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The books I'm reviewing this month are around the more controversial areas of human development to be increasingly included in education and training — life management, experiential group learning, and counselling.

Increases in productivity have their origins at the level of the individual firm and are reflected through improved efficiency. Improved efficiency is brought about by more effective use of scarce economic resources and unless some satisfactory measure exists for the evaluation of the effectiveness of industry in utilising the resources at its disposal, national objectives aimed at securing growth without inflation cannot be incorporated into the individual objectives of industrial firms themselves. Irrespective of the needs of the economy for growth most industrial firms have their own growth targets the assessment of which equally require a reliable measure of efficiency. To be satisfactory, the measure of efficiency employed must permit comparison of performance by firms over time, as well as comparison with other firms in the same industry and, ideally, in other industries also. There is no unanimity of opinion as to what is the most reliable single yardstick of industrial efficiency.

I still have an affiliation to BSI, but my current prime role is with a new organisation called Resource which is half‐way between the British Government and BSI, with an express role to improve the influence of the UK through co‐operative projects with overseas countries. So, the sort of information consultancy I was doing in Thailand and Saudi Arabia, and various other countries, I am still doing but with a wider brief to help not only BSI but other quality organisations and I hope possibly organisations like the ones you work for. One of the reasons why I am saying this is to encourage you to see me at a later stage if you have any interest in overseas developments of projects on the information side, to see whether we can assist or even contribute funds towards the development of such things. Having only been with Resource since 25 January 1988, I think it would be undiplomatic of me to speak on their behalf, so for the purpose of this exercise I am speaking only as John Widdowson, individual and traveller, with, hopefully, some outside view.

Writing nearly 20 years ago, Robert Heller emphasized marketing’s focus on the constant and systematic study of what products a company should be offering, when and at what price. Marketing, said Heller, is the part of the company that should always be asking “What business are we in?” In recent years this focus has widened to include attracting and retaining business and managing a range of internal and external relationships.

Robert Heller, author of The Fate of IBM, in discussion with Bruce Lloyd (Head of Strategic and International Management, South Bank University). Heller argues that at the core of IBM′s problem was a gap between its management perceptions, driven by its historic success, and the reality of the marketplace as seen by its customers. Until this gap was recognized it was not possible for the need for radical change to be accepted. The extent to which these challenges are inevitable is to ensure that appropriate performance indicators are used, as these are critical mechanisms for generating the required changes in culture within the organization. It is also necessary to combine the effective management of these performance indicators with effective learning processes that focus on the future, rather than indulging in reflecting on past glories and managing history.

In April 1986 the BIM Journal Management Today carried an article on the top eight British companies measured in terms of average return on capital over the last ten years. According to the author, Robert Heller, most of these companies exhibited that quality of management that also generates the recruitment of high‐quality management for the future; and he observed that whereas a high level of management expertise does not ensure that strategic performance will match the operational excellence of the past “it greatly improves the odds, and that is one measure of what good management is all about”.

This chapter examines the influence of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy on some of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the past three decades. Mobilizing the epistemic community framework, it demonstrates how network members, acting as amici curiae, litigators, academics, and judges worked to transmit intellectual capital to Supreme Court decision makers in 12 federalism and separation of powers cases decided between 1983 and 2001. It finds that Federalist Society members were most successful in diffusing ideas into Supreme Court opinions in cases where doctrinal distance was greatest; that is, cases where the Supreme Court moved the farthest from its established constitutional framework.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

There's no doubt that the information industry is the world's fastest growing: not only micros, software, workstations and databases but magazines, news‐letter books, every form of printed and televised message. Desktop publishing threatens another surge forward. Technological revolutions never come about by accident — so what's the reason?

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.