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This study explores how balanced scorecard format and reputation from environmental performances interact to influence performance evaluations.

Two general options exist for inserting environmental measures into a scorecard: embedded among the four traditional perspectives or grouped in a fifth perspective. Prior balanced scorecard research also assumes negative past environmental performances. In such settings, and when low management communication levels exist on the importance of environmental strategic objectives (a common practitioner scenario), environmental measures receive less decision weight when they are grouped in a fifth scorecard perspective. However, a positive environmental reputation would generate loss aversion concerns with reputation, leading to more decision weight given to environmental measures. Participants (N=138) evaluated performances with scorecards in an experimental design that manipulates scorecard format (four, five-perspectives) and past environmental performance operationalizing reputation (positive, negative).

The environmental reputation valence’s impact is more (less) pronounced when environmental measures are grouped (embedded) in a fifth perspective (among the four traditional perspectives), when the environmental feature of the measures is more (less) salient.

Findings provide the literature with original empirical results that support the popular, but often anecdotal, position of advocating a fifth perspective for environmental measures to help emphasize and promote environmental stewardship within an entity when common low management communication levels exist. Specifically, when positive past environmental performances exist, entities may choose to group environmental performance measures together in a fifth scorecard perspective without risking those measures receiving the discounted decision weight indicated in prior studies.

The Haslegrave Report, which will bring a more systematic approach to the education and training of the technician, was published on 16 December 1969. Already it has attracted a great deal of comment, mostly favourable. Recently the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Technician Engineers organised a conference on the Haslegrave Report at Nottingham University and this provided a valuable formal platform for the public expression of views. Two speeches in particular seemed of special interest to our readers. The first reported speech is that given by Mr W A C Kendall, President of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions (ATTI), presenting the official view of the technical college teaching profession. Following this is a report of the speech by Mr R F Marshall, a well‐known and distinguished training manager, looking at the Haslegrave proposals from an industrial viewpoint. Reference is made to Dr Haslegrave's own speech to the conference in our editorial leader on page 248 of this issue.

This study examines the leadership styles provided by women in top corporate positions. Three women – each president of a southern California apparel manufacturing company – were selected for case studies. Major findings show an integrative leadership model characterised by task commitment, demonstrated by a “hands‐on” approach to work, personal sacrifice, multi‐tasking and goal orientation; a commitment to personal relationships with employees, shown by an emphasis on teamwork‐collaboration, egalitarianism and concern for employees; and power sharing, shown by information sharing, autonomous decision making and employee development. This integrative leadership has a strong impact not only on how women deal with employees within their companies but also on how they deal with external business constituents. The study concludes by showing that this leadership style lays a foundation for future studies of women’s leadership in other types of apparel industries as well as in other fields.

The increasing use of complex, nonfinancial environmental performance measures in managerial decisions motivates consideration of contextual influences that potentially impact managerial judgments in environmental settings. This study extends general evaluability theory (GET: Hsee & Zhang, 2010) to environmental accounting by investigating the combined effects of evaluation mode and incomplete supplemental evaluability information (SEI; e.g., benchmark data) on management decisions. To elaborate, evaluation mode is the display format in which the accounting information system (AIS) provides available information for analysis; e.g., a manager’s or business unit’s performance is assessed either comparatively (i.e., in joint mode) or individually (i.e., in separate mode). GET suggests more decision weight on measures containing SEI in separate mode because that evaluation mode contains less context in which to analyze information. On the other hand, more decision weight should result for measures that do not contain SEI in joint mode because that mode already contains more context for analysis (e.g., comparing multiple performances with each other). To test these predictions, experimental participants (n = 53) evaluated environmental measures for factories with similar environmental performances. To operationalize the information available in many environmental AIS, some, but not all, performance measures contained benchmark data (incomplete SEI); factories were evaluated either jointly or separately. Participants evidenced decision intransitivity; i.e., in separate evaluation mode, factories rated higher when a favorable measure contained SEI, while in joint evaluation mode, factories rated higher when a favorable measure lacked SEI. The results extend previous AIS and management accounting research by investigating contextual influences, and potential systems design elements, in judgments using environmental AIS.

