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Corruption and dishonesty in the political and bureaucratic realms have impeded the ability of local governments to provide services and social justice in Nepali society. In light of this, the purpose of this research is to answer the key research question: what are the possibilities and limitations of local government in implementing constitutionally guaranteed rights in order to transform local communities?

This study gathered qualitative data from 14 local governments in seven provinces. A total of 56 in-depth interviews were held with elected representatives, political parties, and government officials at both the national and local levels. Both open-ended and open-structured questionnaires were employed for the interviews.

The results indicate that capacity is a major constraint for local governments, which should be addressed to achieve successful local governance, inclusive citizen engagement, and strong technical, administrative and fiscal capabilities. Lack of local autonomy, political conflict and social class differences, external engagement, and conservative hierarchic government bureaucracy are major hurdles to growing capacity.

This paper analyses the capacity of newly restructured local governments through qualitative approach. It attempts to understand to what extent the Nepali local governments are capable in delivering the services at the local level as closest unit of the citizens.

Oklahoma has seen rapid growth in the development of wind energy over the past decade. Residents are concerned about the negative impacts of turbines such as noise or their appearance. This has raised concerns about property values. Thus, this paper aims to examine and quantify the overall impact of wind turbines upon real estate prices in Western Oklahoma.

Sales prices and the history of approximately 23,000 residential real estate records for both platted and unplatted properties in five counties were examined prior to the announcement of construction, after announcement and after construction. A hedonic analysis was undertaken to examine the real estate prices of the properties near wind farms.

While there may be isolated instances of lower property values for homes near wind turbines, results show no significant decreases in property values over homes near wind farms in the study area. Similar results are found for the unplatted properties.

This paper highlights that in spite of mixed attitudes toward wind farms and misconceptions regarding the link between turbines and property values, Oklahoma’s growing wind industry can continue to thrive without negatively impacting nearby home and land values and prices.

Although there have been numerous studies examining the relationship between wind turbine locations and real estate prices, no study has combined the large quantity of records (over 23,000) as well as both platted and unplatted locations.

In a rapidly changing business environment, the need to constantly adapt is deemed essential to maintain competitive advantage. This requires an optimum balance of quantitative and qualitative measures to monitor progress and performance. This paper provides a framework of thought process that will guide practitioners in developing better qualitative measures and seeks to answer three essential questions: thought process 1 – what is the nature of reality? Provides the answer to the question, can the phenomenon be realistically measured? Thought process 2 – what are the processes used for constructing the measure? Provides answer to the question, are the processes appropriate and sufficiently influential? Thought process 3 – what usefulness and power does this measure provide? Provides answer to the question, is it powerful in a practical environment? The framework was applied to measurement in learning organization contexts and ten models were reviewed. Conclusions cover deficiencies in the models and suggestions on how they might be improved.

The paper aims to rethink empirical models and theory used in explaining banks and financial institutions (FIs) and to enhance the process of theory construction. This is a provisional response to Colander et al. (2009) and Gendron and Smith-Lacroix’s (2013) call for a new approach to developing theory for finance and FIs.

An embryonic “behavioural theory of the financial firm” (BTFF) is outlined based on field research about banks and FI firms and relevant literature. The paper explores “conceptual connections” between BTFF and traditional finance theory ideas of financial intermediation. It does not seek to “integrate” finance theory and alternative theory in “meta theory” and has a more modest aim to improve theory content through “connections”.

The “conceptual connections” provide a means to develop ideas proposed by Scholtens and van Wensveen (2003). They are part of a “house with windows” intended to provide systematic means to “take data from the outside world” whilst continuously recognising “the complexities of the context” (Keasey and Hudson, 2007) to both challenge and build the core ideas of FT.

The BTFF is a means to create “conversations” between academics, practitioners and regulators to aid theory construction. This can overcome the limitations of such an embryonic theory.

The ideas developed create new opportunities to develop finance theory, propose changes in banks and FIs and suggest changes in the focus of regulation.

Regulators can use the expanded conceptual framework to encourage theory development and to enhance accountability of banks and FIs to citizens.

The literary world is an elitist enclave, where anti‐marketing rhetoric is regularly encountered. This paper aims to show that the book trade has always been hard‐nosed and commercially driven.

This paper is less a review of the literature, or a theoretical treatise, than a selective revelation of the commercial realities of the book business.

The paper shows that the cultural industries in general and the book business in particular were crucibles of marketing practice long before learned scholars started taking notice. It highlights the importance of luck, perseverance and, not least, marketing nous in the “manufacture” of international bestsellers.

By highlighting humankind's deep‐seated love of narrative – its clear preference for fiction over fact – this paper suggests that marketing scholars should reconsider their preferred mode of research representation. Hard facts are all very well, but they are less palatable than good stories, well told.

The paper makes no claim to originality. It recovers what we already know but appear to have forgotten in our non‐stop pursuit of scientific respectability.

These notes on Sir Walter Scott by John Galt, here published for the first time, have been transcribed by Dr Hamilton B. Timothy, Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Galt Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, from a manuscript among the material given him by Henry Gordon Harvey Smith, Q.C., a great‐grandson of John Galt, and his sister, Mrs Muriel Harvey Turner, of Winnipeg. John Galt's youngest son, Alexander, with whom Galt's widow made her home after the novelist's death in 1839, became the Hon. Sir Alexander Galt and Canada's first Federal Finance Minister; from him John Galt's library and miscellaneous papers passed to his youngest daughter, Annie Prince Galt, who married Dr W. Harvey Smith, a distinguished opthalmologist. (In 1930 he had the rare honour of holding at the same time presidency of both the British Medical Association and the Canadian.) His carefully augmented collection of Galt family papers, inherited by his son and daughter, has now been passed to Dr Timothy for use in connexion with his study, The Galts: a Canadian Odyssey. At the same time the family collection of John Galt's writings—in sixty‐eight volumes, many from the novelist's own library—was presented to the library of the University of Western Ontario. For permission to print these interesting notes we are indebted to Mr Harvey Smith and Mrs Turner. The annotations initialled C are by Dr Robert Hay Carnie of the University of Calgary.

Outlines the aims, purposes and contents of the various reference guides to the manuscripts, poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott, to the dramatizations of the novels, to contemporary and subsequent reviews and critiques of his literary work, and to bibliographical studies.

A YEAR OR TWO AGO there came into my hands a manuscript book about Edinburgh in the 1790s written in his old age in 1854 by a certain John Howell. This book, which had been sent by a relative, proved to be of great interest both topographically and as a record of social life, and was eventually secured by the National Library of Scotland. A few months later, the Keeper of Manuscripts in the Library wrote to me again saying that he believed there might be further eighteenth‐and nineteenth‐century letters and papers in the possession of the former owner of the Howell manuscript, and asking whether she might be willing to allow these to be seen, and possibly acquired, by the Library. The papers turned out to be predominantly family papers, and the central figure in this context was John Brown, M.D., the Edinburgh essayist (1810–82), the author of three volumes of essays and papers, Horae Subsecivae, the best known of which are perhaps ‘Pet Marjorie’ and ‘Rab and his Friends’.

Mr F. W. Caldwell Receives the John Scott Award Mr Frank W. Caldwell, director of research at United Aircraft Corporation, has received the John Scott Award, comprising a medal and cash sum of 1,000 dollars, for development of the controllable pitch propeller.