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Transactional analysis (TA) as a strategy for change in organizations appears to be enjoying a period of renewed interest. The extent of its use is sufficient for a substantial evaluation. Attempts at evaluating TA training appear rarely in the organizational/management literature. Reports the findings which have appeared so far; these findings are generally supportive, though studies are frequently based on small sample sizes. Significant findings have been produced in the areas of departmental efficiency, improvements in group processes and increases in empathetic discrimination and internality of control.

In the UK there are now more than three million people unemployed, leaving aside the Black Economy. In the EEC as a whole there are more than 12 million without work.

Millions of the British people have for some years now been struggling valiantly to live with hard times, watching them day by day grow worse but always hopefully that the cloud had a silver lining; that one day, reason and a sense of direction would prevail. Tyranny in many forms is a feature of history; the greatest epics have been risings of ordinary people to overthrow it. The modern form of tyranny is that of Money; the cruel and sinister ways in which it can be obtained and employed and the ineffectiveness of any measures taken to control the evils which result. Money savings over the years and the proverbial bank book, once the sure safeguard of ordinary people, are whittled away in value, never to recover. Causes always seemed to be contained within the country's own economy and industrial practices, and to this extent should have been possible of control. The complex and elaborate systems constructed by the last Government were at least intended for the purpose, but each attempt to curb excessive demands for more money, more and more for doing less and less— the nucleus of inflation—produced extreme reactions, termed collectively “industrial strife”. Every demand met without compensatory returns in increased work, inevitably led to rises in prices, felt most keenly in the field of food and consumer goods. What else would be expected from such a situation?

Maintaining an adequate nutritional state, important at all times, is never more so than during the dark days of Winter. The body reserves are then taxed in varying degrees of severity by sudden downward plunges of the thermometer, days when there is no sight of the sun, lashing rains and cold winds, ice, frost, snow, gales and blizzards. The body processes must be maintained against these onslaughts of nature — body temperatures, resistance against infections, a state of well‐being with all systems operating and an ability to “take it”. A sufficient and well balanced diet is vital to all this, most would say, the primarily significant factor. The National Food Surveys do not demonstrate any insufficiency in the national diet in terms of energy values, intake of vitamins, minerals and nutrients, but statistics can be fallacious amd misleading. NFS statistics are no indication of quality of food, its sufficiency for physiological purposes and to meet the economic stresses of the times. The intake of staple foods — bread, milk, butter, meat, &c., — have been slowly declining for years, as their prices rise higher and higher. If the Government had foreseen the massive unemployment problem, it is doubtful if they would have crippled the highly commendable School Meals Service. To have continued this — school milk, school dinners — even with the financial help it would have required would be seen as a “Supplementary Benefit” much better than the uncontrolled cash flow of social security. Child nutrition must be suffering. Stand outside a school at lunch‐time and watch the stream of children trailing along to the “Chippie” for a handfull of chip potatoes; even making a “meal” on an ice lollie.

The question has been recently raised as to how far the operation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts of 1875, 1879, and 1899, and the Margarine Act, 1887, is affected by the Act 29 Charles II., cap. 7, “for the better observation of the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday.” At first sight it would seem a palpable absurdity to suppose that a man could escape the penalties of one offence because he has committed another breach of the law at the same time, and in this respect law and common‐sense are, broadly speaking, in agreement; yet there are one or two cases in which at least some show of argument can be brought forward in favour of the opposite contention.

