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States that the Chinese market stands out both for its size and its record of growth. A growing literature identifies a wide range of challenges that must be confronted to launch a successful joint venture. Explores this literature and reports on how one medium‐sized European company, Nutrexpa SA, has successfully set up and developed a joint venture in China.

Illustrates the growth of foreign investment in China, which is most often dealt with through Chinese‐foreign equity joint ventures and discusses the business issues involved. Traces the development of the Chinese accounting system, which is now largely in line with international standards, and identifies four accounting issues for foreign partners in joint ventures. Warns that the evaluation of a proposition must take into account the different accounting standards applied to previous accounts, the time needed to get an investment running effectively and possible legal problems in the home country from personal favour. Points out that the consolidation of joint venture accounts is not straightforward and recommends that the accounting rules which apply to contracts should be specified.

Comparative national management accounting is a young discipline. A recent survey of management accounting practice in Europe reveals five major issues that contrast across national management accounting practice. In the light of this work we undertook a survey of Spanish management accounts and found that there is declining use of official government guidance on management accounting; the emerging management accounting profession is qualified by university education, and is not generally involved in any professional body; although the literature indicates a strong Anglo‐American influence on modern Spanish management accounting, we found a strong, previously unreported, German influence; a wide range of innovative management accounting approaches have been tried; there is a move towards a planning objective as the focus of the management accountant’s work.

During the 1990s studies of management accounting practices in Europe and in Latin America have given us data on 23 countries. In this paper we use these data to identify five distinct aspects of national management accounting culture: the influence of regulations on official recommendations; the source of management accountants; influence from one country to another; variations in use of specific techniques; and variations in the objectives of the management accounting system. We then identify nine factors which account for national variations in the management accounting environment, being: taxation, price controls, protection and competition, academics, ownership of the firm, bonus schemes, inflation, the extent of manipulation, and ideology.

THERE was an air of expectancy about the audience which assembled at Draper's Hall on October 27th to hear the address with which the President of the Board of Education inaugurated the session of the London Branch of the Library Association. Quite unjustifiably, we fear, because it rested upon the expectation, or hope, that the noble and right honourable gentleman would deliver his views of library policy in anticipation of the report of the Trevelyan Committee. Lord Eustace Percy's speech was charming, was stimulating, and was an excellent statement of certain elementary ideals, which, though familiar to us all, cannot be emphasised too often. It was, indeed, exactly the type of speech which a cultured and skilful statesman must make (if he have the ability) to such an audience as ours, which would dearly have liked to hear him say something nearer to what was in their own minds. It said nothing whatever about the Committee, or even referred to its existence. Of course, no minister would or could anticipate the deliberations of any body which had not yet finished its work.

This article provides an introduction and assessment of the English and Spanish literatures on gender relations in disaster contexts. We analyze regional patterns of differences and similarities in women’s disaster experiences and the differing research questions raised by these patterns in the scholarly and practice‐based literature. The analysis supports the claim that how gender is theorized makes a difference in public policy and practical approaches to disaster risk management. We propose new directions in the field of disaster social science and contribute a current bibliography in the emerging gender and disaster field.

A piece of frequently given informal advice to those starting in the world of research is to ‘pick a topic you'll be able to stick with for three or four years’ – and often that's the end of it. This chapter suggests that we should understand the importance of confronting the ‘affective gap’ in how research is currently conceived. It does so by considering how usually we do not engage with the issues underlying this ‘sticking with’ and what allows us to sustain our attention and effort across the years of a research project. Through a case study of my own confrontation with the question of how I chose and changed my own PhD research topic, this chapter introduces the idea of affective research through an exploration of the concept of affect and its relevance to research. The first part of this chapter explores affect through a brief overview of four different scholarly literatures, to provide an initial framework and some clarity for what is often an opaque subject. This is then grounded through an affective engagement with the issue of choosing a research topic and how this affects our research. It concludes with a brief overview of the other chapters in the volume.

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.