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An international aid conference held in Tokyo from 9 to 10 June 2003, conducted with the participation of 51 countries and 20 international finance agencies, granted US $4.5 billion over a 4-year period to Sri Lanka (www.news.bbc.co.uk (a)). The aid, pledged by donors for development and reconstruction in Sri Lanka, was conditional upon the successful continuation of progress towards a permanent solution to the ethnic conflict. The Prime Minister promised ‘a provisional administrative structure with wider powers to the LTTE’ (Wickramasinghe, 2003b), suggesting that the Tokyo aid would enable the implementation of a new framework to re-energise Sri Lankan peace and development. However, the aid package has elicited mixed reactions from key players. In particular, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are refusing to participate in further peace negotiations until there is a more equitable distribution of resources, resulting in more aid being allocated to the areas of need in the North, East and South. That is, those areas where they wish to have greater control, and they have condemned the proposed new administrative structure.

This paper examines the contested value of healthy life and wellbeing in a context of severe austerity, exploring how the value of “Public Health” is constructed through and with material-discursive practices and accounting representations. It seeks to explore the political and ethical implications of constructing the valuable through a shared consensus over the “facts” when addressing complex, multi-agency problems with long time horizons and outcomes that are not always easily quantifiable.

The theorisation, drawing on science and technology studies (STS) scholars and Karen Barad's (2007) agential realism, opens up the analysis to the performativity of both material and discursive practices in the period following a major re-organisation of activity. The study investigates two case authorities in England and the national regulator through interviews, observations and documentary analysis.

The paper demonstrates the deeply ethical and political entanglements of accounting representations as objectivity, consensus and collective action are constructed and resisted in practice. It goes on to demonstrate the practical challenges of constructing “alternative accounts” and “intelligent accountabilities” through times of austerity towards a shared sense of public value and suggests austerity measures make such aims both more challenging and all the more essential.

Few studies in the accounting literature have explored the full complexity of valuation practices in non-market settings, particularly in a public sector context; this paper, therefore, extends familiar conceptual vocabulary of STS inspired research to further explore how value(s), ethics and identity all play a crucial role in making things valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse role transition for professionals moving towards hybrid managerial roles. Specifically, the authors examine reforms to the national tax agency in the UK, focusing on attempts to shift hybrid managers away from a focus on tax compliance, to a greater customer focus. This extends understanding of the relationship between New Public Management (NPM) and the public professions, by offering greater insight into the dynamic between regulators and regulatees, as professionals are co-opted into management roles that encompass greater customer orientation.

The authors draw on documentary data relating to reform from 2003 to 2012 and 43 semi-structured interviews with senior tax inspectors co-opted into hybrid manager roles.

The findings support established accounts of the effect of NPM reform to public professions, as these professionals are co-opted into hybrid management roles. Some hybrid managers resist, others embrace the demands of the new role. Linked to a hitherto neglected aspect of analysis (the extent to which hybrid managers embrace a greater customer orientation) the findings also show a more novel third response: some hybrid managers leave the national tax agency for opportunities in the private sector. These public-to-private professionals the authors call “canny customers”. Canny customers are ideally placed to exploit aspects of NPM reform, and thereby accelerate changes in the governance of public agencies, but in a way that might undermine the function of the tax agency and tax professions.

In regulatory settings, policy reform to co-opt professionals into hybrid managerial roles may have mixed effects. In settings where a focal dynamic is the regulator-regulatee relationship, effective governance will require understanding of the labour market to temper excess influence by those hybrid managers who become canny customers, otherwise, in settings where it is easy for individuals to move from regulator to regulatee, the pace and consequences of reform will be harder to govern. This runs the danger of eroding professional values. The specific case of tax professionals reflects themes in the literature examining hybridisation for accountants, and provides novel insight into the dynamics of professionalism that extend to the case of accountants.

The contribution is to extend the literature on role transition of professionals. The authors focus on hybrid managers in the context of a regulatory agency: the UK national tax agency. Policy reforms associated with hybridisation emphasised customer orientation. The authors highlight labour market characteristics impacting the regulator-regulatee dynamic, and an as yet unexplored, unintended consequence of reform. The public professional who leaves for the private sector becomes a “canny customer” who can exploit and accelerate reform.

Chronic exposure to occupational stress may lead to depressive symptoms in police officers. The association between police stress and depressive symptoms and the potential influences of coping and hardiness were evaluated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Stress level was assessed in the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress Study (2004–2009) with the Spielberger Police Stress Survey. The frequency and severity of events at work were used to calculate stress indices for the past year. The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale was used to measure depressive symptoms during the past week. Linear regression was used to evaluate the association between the stress indices and depressive symptom scores. Models were adjusted for age, sex, race, smoking status and alcohol intake, and stratified by median values for coping (passive, active and support seeking) and hardiness (control, commitment and challenge) to assess effect modification.

Among the 388 officers (73.2 percent men), a significant positive association was observed between total stress and the CES-D score (β=1.98 (SE=0.36); p<0.001). Lower CES-D scores were observed for officers who reported lower passive coping (β=0.94 (SE=0.45); p=0.038) and higher active coping (β=1.41 (SE=0.44); p=0.002), compared with their counterparts. Officers higher in hardiness had lower CES-D scores, particularly for commitment (β=0.86 (SE=0.35); p=0.016) and control (β=1.58 (SE=0.34); p<0.001).

Results indicate that high active coping and hardiness modify the effect of work stress in law enforcement, acting to reduce depressive symptoms.

The information needs of consumers or the general public have been neglected by information researchers. Consumers are the users of public libraries, they are changing their sources of information and they are a very large group. This paper discusses two investigations into the information needs of parents — a sub‐group of consumers particularly important to the future of libraries. In the first investigation carried out by the authors the records of a telephone helpline were analysed to find out the subjects of the information that parents needed. These were: children's behaviour, family problems and school. The second investigation, funded by the British Library, involves discussion groups and interviews with parents of children under 5 in the London Borough of Haringey. These parents need information with particular characteristics: it should have authority. Local information is helpful. Information may be needed very fast when a child is ill. 1990s parents want current information. The viewpoint may be important. Considering sources of information, oral information still comes first, books remain reliable and grey literature (e.g. newsletters) is considered very useful. Information provides support for parents undergoing a major transition in their lives.

WHILE there is no doubt that the system of issuing books at “net” prices is of great benefit to booksellers, there is also no doubt that, unless care is taken, it is a serious drain upon a limited book‐purchasing income. A few years ago the position had become so serious that conferences were held with a view to securing the exemption of Public Libraries from the “net” price. The attempt, as was perhaps to be expected, failed. Since that time, the system has been growing until, at the present time, practically every non‐fictional book worth buying is issued at a “net price.”

LIBRARIANS in Britain stand at the threshold of great possibilities. Having passed through the ages of the ecclesiastical library, the rich collector's private library, the academic institutional library, and the rate‐supported public library—all general libraries —they have reached the age of the special library. The next will be that of the co‐ordinated, co‐operative library service.