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Presents the findings of a major survey comparing alternative development centre designs. Aims to understand which designs are most effective; results suggest that “third generation” centres generally address common problems better than earlier models. Presents new data on centre use and content, and concludes with practical guidance for users.

This study investigates how heterogeneity of product mix and production technology affects the use of responsibility accounting practices, the “unbundling” of products for cost management purposes, and the practice of increasing the number of expense accounts to create homogeneous cost pools. To test these relation‐ships, data were gathered from 31 Texas electric utilities. Analyses find that the more heterogeneous the products offered and the more diverse the production technologies employed, the greater the degree of product unbundling (subdividing products for the purposes of collecting and reporting costs), the more cost centers, and the greater the number of expense accounts.

This case study broadly outlines the approach taken by a leading UK financial services organisation — its premises, budgetary and cost control procedures — to the setting, monitoring and control of its head office group and sales branch offices premises related costs.

Points out that selecting a new general ledger system can be a very difficult undertaking in today’s environment because of the variety of hardware platforms and choices of software products. Based on the composite experiences of several companies, provides an organized approach to evaluating and selecting a new general ledger system, including a sample general ledger software evaluation instrument.

Injecting drug use is a global concern, with an estimated 16 million people who inject drugs (PWIDs) in over 148 countries. A number of Asian countries detain PWIDs for compulsory treatment. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors reviewed the literature on compulsory drug treatment in seven Asian countries.

The authors identified 1,269 closed settings which held over 600,000 drug users in eight countries. The average detainee was aged from 20 to 30 years and was predominantly male. HIV risk behaviour continued in detention in some countries. In most countries treatment comprised physical labour, military drills. Methadone maintenance treatment and antiretroviral therapy were rarely available. No data were located to show detention in a closed setting treated drug dependency. Issues of concern were; no due legal process for the detention of drug users, lack of evidence-based drug treatment, lack of HIV prevention and treatment, abusive conditions, forced labour and exercise, arbitrary exit procedures and very high relapse rates.

The review of compulsory treatment of drug users failed to find any evaluation of effective drug treatment for detainees. Instead serious breaches in human rights conditions were evident. Prominent international organisations have called for the compulsory treatment of drug users to cease.

Many countries are spending vast amounts of funding on ineffective treatments for drug users.

Funding should be directed to community-based drug treatments that have been shown to work.

This is the largest review of compulsory treatment of drug users to date.

A fundamental element of international anti‐money laundering (AML) systems is the requirement that financial institutions file suspicious transaction reports (STRs) with financial intelligence units. Although the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has established global standards, there is a range of national laws, practices and experiences with STR systems. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of national STR systems, by using Switzerland as a case study.

Primary source documentation, complemented by observations at FATF meetings, are relied on to evaluate STR systems.

The FATF ratings of a country's compliance with international standards are objective, expert driven and consistent in application, but are limited as performance measures in that they ignore the costs of AML and STR measures. The effectiveness of the Swiss STR system is questionable because of serious under reporting of suspicious transactions. The Swiss STR system is efficient to the extent that there is a high usage of STRs and that large amounts of money are automatically frozen under the mandatory reporting obligation.

Evaluation of national STR systems is limited because of a lack of reliable statistics on the extent of money laundering.

This paper is addressed to policy makers who are concerned with assessing the effectiveness of STR systems. Future research would deal with STR systems in developing countries and the role of STRs in uncovering the financing of terrorism.

Insider/outsider description of the FATF mutual evaluation process. Compilation and interpretation of statistical data on STR systems, as performance measures.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative position of the extent of commonality or diversity in the rationale, objectives, processes used and outcomes achieved by financial intelligence agencies in India and Australia. An effective financial‐intelligence unit (FIU) can make a significant contribution to combating serious financial crimes nationally and internationally.

The agencies in these two countries are compared using the framework for assessment of financial regulatory agencies – suitably modified to capture the specialist role of such agencies. Information available at the web site of the two agencies has been used.

The study shows several commonalities and differences in the financial intelligence agencies in the two countries and points to operational and policy changes required in making the units more effective.

It is hoped that the study would encourage similar studies in respect of other FIUs and help in contributing to making the global financial‐intelligence regime more robust.

An extensive mid‐term review in 2005 of the Innovative Manufacturing Programme, followed by sporadic individual reviews in 2006, provided the opportunity to draw inferences from the overall performance of 12 research centres in the UK and to review the impact of block funding. Previous studies of research centres (in this case with a multidisciplinary character) are rare – none for operations management were found – and to that purpose of the paper proposes (new) metrics in addition to the peer review.

The rich data provided during the mid‐term review provided input for the analysis.

In general the analysis indicates that the centres gravitate towards consultancy, stimulated by criteria set by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Consequently, setting the industrial agenda to improve the competitive position of the UK manufacturing industry rarely occurs. Furthermore, centres with a stronger research strategy and with motivated research staff did outperform others in attracting additional funding. A focus on specific sectors correlates with a negative impact on research output. Despite an increased responsiveness to industry and the concentration of motivated research staff, stronger management cultures at the centres and more collaborative efforts between the centres would benefit performance.

Even though the metrics proved an important tool, the combination of quantitative analysis and peer review made it possible to arrive at these conclusions, possibly setting the scene for the new REF in 2015. The lessons learned from the review and the analysis might be beneficial for research centres in operations management.

Since this type of study – the in‐depth evaluation of the performance of research centres – has never been conducted before, it paves the way to a better understanding of research management in a national context. Implications of the study might exceed that of the domain of research into manufacturing technology and manufacturing management.

Unicorn and STILAS are multiuser client/server systems developed in and for the Unix environment to automate all aspects of information management, from cataloging and authority control to intelligent access of non‐SIRSI databases. In keeping with the client/server concept, SIRSI has introduced a graphical user interface (GUI) to Unicorn and STILAS. The SIRSI system provides a path to information both inside and outside the library. SIRSI provides a standard interface, an “Intelligent Interface” client to diverse database systems and other vendors' library automation systems. SIRSI's Reference Database Managers provide an intelligent connection to locally mounted reference databases. SIRSI's VIZION, a stand‐alone desktop client, provides an automatic graphical user interface to hundreds of online sources of information and services available through the Internet and via modem. Furthermore, SIRSI has recently introduced WebCat, which facilitates mounting and access to the complete catalogs and other services of libraries over the Internet's World Wide Web.