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Highlights the fact that foreign language (FL) training is a problematic area for many companies. Outlines five approaches to FL training that can be adopted by organizations, ranging from the “language for all” approach to a highly selective approach based on job analysis and individual assessment. Points out that these approaches can be realized in part or whole by two very different implementation strategies.

Argues taht the idea of global and national/international categories being inherently opposed, is a fallacy of the globalization debate. Seeks to illustrate how “international” co‐operation can have favourable national consdequences. Explores the implications of international volunteerism for nation‐building in Singapore.

John Andrews Fitch spent a year studying labor conditions in the steel industry around Pittsburgh during 1907 and 1908. The results of his research became The Steel Workers, one of six volumes in the Pittsburgh Survey, a groundbreaking 1910 analysis of conditions faced by working people in a modern industrial city. Introducing his discussion of common employment practices in the steel industry, Fitch declared, “A repressive regime…has served since the destruction of unionism, to keep the employers in the saddle.” He traced the origins of management’s arbitrary power to the Homestead lockout of 1892, when Carnegie Steel destroyed the last stronghold of organized labor in the mills of western Pennsylvania. During his stay in Pittsburgh, Fitch saw the results of fifteen years of management domination. “The steel worker,” he wrote, “sees on every side evidence of an irresistible power, baffling and intangible. It fixes the conditions of his employment; it tells him what wages he may expect to receive and where and when he must work. If he protests, he is either ignored or rebuked. If he talks it over with his fellow workmen, he is likely to be discharged” (Fitch, 1989, pp. 206, 232–233).

This chapter highlights the growing body of international research into the benefits of residence abroad for foreign language students, surveying studies from the past 35 years originating in both the U.S.A. and the U.K. It examines some of the problematic issues confronting researchers in this area and shows how these issues have contributed to a paucity of studies in the area and led to a diversity in research design. It reports on longitudinal study, the first of its kind in the U.K., which examined the linguistic benefits of residence abroad for a cohort of modern language students from a leading university. This 4-year study used repeated measures proficiency testing, involving a C-test, a grammar test and a range of qualitative measures, to chart the progress made by students on 6- and 12-month study placements in Germany. Findings confirm substantial proficiency gains on both of the main measures but fail to confirm gender and length of residence abroad as predictors of progress. Results also reveal strong differential individual performance during residence abroad. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research aimed at exploring this key finding further.

Volume 12 of Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations (AILR) contains eight papers that deal with contemporary and historical aspects of unionism and other forms of union representation, union-management relations, union political activity, labor market regulation, and interpretations of selected leading labor scholars’ writings about the evolution of welfare capitalism in the U.S. Four of these papers, by Daniel & Siebert, Borgers, Rubinstein, and Pereles, were winners of the 2002 AILR/Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA) “best papers” competition.¹

This paper examines the experience of the two year action research programme Better Government for Older People within the wider context of an ambition to create ‘quality in ageing’. It argues that within the limits of the originating aims and values of the Better Government for Older People a great deal has been achieved to improve services for older people, and to encourage and recognise the direct contributions of senior citizens within 28 pilot areas and wider Networks of local authorities across the UK. However, the author suggests that such service improvements and experiments in engagement are unlikely to be sustained and developed without a wider commitment by central and local Government to the development of strategies for an ageing population.The paper describes the antecedents of the Better Government for Older People programme, its structure and operational practices. It goes on to examine the programme's achievements against its stated aims and values, seeking to identify what still needs to be achieved. In the final section it seeks to explore the barriers to realising the ambitions of quality in ageing, arguing that ageism coupled with political and professional inertia are major constraints. In conclusion it argues that legislation is likely to be a pre‐requisite for the cultural and organisational shift required in order to move to a system based on older people as citizens rather than service recipients.

Christine Asmar works in the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her current research considers questions of difference, internationalisation and globalisation in higher education, with particular reference to Muslim and Indigenous issues.