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To overcome the problem of metabolic crashes as hypoglycaemic as well as hyperglycaemic episodes in diabetic patients the continuous or at least very frequent checking of the circulating intracorporal glucose concentration is necessary. Biosensors measuring glucose in vivo are suitable for estimating the transient interstitial glucose concentration in human beings. Biologically and/or biochemically caused processes are responsible for limiting the functional stability of implanted sensors. It is now possible to advance beyond the current practice of hand making glucose sensors in the laboratory and produce these sensors as industrial products with reproducible characteristics. This gives us a real chance to avoid hypoglycaemic and hyperglycaemic metabolic attacks.

Increasingly, managers are harried by rapidly accelerating technological changes, globalization, and new competitors. How can they cope with the mercurial environments their firms are facing today? Should they stop wasting precious time thinking strategically and instead concentrate on action? Should they forget about careful pre‐planning and use their energy to try enough different approaches so some will surely succeed? Has strategizing as we know it become obsolete in today's chaotic environment?

Much research into housing concentrates on the dwelling as a place of shelter for the household, as a unit to accommodate basic domestic activities or as an asset to secure and facilitate social reproduction. However, the dwelling is more than an enclosed private space; it involves a diversity of indoor and outdoor spaces that house a multitude of activities to fulfil latent functions and meanings. The scarcer the resources of the residents, the more critical it is to maximize the use-value of the home environment, and key ways to add value is for the dwelling to become a place to house income generating activities, a place to produce one's food or a place to accommodate changes in household structure over time. In such cases, public and private space use within the home range is intensified through multiple usage, often changing diurnally or seasonally to afford the occupants increased adaptability and maximum use value. Drawing upon empirical data from Egypt, Colombia and Indonesia, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to analyse the diverse manifestations of this phenomena and to identify lessons for designers and policy makers concerned with making housing more appropriate and affordable.

Presents a review on implementing finite element methods on supercomputers, workstations and PCs and gives main trends in hardware and software developments. An appendix included at the end of the paper presents a bibliography on the subjects retrospectively to 1985 and approximately 1,100 references are listed.

This paper aims to investigate how dynamic capabilities enabled survival in a select group of brewers, during one of the lengthiest and most severe industry consolidations in history. In doing so, we advance Abell’s (1978) theory of strategic windows through integration with the resource-based view of the firm.

Using a mixed method approach, we first apply case study methods to develop hypotheses around the timing and level of operational capability required for survival. In the second phase, we test these hypothesized estimations on the USA Brewing population.

Indicate that brewers which had advanced distribution and manufacturing operational capabilities before the strategic window of opportunity closed had higher survival rates.

This study reinforces the importance of making timely strategic investments in capabilities.

The integration of strategic window and capability theories advances our understanding of the roles that capabilities and time play in determining firm survival.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This paper reports on a study of the efficacy of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand's (the Institute) Professional Accounting School (PAS) programme in developing a set of competencies in candidates. The study surveyed Institute candidates' perceptions of their competence levels for 16 specified skills at the commencement and conclusion of the 1999 PAS programme. The findings indicate that candidates perceived their levels of competence, for both cognitive and behavioural skills, to have been significantly improved by the PAS programme. Tests of two secondary hypotheses in the study indicate certain gender‐ and firm‐based differences in the perceived level of competence of candidates. The results of the study provide the Institute with feedback on the PAS programme and facilitate the further development of the programme. Other professional accounting bodies may consider replicating this study using data collected on similar programmes. The results of such studies may then be compared to enhance the existing knowledge of competency development in professional accounting education.

Many firms are once again enjoying favourable business conditions after a number of very difficult years. The economies of the world have begun to grow, interest rates and inflation are down, and even though unemployment levels are still high, consumer spending patterns display a measure of optimism about the future. However, complacency is not advised; having made it through a deep recession, numerous companies now have to face a series of fresh challenges.

Examines branding strategies in the light of the debate about whether brands should be included on balance sheets. Discusses the factors involved in the creation of successful brands and how brands work. Concludes that there are four levers for developing successful brands: quality, service, innovation, and differentiation, and that the danger of including brands in balance sheets is that it leads to weaker rather than stronger branding strategies.

NO document issued by the National Board for Prices and Incomes is of more importance to people engaged in work study than Report 83 on Job Evaluation. It lists nine definitions by various authorities but contents itself with a fairly simple one; the comparison of jobs by the use of formal and systematic procedures, set down on paper and adhered to as distinct from rule of thumb methods, with subsequent analysis determining the relative positions of jobs in a wage structure.