Despite the increasing evidence about the inappropriate use of medications by older people, there is very little published evidence about the control and monitoring of neuroleptic drugs used in nursing homes. As others have indicated, this is all the more worrying when set in the context of the paucity of research on nursing home care and the trend to replace registered nurses with untrained care assistants. In the United States, legislation in the form of the Nursing Home Reform Act (OBRA 1987) was introduced, in part, to regulate the prescribing and administration of neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs. No such legislation exists in Canada or the United Kingdom. In the case of the latter jurisdiction, the recent Royal Commission on Long‐Term Care for older people (The Stationery Office, 1999) has recommended a national care commission to monitor care, and set assessment and quality benchmarks. In Canada this debate has not even begun, and the purpose of this paper is not to ignite controversy, but to raise questions about the use of these drugs with nursing home residents. Voluntary guidelines and education of physicians, nurses and care attendants would be infinitely better than legislation. In the meantime, we need research to address the following questions: For what reasons should these drugs be given to older people? Are these drugs being used appropriately? Is the risk of side‐effects too great with these drugs? Are the numbers and type of staff employed in nursing homes adequate/qualified to detect and report side‐effects? How well do these drugs manage the behaviours they are given to control? Are they being used as chemical restraints or to make the older person compliant? Are the so‐called ‘atypical’ neuroleptic drugs any better? What we offer in this article is background information that might encourage others to not only review their practice but also to address these questions.

Henry George's fame in the fields of economics, politics and literature rests largely on his powerful book, Progress and Poverty, first published in 1879. The centenary of this event sparked a modest revival of interest in George's work among academic economists, including a special session devoted to him at the December 1979 American Economics Association meetings in Atlanta. Generally, however, his work has been neglected by twentieth‐century economists and, as Robert Heilbroner (1969) remarked, he is cast as a member of the economics “underworld”. If any economics undergraduate has heard his name it is usually through a passing reference in a first‐year textbook to the Single Tax Movement. The impression is then given by the text that George was a single‐issue fanatic. The student is told that a tax on land rents is theoretically interesting and that it would have no disincentive effects but that it is either impractical to separate land from improvements or that rents are not sufficiently important to warrant much attention to them as a major source of government finance.

The acceptance of the educational reforms advocated by Crowther, Robbins, Newsom and now Henniker‐Heaton require a massive increase in the school and college building programme. The Henniker‐Heaton report requires an expenditure of £60 million for buildings and equipment, if its admittedly modest target of an additional 250,000 with day release is to be achieved by 1970. Whilst it remains doubtful if anyone really believes such expenditure is possible, or even practicable by 1970, the clamour for more college accommodation continues, and the failure to provide it will be set alongside the shortage of teachers as reasons for our failure to improve our educational services in general, and our day release arrangements in particular.

In this paper we discuss a mechanism for making business decisions on the basis of an expected penalty function associated with cost variance. We assume that the decision maker is knowledgeable of the economic environment in which the decision will be made, but that he has no hard data” such as a market research report. In this setting fuzzy logic is more applicable than ordinary statistical decision theory. We develop a method of computing a fuzzy expected penalty based on a fuzzy distribution of cost variance and a fuzzy penalty function. These fuzzy expected penalties are then defuzzified” so that a non‐fuzzy decision can be made.

THE POST‐WAR PERIOD has produced some major changes in methods of training of professional engineers, one of the most significant being the widespread adoption of various forms of sandwich course aimed at closer integration of academic study and practical experience. The ‘sandwich’ idea is not, however, a post‐war development; in fact, a number of college and university courses have been run on similar lines for many years. These were the prototypes of the thin‐sandwich arrangements involving alternating periods, usually of about six months, in college and in industry which characterise the courses leading to the recently instituted Diploma in Technology.