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The depth and breadth of the market for contingent claims, including exotic options, has expanded dramatically. Regulators have expressed concern regarding the risks of exotics to the financial system, due to the difficulty of hedging these instruments. Recent literature focuses on the difficulties in hedging exotic options, e.g., liquidity risk and other violations of the standard Black‐Scholes model. This article provides insight into hedging problems associated with exotic options: 1) hedging in discrete versus continuous time, 2) transaction costs, 3) stochastic volatility, and 4) non‐constant correlation. The author applies simulation analysis of these problems to a variety of exotics, including Asian options, barrier options, look‐back options, and quanto options.

This article discusses static hedges for installment options, which are finding broad application in cases where the option‐buyer may reduce up‐front premium costs via early termination of an option. An installment option is a European option in which the premium, instead of being paid up front, is paid in a series of installments. If all installments are paid, the holder receives the exercise value, but the holder has the right terminate payments on any payment date, in which case the option lapses with no further payments on either side. The authors summarize pricing and risk management concepts for these options, in particular, using static hedges to obtain both no‐arbitrage pricing bounds and very effective hedging strategies with almost no vega risk.

Modelling is a research methodology that has received little academic attention since it began to be formulated in the 1970s. On the spectrum of clean language interviewing (CLI) applications described in Chapter 1, the most sophisticated is modelling, and especially modelling that takes place in real time during the interview.

This chapter defines what we mean by ‘a model’ and ‘modelling’ and explains how they are related to CLI. We situate the chapter by recounting how modelling became linked to CLI. To conclude we consider some of the methodological challenges faced by both the interviewee and interviewer involved in a modelling research project.

We also explain how interviewee metaphors discussed in Chapter 3 can support the modelling process. Much of the modelling that takes place during an interview resides in the background of the interaction. To illustrate modelling we provide an annotated transcript of a symbolic modelling interview that uses clean language to model the skill of ‘knowing what is essential’.

In this paper I seek to contribute to a growing understanding of the role of the self in qualitative forms of research and narrative. In calling upon the work of symbolic interactionists, postmodernists, and feminists, I explore how self-narrative might inform our scholarly work, both in terms of creating more advanced self-understandings and in promoting open and honest discussions about how our personal and professional lives intersect. After reviewing the philosophical rationale as well as various uses of self-narrative in social science and educational research, I examine my own deployment of self-reflexive writing as part of an effort to bridge the chasm between my personal life and my life in the academy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify theories from manufacturing which can be applied to alleviate current issues within contact centre organisations. As contact centres currently adopt a mass production approach to customer service, this paper aims to examine the key issues currently facing contact centres and investigate how manufacturing has overcome some of its issues with the mass production approach.

The research employs a qualitative case study approach using a cross section of different types of contact centre to identify the current issues with contact centres. Interview and direct observation are the chosen methods for data collection and the data are analysed using a series of deductive and emergent codes.

From empirically investigating the issues that contact centres are currently facing it would imply that they have the same issues as manufacturing historically faced. Therefore, it can be concluded that if manufacturing can develop from an industry founded on scientific management principles, then so can the contact centre industry.

The findings of this paper provide a useful starting point to discuss the ability of theories developed in manufacturing to be adapted into the contact centre context. This paper is a starting point for further work into the applicability of manufacturing theories into the contact centre environment and as such it is deliberately discussed at a high level of abstraction.

Many of the techniques employed in contact centres originate from manufacturing's past but little of the research focuses on how contact centres can learn from manufacturing's future therefore this paper has practical implications in identifying which concepts can be transferred from manufacturing to contact centres.

The value of this paper is that it looks to the future of contact centre operations and discusses which techniques can be transferred from manufacturing to alleviate some of the current issues with contact centres.

In a recent RQ column, Sharon L. Baker reviewed the profession's literature in the area of readers' advisory services. She found that very little research existed in the area of readers' advisory services. The research that does exist is focused on “passive” readers' advisory strategies. Baker is a leader in this area and her articles on overload and browsing, the use of displays, and genre classification are essential to understanding the adult fiction reader and ways in which libraries can assist these individuals in locating new authors and titles of interest.

In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers probes the American malaise through the longings of a young adolescent girl. Twelve‐year‐old Frankie no longer sees the world as round and inviting as a school globe. No, the world is huge and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour. Indeed, the world seems separate from herself. In the midst of chaos, Frankie sees her brother's upcoming wedding as a chance to feel connected, to feel that she matters. The story focuses on Frankie's efforts to be a “member of the wedding,” as she recognizes, “they are the we of me.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Harry Messel, Harold Wyndham, L.C. Robson and Robert Menzies were instrumental in bringing about substantial change in science curriculum and infrastructure reform in NSW schools.

The paper relies on substantial archival research including materials never before examined or used by historians of education history. The paper is divided into sections, the first uses teacher surveys and identifies problems with science teaching in 1958, a key year in education history and each section after that looks at the contribution of Wyndham, Messel, Robson and Menzies in driving a new direction for science education.

The research found that Wyndham, Messel, Robson and Menzies each contributed a new dimension to the reform of science education in Australia. Their individual contributions were substantial, inter-related and interlocking but quite different. The paper argues that it is not adequate to look at science education reform purely as a means to introduce State Aid, rather science education reform was advocated as a means to ensure students had a scientific literacy going forward into a technologically driven future.

The research strikes a path through a vast primary source record to outline how individuals and science teachers more generally believed in science education reform as a mechanism to ensure students were better placed to enter a post-Sputnik world. As a result, known arguments around State Aid are only part of the story and not the main focus of the research. The aim is to supplement that knowledge by looking more at a broader picture for science reform for its own sake.

This paper takes an original approach to the history of curriculum change by providing a broader context for the State Aid debate, that is, by focussing on individual contributions to science education reform for its own sake and because science education was deemed necessary for student literacy in the future. At the same time it uses archival material never before accessed or used to tease out this history. The teachers’ surveys provide a unique insight into conditions for science teachers in the late 1950s. This material has not been accessed before and it provides a context upon which to superimpose the impact of the contributions of Wyndham, Messel, Robson and Menzies.

Takeovers create a potential conflict of interest between target shareholders and directors. While mergers generally create value for the target shareholders, their directors will typically lose their board seats and likely face a financial loss or loss of prestige. The purpose of this paper is to examine evidence to support or refute that directors may act in their own best interests at the expense of shareholders.

The authors reason that if directors act in their own best interests, then acquiring firms will seek targets with older board members who are closer to director retirement and are therefore less reluctant to give up their board seats. The paper uses data of 528 banks between 1999 and 2004 to estimate logistic regressions controlling for variables relevant to takeover probability. In the hypotheses, the authors test for the significance of the average director age on a board.

The paper finds a highly positive significant relation between the average age of a board of directors and the probability of takeover. Furthermore, this variable is more robust and has greater explanatory power in predicting takeover targets than all other financial, ownership and governance variables commonly controlled for and included in this study. This suggests that older directors are less prone to agency problems and more willing to make decisions that will likely result in the loss of their board seat.

These findings have important policy implications on director retirement policies such as director age versus term limits. The results also have implications on the use of director golden parachutes. Finally, the authors highlight a strategic consideration for acquiring firms seeking takeover targets.

This paper is the first, to the best of the authors' knowledge, to document board age as an important governance characteristic.