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Significant problems arise where an investigating authority searches premises for relevant material and the holder of the material asserts a claim of legal privilege over some, if not all, of the documents concerned. Invariably the holder's claim is rejected by the investigating authority, either on the ground that legal privilege does not attach to the category of material in question, or if it does attach, the privilege falls away because the material was brought into existence to further a fraudulent purpose. How are disputes between the investigating authority and the holder of the material to be resolved? How is the true status of the material to be determined?

The purpose of this paper is to consider the increased exposure to cyber crime which would result if one‐day cheque clearance were introduced in the UK.

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the UK and US cheque‐clearance systems, examines the enhanced vulnerability to fraud occasioned by a one‐day cheque clearance system and considers the resulting evidential difficulties encountered in US cheque fraud prosecutions. The paper then anticipates the UK experience and examines recent cyber‐crime cases in the UK. Finally the paper explores the possibility of biometric fingerprint authorisation as a prevention strategy.

The introduction of one‐day cheque clearance in the USA heralded an increase in cyber‐crime banking fraud and a reduction of the ability of the prosecuting authorities to bring cases to court because of the paucity of documentary evidence. The same pattern of activity would be likely to occur if one‐day cheque clearance were to be introduced in the UK. Banks should lobby for the replacement of cheque banking with biometric fingerprint authorisation of electronic banking transactions as the best way forward.

This paper indicates the most pragmatic way forward for banks targeted by this type of cyber‐crime and warns the legal profession of the evidential difficulties in US prosecutions.

This paper is of value to legal practitioners, academics, students and financial market professionals with interests in banking, fraud, and cyber‐crime.

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether HM Revenue & Customs systems are vulnerable to penetration by organized criminals.

The paper is a review of available material published in hard copy and on the internet.

The paper finds that HM Revenue & Customs systems are vulnerable to penetration by organized criminals in a number of ways. Theft by employees, fraud perpetrated by external criminals and money laundering are particular vulnerabilities.

The paper is an invite to the House of Commons Public Accounts or Treasury Select Committee to investigate HM Revenue & Customs' vulnerability to penetration by organized criminals.

The paper identifies the need to reduce monies lost by HM Treasury.

This is the first study, to the author's knowledge, of a holistic approach to the issue of HM Revenue & Customs systems' vulnerablity to penetration by organized criminals.

On 30th October, 2000, a new initiative to combat money laundering was unveiled. What differentiates this initiative from many of the existing initiatives is that it has been put forward by the private sector. Eleven banks signed a set of principles known as the Wolfsberg Anti‐Money Laundering Principles (the ‘Wolfsberg Principles’). The Wolfsberg Principles are a non‐binding set of best practice guidelines governing the establishment and maintenance of relationships between private bankers and clients. Over the past decade much has been written about money laundering, the problems it creates for the economic, political and social institutions of countries, and the need to combat the phenomenon. Most initiatives to date have been public sector led by governments and their regulatory and law enforcement agencies, or by government representatives acting through international forms such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Basel Committee of Bank Supervisors. Consequently, most initiatives have focused on enacting new criminal laws, implementing reporting requirements, and developing codes of best practice. The fact that the private sector has taken the initiative to establish the Wolfsberg Principles is therefore worthy of closer analysis. As Dr Peter Eigen, the Chairman of Transparency International, observed on the release of the Wolfsberg Principles, ‘This is a unique event — few would expect the leading anti‐corruption organisation and the leading banks to be standing on the same platform’. The following article examines the Wolfsberg Principles in order to identify the various strengths and weaknesses of each. First, however, it is worth noting in brief the background to the Wolfsberg Principles and the regulatory paradigm within which they are to operate.

Until now, very little empirical research has focused on social media adoption behavior within relatively small firms, and fewer still on adoption drivers within the specific context of microentrepreneurs, including that of micro-retailers. The purpose of this manuscript is to contribute to the study on social media adoption at the firm level by focusing on the specific role of institutional pressures, as captured by coercive, mimetic and normative pressures, in the initial adoption of social media in the context of micro-retailers.

This study, based on self-administered questionnaires, collected data from more than 200 micro-retailers in an emerging market and utilized the partial least squares modeling approach.

Findings reveal that normative and mimetic (not coercive) pressures are critical to initial adoption. Additional analysis, though not directly the center of attention in the study, indicates that both coercive and normative pressures are critical to continued adoption, especially for retailers who currently use social media to promote their businesses.

This study represents one of the few attempts to extend the institutional theory to study social media adoption behavior in the firm. In addition, it is the first in the literature to extend the theory to social media adoption within the context of microenterprises, primarily micro-retailers, who form the significant majority in the world.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although improvisation has been conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process of improvisation itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to jazz improvisation to identify a new paradox of interest to organizational scholars: the paradox of intentionality. To improvise creatively, jazz musicians report that they must “try not to try,” or risk undermining the very spontaneity that is prized in jazz. Jazz improvisers must therefore control their ability to relinquish deliberate control of their actions. To accomplish this, they engage in three interdependent practices. Jazz musicians intentionally surrender their sense of active control (“letting go”) while creating a passive externalized role for this sense of active control (using a “third ear”). Letting go allows new and unexpected ideas to emerge, while the metaphorical third ear can identify promising ideas or problematic execution and, in doing so, re-engage active agency (“grabbing hold”). Examining the practices within creative improvisation reveals the complexity of the lived experience of the paradox, which we argue suggests further integration among organizational research on improvisation, creativity, and paradox.

The aim of the DECIMAL Project is to produce an integrated Decision Support Module for library management systems. This is being developed from an assessment of the needs and practices of library managers in small to medium size libraries in the UK, Spain and Italy. The Project, which commenced in February 1995, comprises four Phases — Management, Research, Technical Development and Evaluation. The objectives and structure of the Project are described, with an account of progress in the technical development to date and a summary of the findings of the Research Phase. The Module is being developed to incorporate both textual and numeric information to support the decision process.

This paper reports the findings of in‐depth case study research carried out with the board of a UK family business. The research was designed to explore interaction amongst directors seeking to achieve agreement on a key strategic issue in one of their quarterly board meetings. In particular there is a focus on the extent to which there is parity between individual directors’ own opinions and views about this strategic issue, contributions they made in the boardroom and the collective agreement reached.