondents seek more self‐care time in an effort to find new meaning in the work, family and self equation.

The study raises important issues for the management of professional working mothers and the implications of the study for individuals and organisations are set out.

This paper makes contributions to work‐life integration and career theory. It provides one of the first empirical studies on work‐life integration in Ireland using the construct of meaningful work and secondly builds on the kaleidoscope career model theory.