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In those frightening years between the two Wars and governments in France came and went with dismal frequency, it used to be said that any French Government which permitted food prices to rise had no chance whatever of surviving, and the result was that food was bountiful and incredibly cheap. Times have changed dramatically but not the attitude of people to the price and availibility of food and, in particular of political control; this is very much the same as always. Mostly, it revolves around the woman and what she sees as an abuse, greed and taking mean advantage of prevailing conditions and, make no mistake, this will be reflected in the political field; in the way she votes. It has happened in previous elections; it will happen in even greater degree in the next election and, although not decisive, it can have a not insignificant impact. None know better than the housewife how meaningless is the smug talk of the politicians when it comes to food prices. Their attitude may not have been the main factor in throwing out the last Conservative Government; this was undoubtedly the fear that their continuance in office would result in widespread strikes and the serious effect these upheavals have on food prices (and other household necessit ies), but the votes of woman were an unimportant contribution. As it was, it mattered little to the muscle men of the trade unions which party is in power. Women's talk around the shops and supermarket's, up and down the High Street to‐day is one long grumble and disillusionment with politicians generally.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The old year has gone, leaving its trail of never‐to‐be‐forgotten memories of strife and turbulence, calamity, disaster, and a huge burden of worries for us to face in the New Year. Few if any will not be deeply grateful to see the passing of 1985. Except for the periods of calm there cannot be a year within living memory to equal it in terms of violence, unparalleled in times of “peace”, collosal in terms of soaring social and public expenditure and financial loss, and in disasters in the world beyond the shores of these islands. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the enormous indebtedness which the year has heaped upon the people will never be wiped off, and it has got to be done mainly by those innocent of any misconduct, and their descendants. The unprecedented scale of street and community violence, the looting, thieving and general crime committed behind the screen of it.

The whole kingdom from north to south at the time of writing is enveloped in freezing Arctic weather, reminiscent of the North Russian campaign of long ago. The normal winter is relatively mild, mainly a Westerly pattern, occasionally wild and windy, wet with a rare cold “snap”. There are variations in the pattern, damp and warm in the south‐west, few frosts and rarely any snow; in the north of the country, Scotland, much colder, with the south‐east partaking of the weather pattern of the land mass of the Continent. The variations appear more of the mild weather in the South and colder, appreciably, in the North; recalling service personnel stationed at Gosport who did not need an overcoat all winter, whereas in the North, many found it necessary to wear a light overcoat tor most of the year, the south‐east corner of England, obtaining no help from the warming Gulf Stream, often gets the worst of the weather, which it has done to a very considerable extent in this winter.

THE fashionable topic today is management. Critics lay at its door many of the troubles from which we suffer. On the other hand there are those who laud it as the key which will open the door to future prosperity for this country. Government, Press, commerce and industry are as one in assuring us that by making management efficient we can say goodbye to many of our difficulties. That is a rather facile assumption. Prosperity depends on productivity and management is only one of the factors involved.

As well as the relatively large number of cases of typhoid fever resulting from the Zermatt outbreak, the last few months have seen several outbreaks of both typhoid and paratyphoid in different parts of the country, all having food as the suspected or proven vehicle, except perhaps for the most recent South Shields out‐break, where as yet the source has not been traced, although canned meat is suspected. In small outbreaks it is rarely easy to quickly pin‐point the food vehicle; usually none of the infected food remains; it takes time to confirm clinical diagnoses by bacteriological exam‐ination of sera, faeces, etc., and frequently a food is implicated only by suspicion, although usually based upon good circumstantial evidence.

Anti-globalization and protectionism movements have transformed strategic internationalization, international business (IB) student engagement and enrollment growth into very complex endeavors. Whereas the literature is rather scarce on solutions, this paper aims to offer some best practices at a highly ranked IB program that can be very useful to business school leaders.

Descriptive case study of the Fox IB program (Temple University, USA) is based on an inductive approach and the Quality Function Deployment framework to design and internationalize the curriculum.

Listening to the voice of the customers through student and employer testimonials, the author found the elements that make an IB program and curriculum successful. Even senior students who are “between opportunities” feel that the new IB curriculum have prepared them well for their career.

While the case study methodology is well-suited to understand strategies and processes, this research has natural limitations in terms of generalizability.

Academic Directors and business school leaders can use these best practices to innovate, engage their stakeholders and grow enrollments. By increasing job placement opportunities and enrollments, they create a virtuous cycle of success and can obtain additional resources for their program.

The value of management education to society is almost incalculable. IB is an integrative management discipline that is instrumental to the success of the global economy and society.

The best practices of the highly ranked Fox IB program and the 21 student and employer testimonials in this case study have never been shared before.

This paper aims to combine the agency theory and efficiency wage theory to explore the effects of relative compensation for executive directors with marketing experience on two marketing outcomes (marketing efficiency and market share) and the moderating roles of ownership type (private vs state-owned enterprises) and market concentration in this process.

A total of 2,753 firm-year observations from Chinese listed companies (from 2010 to 2014) were retrieved from China Stock Market and Accounting Research database and analyzed using firm random-effects with industry, year and region fixed effects.

Relative compensation has a positive effect on both marketing efficiency and market share, and these effects are moderated by ownership type and market concentration. Specifically, the positive effect of relative compensation on marketing efficiency and market share are stronger for central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) compared to local SOEs and private-owned enterprises but the results are mixed for market concentration.

This study shows that paying higher compensation to the executive directors with marketing experience can enhance marketing performance, but the data does not allow identification of the actual actions taken by these directors for this.

This study highlights the importance of appropriate compensation for directors with marketing experience to motivate them to make better marketing decisions to overcome the challenges posed by market concentration and agency conflicts.

This paper points out the importance of having directors with marketing experience and paying them suitable compensation to motivate them to be more effective.

This study aims to examine the applicability of key measures of service quality and customer satisfaction in a cross‐cultural setting, first establishing measurement equivalence and then investigating the impact of culture on these measures.

Using scenarios involving a visit to the dentist's office, respondents from Germany, Japan, and the USA participated in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment in which the authors manipulated both expectations (low/high) and service performance (low/high).

Regardless of expectations, when performance was low, the low‐context respondents (USA and Germany) perceived lower quality than did the respondents from the high‐context country (Japan), but gave higher quality ratings than did the Japanese respondents when the performance was high.

The findings of this study highlight the necessity of considering culture when interpreting customer satisfaction ratings.

This research adds credence to the paramount role culture plays in consumers' ratings of perceived service quality and customer satisfaction.