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This paper is rooted in practitioner experience of working within the non‐profit sector. It is both underpinned by Master’s level research and built on as part of an on‐going sense‐making process for the author in terms of her doctoral research. Focusing on a specific part of the sector – local development agencies, explores how personal theories emerge and the rules of thumb chief executives of such agencies use to develop their practice. This paper draws on fieldwork involving interviews with 20 chief executives and considers the roles of chief executives in relation to learning and development needs. As such, this is not a search for “truth” or for blueprints for managers, but represents a concern for and interest in how people – “puzzled” individuals who have to deal with ambiguous situations day‐by‐day – juggle multiple realities, and what informs their (thinking and) actions.

This chapter provides a useful background to the development of voluntary social work in Denmark that echoes the experience of other European countries over the last 20 years. It documents the shift from periphery to centre stage of voluntary and community organisations in the provision of social care and welfare services. This has meant new roles for volunteer-led social work organisations and social enterprises in providing services directly and in supplementing existing public sector services. The appreciation and centrality of the sector was marked with the Charter of Co-operation between the voluntary sector and government (similar to the Accord in Canada and the Compact in the United Kingdom) followed by the development of infrastructure organisations, joint committees and policy forums and calls for what la Cour and Hø´jlund describe as ‘more integrated forms of cooperation between the voluntary sector and the public sector’ (pp. 87–111, final paragraph).

Much of the research and dialogue around the voluntary sector is around the economics and identity of the sector. Its relationship with clients, suppliers and government has become more sophisticated and complex. The ability of voluntary sector leadership to be proactive in determining the nature of these relationships underpins much of the current debate on the future of the voluntary sector, both in the UK and internationally. There are useful lessons to be learnt from business techniques. Yet, the execution of business‐enhancing tools needs to be considered in the context relevant to the sector’s interests and to the primary aims of a sector. This paper is based on practitioner experience, previous unpublished research, initial doctoral research into management and learning in the sector and e‐mail interviews with key respondents working in the non‐profit sector in the UK and Russia.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to explore the current trend for new ‘mutual’ models of public service delivery as part of a process of personalisation and commodification of health and social care design and service delivery.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors use the thesis of commodification and the concept of value to explore, with the aid of three examples from previous research, the complexity of transfer of large-scale services from local government and health bodies and the potential contribution of co-operatives and mutuals to this agenda.

Findings – Mutuals may provide an alternative to the supposedly inevitable progression to wholly commodified health and social care provision. However, a top-down push to encourage employee-owned enterprises may fail to take account of significant issues: high capital and labour costs; transfer of risk to consumers purchasing services; quality of care assurance; scope and scale of services; and enabling policies and structures to support democratic ownership and control of enterprises.

Research implications/limitations – Although the chapter focuses on Welsh experience, there are implications for the future provision of public services more generally.

Originality/value – This chapter contributes to a growing discourse and critical awareness of co-operatives and mutuals as potential public service providers. In particular, the nature of democratic engagement and involvement; models of co-ownership and co-construction of public services and the role of the State in promoting alternative non-marketised systems of design and delivery for the public good as well as maintaining accountability through local and national democratic processes.

We have before us the recently‐issued Annual Report of the Local Government Board on the work done by the Local Authorities under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. While preserving the general form and arrangement of its predecessors, it shows that not only the Board itself, but the local authorities also, are coming to an increasing realisation of the importance of the subject. Six years ago we had occasion to point out some of the defects attaching to these reports, and to suggest various improvements that might be made in them. We felt, and expressed at the time our belief, that the Board was much handicapped by the form of quarterly reports imposed on the Public Analyst by the Food and Drugs Acts, and by the non‐existence of any machinery by which it could get together and collate the vast amount of information which those reports ought to, but do not, yield. Until the law is altered the present system must continue, but it is striking evidence of the lack of serious study spent on the matter that for want of effective coordination and control more than one‐half of what may be considered the real and permanent value of the Public Analyst's work goes into the waste‐paper basket. The work done by most Public Analysts as individuals is limited to some few hundreds of samples of any one article of food, but the combined expeperience of them all would in most cases — assuming it could be accurately ascertained—go far towards settling in a single year many of the thorny questions relative to standards and limits which are fought out at such great length and still greater cost to the community in the courts of law.

The Presidential Address to the Liverpool Engineering Society by Mr. Farthing (the salient points of which are reproduced in this issue) has particular bearing upon lubrication and especially on young lubrication engineers. Mr. Farthing stressed the very wide field open to young engineers and the difficulties associated with training in order to cover as wide a field as may be necessary. It is usually so important to gain a wide knowledge before one can specialise and this is certainly the case with lubrication engineers. One cannot begin to fully appreciate the intricacies of a lubrication system with all its accessory components lubricating and guarding, for example, a large motive power plant or rolling mill, until one has more than a mere working knowledge of the plant itself, the duties it must perform, how it performs them and the snags that arise which might be overcome by correct lubrication. In view of the fact that lubrication systems are just as important in a textile mill as in a power station or a large brick works, the almost impossible‐to‐achieve‐range of knowledge that would simplify the work of a lubrication engineer is very obvious. Fortunately, lubricating principles apply to most cases and knowing how to apply one's knowledge from basic principles is the key to success in this difficult profession.

ONE effect of sharing a common language with America is the imposition of a surfeit of books on matters like work study, in which our own literature is modest indeed. The almost simultaneous publication of two books with a common subject is therefore very unusual. They both deal with work measurement, one in forty‐seven chapters and the other in fifteen. Since books are not judged by a quantitative standard this is no guide to their respective merits.

It is a well known problem the interactions between the market value of cash flows and the discount rate (usually the weighted average cost of capital, WACC) to calculate that value. This is mentioned in almost all text books in corporate finance. However, the solution adopted by most authors is to assume a constant leverage D%, and hence assume that the leverage gives raise to an optimal capital structure and the discount rate is constant. On the other hand, most authors use the definition of the Ke, the cost of leveraged equity for perpetuities even if the planning horizon is finite. Among these authors we find the work of Wood and Leitch W&L 2004. In this article we wish to analyse the claim made by W&L 2004 in the sense to have found an iterative solution to the problem of circularity that results in a “near” matching with the Adjusted Present Value APV, proposed by Myers, 1974. They use as the basic principle the fact that there is a “near” constant relation between Ke the cost of equity and Kd the cost of debt. They consider as well that the cost of debt Kd is not constant and changes proportionately with the leverage D%. We propose a very simple and precise approach to solve the above mentioned circularity problem.