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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.

The purpose of this study is to draw on multiple streams analysis (MSA) and to investigate how policy change emerged from two inquiries into allegations of abusive hospital care in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the United Kingdom (UK) in the 1960s.

The methodology of this study is regarding a historical case study of two inquiries.

The Sans Everything and Ely inquiries had the same legal standing and terms of reference, but the second put psychiatric hospital reform on the agenda, while the first did not. The main factor making Ely rather than Sans Everything the turning point seems to have been concerned with “agency”, linked with a few key individuals.

A study of 1960s event necessarily relies heavily on documentary and archival sources, and cannot draw on interviews which are an important ingredient of many case studies.

The originality of the study is to examines inquiries, which have been largely neglected in MSA, despite their obvious potential role in placing issues on the agenda. Previous studies of MSA have devoted little attention to the ability of the media to provide the focus on “focusing events”.

Explores organizational learning based on the interpretations of actors in the organizational setting. Brings out the major point that events of organizational change are subject to multiple and competing interpretations and that labelling a particular event as “organizational learning” can be seen as an act of power through which a progressive and positive interpretation of organizational events is privileged over other interpretations. Argues that, although the metaphor of “learning” is a useful tool for organizational analysis, focusing only on learning marginalizes the darker themes of people’s organizational experience and leaves us with a more partial appreciation of organizational life.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues in studying hidden populations, with particular focus on methodology used to investigate ethnic minority entrepreneurs who illegally run their businesses in the UK. In this paper, on reflection, the authors look at what issues should be considered before engaging with such communities, as we identify current approaches and evaluate their merits.

Certain methodological problems are faced by researchers working with hidden populations, and this paper explores these using a sample of Ukrainian illegal self‐employed construction workers operating in London. Semi‐structured interviews with 20 Ukrainians showcase the issues raised and help illustrate the limited applicability of some commonly used research methods to ethnic minority entrepreneurship studies. The authors used an intermediary to help gain access to these illegal migrants in order to satisfy the sensitive issues of this vulnerable group of respondents.

The authors analyse the ethical considerations, problems and issues with access to such data, discuss early and more recent sampling methodologies and the ways to estimate the size of hidden population. This paper, hence, establishes the state‐of‐the‐art approaches in this field and proposes potential improvements in achieving representativeness of the data. Using the Ukrainian illegal self‐employed construction workers as an example, this paper evaluates the choices made by the researchers.

The main contribution of this paper is to showcase the methodological issues emerging when studying hard‐to‐reach groups and to emphasise the limited applicability of some methods to research on hidden populations.