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While some previous research supports the existence of a finance gap within the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, particularly for female owned SMEs, the evidence is hardly unequivocal. Further, much of the prior research has focused on supply‐ rather than demand‐side issues. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate both supply‐ and demand‐side issues for female and male SME owners.

From the results of three focus groups and a review of the literature eight hypotheses were formulated for testing with a mail survey sent to 534 SME owners.

Based on 123 responses, the findings provide no evidence to suggest that a supply‐side finance gap exists within the Australian SME sector. There is also no evidence that Australian SME owners (particularly female owners) are being discouraged from applying for loans from a financial institution because they believe their application will be rejected. The results suggest that other demand‐side issues (particularly risk‐taking propensity and desire to maintain control) play a more important role in the capital structure decision making of SME owners.

This study's major limitations are its reliance on a sample of solely Western Australian businesses that were not representative of the population of Western Australian SMEs and its relatively small sample size.

Financial advisers need to be sensitive to various demand‐side issues when advising SME owners about the merits of applying for external funding.

This study adds to the limited available evidence concerning the importance of various demand‐side issues to SME owners considering accessing external funding.

To investigate the relationship between biological sex (male or female) and stereotypical sex‐roles (masculinity and femininity) and to determine which might be more appropriate to use when examining small to medium‐size (SME) owner characteristics such as: locus of control (internal, powerful others and chance); need for achievement; risk‐taking propensity; and preference for innovation.

Data for this study came from 673 usable responses (517 males, 156 females) to a survey of the attitudes and expectations of a random sample of SME owner‐operators in Western Australia.

It was found that femininity was significantly higher for women compared with men, but that there was no significant difference for masculinity. Results also indicate that, unlike femininity, masculinity is highly correlated with all of the “traditional” psychological traits. As a result, only one significant difference between men and women (based on their biological sex) was found; men had a higher risk‐taking propensity.

The results presented in this study confirm the belief that biological sex may not be an appropriate discriminator when examining differences in the psychological attributes of SME owners. Results suggest that the use of masculine and feminine traits might prove more useful in future research on this issue. Further, given the masculinity bias inherent in most of the psychological attributes typically found in the SME literature, it is suggested that Norman's Big Five (being more gender‐neutral) might be more appropriate in examining differences in SME owner characteristics.

Takes a dispassionate view of what the future holds for the Management Standards drawing on a research study reviewing the experiences of using the Management Standards. Takes the view that the future of the Management Standards will be largely determined by user or practitioner satisfaction on the one hand and government policy on the other.

Following the proliferation of e‐commerce and the Internet, there has been increasing interest in the evaluation of Web sites. However, most research on service quality evaluation has focused on people‐based services, rather than technologically‐based services. Specifically there is a paucity of research addressing service quality offered through Web sites. This paper addresses this issue by exploring critical factors in Web site service quality perceptions, using the critical incident technique. The paper further evaluates whether the same factors contribute to high and low quality perceptions. Additionally, the paper investigates the effect of the customer's search behavior while visiting the Web site (goal directed or experiential) on service quality perceptions. Implications for managers are addressed.

THIS issue opens the new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD and it is natural that we should pause to glance at the long road we have travelled. For over forty years our pages have been open to the most progressive and practical facts, theories and methods of librarianship; our contributors have included almost every librarian who has held an important office; and we have always welcomed the work of younger, untried men who seemed to have promise— many of whom have indeed fulfilled it. In the strain and stress of the First World War we maintained interest and forwarded the revisions in library methods which adapted them to the after‐war order. Today we have similar, even severer, problems before us, and we hope to repeat the service we were then able to give. In this we trust that librarians, who have always regarded THE LIBRARY WORLD with affection, will continue to support us and be not tempted because of temporary stringency, to make a victim of a journal which has given so long and so independent a service.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

INDUSTRIAL consultants are being increasingly employed both here and in the United States. It is natural that much of their work should fall within the field of work study since the usual reason for calling them in is to secure greater productivity. Such incursions are sometimes looked at askance by those assigned to that particular role in a company. This understandable human attitude will not be exorcised by implying that consultants are a race of infallible beings whose job is to impose superior methods on the permanent staff.

Scientists are constructing knowledge about global warming by adapting evidence-based disciplines to reflect the Precautionary Principle. It is equally important to communicate the complexities and uncertainties underpinning global warming because inappropriate vehicles for giving accounts could result in defensive decisions that perpetuate the business-as-usual mindset: the method of communication affects how the risk associated with global warming is socialised. Appropriately constructed accounts should facilitate reflective communicative action. Here Beck's theorisation of risk society, Luhmann's sociological theory of risk and Gandhi's vehicle of communicative action (or satyagraha) are used to construct a risk-based accountability mechanism, whilst providing insight into Schumacher's concept of total accountability. These accountability constructs will be illustrated through the lived experiences of South Australian citrus horticulturists in the context of a richly layered narrative of competing discourses about global warming. The reiterative process of theory informing practice is used to construct a couple of dialogical vehicles of accountability.

The case opens with the Ford Motor Company seemingly on the path toward bankruptcy. Ford had been bleeding red ink for more than ten years when it decided in 2006 that continuing the same turnaround attempts was not going to right the ship. The company was facing significant external challenges, such as intense competition and changing consumer preferences, as well as internal challenges, such as quality and design issues and a stifling level of corporate complexity. As the case begins, CEO Bill Ford has taken the unusual step of hiring an auto industry outsider as his replacement. Alan Mulally, a thirty-seven-year Boeing veteran and principal architect of the venerable airplane manufacturer's own massive and successful turnaround, wasted little time in getting about the business of remaking Ford. He developed a plan to: focus on the Ford brand and divest the numerous other brands the company had acquired over the years; simplify and streamline the company's manufacturing operations; and remake the corporate culture from one of fiefdoms and false optimism to collaboration and facing reality. With an ardent belief in the plan's viability, Mulally raised nearly $24 billion and began to put his plan into motion. The case explores the many causes of this once-great company's decline and the steps it took to beat the odds and get back on the path of profitability.

This case demonstrates that internal issues alone can derail a company and emphasizes the importance of leadership in fostering the right corporate culture to turn a company around. Students will identify the key internal and external factors that can contribute to a company's decline and learn the importance of diagnosing issues within each of three major aspects of a company-strategy, operations, and financials-in order to develop a successful turnaround plan.

In 1992 and 1993, I published several articles on the “Total Force” armies of Canada and the US in an attempt to evaluate the worthiness of the concept (see Thompson, 1993). Ideally, a Total Force Army is one in which both regular and reserve units are supposed to be equals, well-integrated, harmonious, synergistic, functional, and interdependent. To achieve this, the two components must work together, train together, respect each other, and function seamlessly with identical equipment, training, and procedure. Since most reserve units in the US, Canada, and the UK, for example, train mostly on weekends, and typically have older equipment, this would necessarily involve the improvement and maintenance of reserve force training, retention, and equipment. It also really means that reserve forces will need time to reach these standards, but for some reason, some governments do not think about this basic fact. This is true not only for the US, but for the Canadian, UK, and other allied forces, as well.