Before this great innovation assaults the long‐suffering British public in mind and matter, in the retailer's cash register and the spender's pocket, a brief comparison between the present coinage and the promised decimal one might not be amiss. The £sd system has its faults and understandably is difficult for the foreigner, but no more so than the language and the weather. Like many things British it is so haphazard: why should there be 240 pennies to the pound? Why 12 pennies to the shilling? One thing, however, about this awkward currency is that it is amazingly well‐adapted to price variations at the lower level, and most commodities are in this range. Whether prices have adapted themselves to the flexibility of the coinage or the other way round is immaterial but the centuries have well and truly married the two. As a lowly coin such as the farthing has ceased to have commercial use with the falling value of money, it has disappeared and its place has been taken by the next larger, the halfpenny and then by the penny, and this must surely be the one great advantage of the £sd system.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The report recently issued by the joint committee, appointed by various Administrative Counties and County Boroughs in the North of England, to inquire into the subject of milk contamination, is an important document to which reference was made in the last number of this journal. Unfortunately little permanent good is likely to result from such reports unless the circumstances which have given rise to the grave faults to which attention is called be dealt with by authority. Such reports are admittedly of great interest. They contain much valuable and important matter, and are full of first‐hand and reliable evidence collected by experts at the expenditure of much time and trouble. As a general rule, however, they are too technical in their wording to appeal directly either to the general public or to the ordinary milk dealer. Still, the bearing of the matters they refer to on the every‐day life and health of the nation is so great that they should not be allowed to sink into oblivion by failure to bring their essential features before the wider public to which they are in tended to appeal. On these grounds the suggestion contained in the report that a pamphlet, should he issued containing the results of the committee's investigations is an excellent one. The means that are taken from time to time to rouse public interest in the important and allied questions of meat and milk are unfortunately characterised by their spasmodic, if vigorous, nature. The agitation dies down after a time and is not renewed until perhaps the original question again rises in a sufficiently acute form. The work has then to be done over again. It is necessary to bring home to the public the importance of, say, a pure milk supply, but to produce a permanent impression it is needful to proceed by an educational process and not by one that is based on unorganised agitation. The methods pursued in the United States in relation to food questions are not always to be commended, but in relation to the educational methods to which reference has just been made we may usefully consider the means adopted by the State authorities of the Republic. They are in the first place nothing if not practical. There, as here, the greatest hope of a would‐be reformer lies in his being able to rouse up public opinion. Hence we find questions such as these are kept steadily to the front by the authorities, by means of official publications and the public press, with the avowed object of enlisting the trade on the side of the law to aid in keeping food products up to reasonable standards of quality. In a report recently issued by the State Agricultural Station of Kentucky dealing with the question of the milk supplied to the town of Louisville it is said that the result of inquiries instituted by the station showed “the large majority of dairymen to be anxious to co‐operate with the officials in the enforcement of all fair regulations; that they need help in an educational way and are eager for any practical information which will help them to better their plants; that to accomplish this both the State and the city should maintain, not at the dairyman's expense, sufficient experts in dairying science, and veterinarians to constantly inspect the districts, helping wherever possible, not only pointing out deficiencies, but suggesting remedies, and, finally, reporting for prosecution or withdrawing the permit of the dairyman not complying with the regulations necessary to produce wholesome milk.” What is said in this report might equally well apply to affairs on this side of the water as regards the milk supply. The authorities in Kentucky have had exactly the same problems to face and deal with as those referred to in the report of the Joint Committee. The same want of attention to cleanliness, to light, ventilation, and drainage in the cowshed; the same unpleasant methods of dealing with the milk during the process of transport; and the same want of cleanliness in the shop characterised many of the small and large dealers in Kentucky as in this country. For all that we cannot assume the milk dealer or cowkeeper to be invariably in the wrong through malice aforethought. The Kentucky report just quoted states that the time and money spent in telling the cowkeeper and dairyman not to do this or that would be in many cases better spent by showing him how to do things. “Most dairymen would be willing to make improvements if they knew exactly how to go about it.” It appears that three‐fourths of the dairymen who supply Louisville with milk are co‐operating with the health authorities in the task of “cleaning up.” We must not assume that the British cowkeeper or dairyman is less willing to do the right thing than is his American confrére. The position of such an institution as a State Experiment Station is probably peculiar to the United States. It is in intimate touch with the requirements of every farmer in the State. It deals with all problems relating to the rearing and diseases of cattle, their housing, food and treatment; with the products of the dairy, farm, and stockyard. It is consulted by farmers on all conceivable subjects affecting their business at all times. The interests of the station do not end here. Not only is it concerned with the cattle and their products as such, but the Experiment Station is authorised by the legislature to concern itself with the distribution and sale of all dairy produce including, of course, milk and allied substances, with the hygienic and veterinary inspection of buildings and cattle, as well as with the conditions prevailing in dairies and milkshops. Moreover, the inspection of food products of all kinds and their analysis under the Pure Food Law of the State is frequently placed by the State in the hands of the experts attached to the Experiment Station. Under these circumstances such an institution is exceptionally well qualified to judge the requirements or faults of any process or institution affecting the food supply. In the case under review the Experiment Station sent round a circular letter to all cowkeepers and dairymen concerned, pointing out what it proposed to do, and asking for comments and suggestions. The object, in fact, was to make all farmers and dairymen feel that in the authorities of the Experiment Station they had to deal with a friendly body and not one whose desire was merely to catch them tripping. This they have apparently succeeded in doing, and with good results. The position of affairs in this country seems rather to suggest that public authorities and the milk trade occupy two hostile camps, and if this be so the fact is regrettable.

Reviewing the Food Standards Report on Misdescriptions contained in this issue—the terms, names, phrases widespread in the field of agriculture and food—one cannot fail to notice the impressive role that words generally play in everyday use of language, especially in those areas where widespread common usage imports regional differences. The modern tendency is to give to words new meanings and nowhere is this so apparent as in the food industry; the Food Standards Committee considered a number of these. The FSC see the pictorial device as making a deeper impression than mere words in relation to consumer preference, which is undoubtedly true. Even Memory can be compartmentalized and especially with the increasing years, the memory tends to become photographic, retaining visual impressions more strongly than the written word. Auditory impressions depend largely on their accompaniments; if words are spoken with the showing of a picture or sung to a catchy tune, these will be more strongly retained than mere words on a printed label. At best, pictorial devices give rise to transient impressions, depending on the needs and interests of the viewer. Many look but do not see, and as for spoken words, these may “go in one ear and out of the other!”.

This chapter examines the case studies in this volume with a focus on concepts and methods used in the study of multi-organization networks and partnerships, motivations to join in multi-party collaboration, how multi-organization collaborations organized and managed, what kinds of value are created by collaborations, and the role of leadership therein.

A comparative look at four vertical networks (in health care and education); two “issue” networks/partnerships (sustainable seafood and water use); and the roles of government in collaboration in horizontal, vertical, and issue-based arrangements.

The chapter describes “lessons” learned about building both sustainability and collaborative capabilities in and across partnering organizations and about improving partnership structures, processes, and results.

The chapter sums and synthesizes the volume’s contributions.