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As a long standing advocate of the virtues of added value, I would like to comment on the article by Ivor Stolliday and Margaret Attwood. Like them, I am seriously concerned that added value should not be oversold as a panacea. Indeed, so many people are now jumping onto the bandwagon that those who laboriously pushed it up to the top of the hill are being trampled underfoot by the newcomers. My experience of running many seminars and workshops is similar to that of the ARMC, namely, that those who arrive wanting only a formula for an AV pay scheme depart realising that the pay scheme is only the tip of the iceberg.

It has become an article of faith to believe that the root of the British industrial malaise lies in low productivity. The apparent permanence of a poor productivity record in Britain was brilliantly chronicled by Corelli Barnett in his recent article in ICT on ‘The hundred year sickness’. The government, industry, and commentators point to the unfavourable comparisons between British industry and our foreign competitors. The car industry seems to be the favourite example for this masochistic mode of analysis.