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The author, whose company runs training courses for the UK Asset and Liability Management Association, explains the rationale behind the training and importance of creating informed professionals within the asset and liability management community.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/09657960410699694. When citing the article, please cite: Jim Byrne, (2004), “ALM: educating the managers of the future”, Balance Sheet, Vol. 12 Iss 4 pp. 14 - 16.

Considers the difficulties experienced by banks in implementing integrated asset and liability management. Explains some of the measures needed in the worlds of credit risk and interest risk. Presents a matrix for risk management and encourages training in this area.

The Xtreme Football League began play in 2001, but lasted for only a single season. It combined the marketing savvy of the World Wrestling Federation with NBC's broadcasting expertise to produce a distinctive sports entertainment product. This case study describes the events that lead to the introduction of the new league, and the league's only season. The factors that contributed to the demise of the XFL are discussed. Some implications of this short “experiment” with a new sports-entertainment league to sports marketers are provided.

THROUGHOUT history certain decades emerge which are of cardinal import to mankind, like the one beginning in 1781, when the inventions of fifty years reached their apogee and through general application transformed the prevailing cottage industry into what we now call the factory system. That vast accretion of resources changed the human environment.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to investigate the documentality of human remains in museum and research collections. Second, to provide a rationale for a processual model of documentation, which can account for their repatriation and eventual burial.

This paper uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the repatriation issue. It considers an ethical argument developed to support claims for repatriation: the nominal identification of a body as a universal criterion for its burial. Based on Igor Kopytoff’s processual model of commoditisation, it looks to cultural anthropology to help explain how objects can move between a document and non-document state.

Human remains can be understood as examples of information-as-thing. However, while document theory can readily account for the expanding realm of documentation, it cannot adequately accommodate instances where documentality is revoked, and when something ceases to be a document. When a human biological specimen is returned, the process that made it serve as a document is effectively reversed. When remains are interred, they revert to their primary standing, as people. The process of becoming a document is therefore not unidirectional, and document status not permanent.

The implications of a processual model of documentation are discussed. Such a model must be able to account for things as they move into and out of the document state, and where the characteristics of documentality change through time.

This paper explores problematic material not usually discussed in relation to document theory. The repatriation movement poses a challenge to a discourse predicated on documentation as a progressively expanding field.

The aim of this study is to explore the nature of the expectations of operations managers (OMs) and the enacted roles of management accountants (MAs) and to understand how MAs construct roles around these expectations.

A qualitative design draws upon company documentation and 36 semi-structured interviews with MAs and OMs. The study uses role theory as a theoretical lens with its core concepts of role expectations, role conflict and role ambiguity. The design draws from role theory’s original development and testing to pair particular roles of MAs with particular roles of OMs in operational settings.

The findings indicate that there are a number of different forms of OMs’ expectations giving rise to role conflicts and role ambiguity for the roles of MAs. OMs’ expectations were identified as conflicting expectations, ambiguous expectations, overloaded expectations and underloaded expectations. MAs construct roles in different ways around these OMs’ expectations, including prioritising the line function, competence deployment, non-accommodation and communication. Factors moderating OMs’ expectations are also identified, including characteristics of the OM and the role of the finance manager.

The study is based on an in-depth investigation of a small number of roles of MAs paired with OMs, and no assurances can therefore be given regarding generalisability of the findings.

The results provide an understanding of the varied nature of expectations that OMs have of MAs and mechanisms through which MAs can address these expectations. It suggests ways in which both MAs and OMs in operational settings can reduce conflicts and ambiguities.

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the expectations of OMs in relation to the roles of MAs and contributes to the literature on the roles of MAs using role theory. It shows how different forms of OMs’ expectations have related mechanisms used by MAs to navigate these expectations through role constructions.