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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three communication interventions commonly used during discharge planning and care transitions enable inter-professional knowledge sharing and learning as a foundation for more integrated working. These interventions include information communication systems, dedicated discharge planning roles and group-based planning activities.

A two-year ethnographic study was carried out across two regional health and care systems in the English National Health Service, focussing on the discharge of stroke and hip fracture patients. Data collection involved in-depth observations and 213 semi-structured interviews.

Information systems (e.g. e-records) represent a relatively stable conduit for routine and standardised forms of syntactic information exchange that can “bridge” time–space knowledge boundaries. Specialist discharge roles (e.g. discharge coordinators) support personalised and dynamic forms of “semantic” knowledge sharing that can “broker” epistemic and cultural boundaries. Group-based activities (e.g. team meetings) provide a basis for more direct “pragmatic” knowledge translation that can support inter-professional “bonding” at the cultural and organisational level, but where inclusion factors complicate exchange.

The study offers analysis of how professional boundaries complicate discharge planning and care transition, and the potential for different communication interventions to support knowledge sharing and learning.

The paper builds upon existing research on inter-professional collaboration and patient safety by focussing on the problems of communication and coordination in the context of discharge planning and care transitions. It suggests that care systems should look to develop multiple complementary approaches to inter-professional communication that offer opportunities for dynamic knowledge sharing and learning.

IN January 1979, Benjamin R. Vickers & Sons Ltd began its 151st calendar year as a Leeds family business engaged in general oil merchanting and the manufacturing of purpose‐blended lubricants for industry. While much of the company's current prosperity has been founded on development of oils for local needs—the processing of wool and textile products, including man‐made fibres—application of Vickers oils has ranged widely from marine stern‐tube lubrication to the supply of grease to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

When this book is filmed, as assuredly it must be filmed, Sir Barnes will take his rightful place as a household name along with R. J. Mitchell after “The First of the Few” and Douglas Bader after “Reach for the Sky”.

The British Library National Sound Archive has published an important reference book Directory of Recorded Sound Resources in the United Kingdom, 1989, 173pp., ISBN 0 7123 0502 5. It is compiled and edited by Lali Weerasinghe, with research by Jeremy Silver and lists 489 collections of both privately made and rare commercial recordings in the UK, covering all subject areas. Addresses of the collections, opening hours, conditions of access and details of size and contents are given. The arrangement is initially under county of location but the indexes include subjects, names of collections and individuals and thus allows research across any desired topic. The collecting bodies include libraries, museums, record offices, learned societies, archives, radio stations, business and industry; and collections have been comprehensively sought out, though it surprises me that the British Film Institute is missed because it must have many historical recordings coupled with moving images. This directory is a worthy addition to the growing number of valuable National Sound Archive publications. Its price, in hardback, is £30 from the British Library Publications Sales Unit, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire LS23 7BQ.

This paper profiles the leadership and Financial Strategy principles of Dr. Henry E. Singleton, the late founder of Teledyne Corporation.

The main sources of this paper are a private study prepared by Leon G. Cooperman, Chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, Inc., who knew Dr. Singleton and who was a long‐term Teledyne investor, as well as a 2007 book that was published by Teledyne's former president.

The leadership and financial strategy principles of Henry Singleton have broad applicability to executives across industries and to researchers across disciplines including strategy, finance, management, and entrepreneurship.

Singleton's principles, especially in the area of Financial Strategy, could be used by executives in the challenging times that likely lay ahead, and could serve as the basis for applied‐based research, most particularly case studies, on entrepreneurship, growth by acquisition, capital allocation, stock buybacks, and spin‐offs.

Long‐time associates of Singleton believe this is the first academic analysis of his leadership and financial strategy principles.

This article aims to explore the impact of the Great War on the Sheffield armaments industry through the use of four company case studies in Thomas Firth, John Brown, Cammell Laird and Hadfields. It charts the evolving situation the armaments companies found themselves in after the end of the conflict and the uncertain external environment they had to engage with. The article also examines the stagnant nature of armaments companies’ boards of directors in the 1920s and the ultimate rationalisation of the industry at the close of the decade.

The research design is based around a close examination of the surviving manuscript records of each of the companies included, the records of the speeches recorded by chairpersons at annual meetings and some governmental records.

The article concludes by outlining how the end of the Great War continued to affect the industry for the following decade and the complex evolving situation with a changing external environment and continuity of management internally ultimately leading to mergers in the industry.

This article uses a number of underused manuscript records to examine the Sheffield armaments industry and explores the effect of a global mega event in the Great War on one of the most technologically advanced industries of the period.

THIS title, abbreviated in current fashion to the initials M.S.T., is given to what Personnel Administration Ltd. describe as a new management technique which has been developed by their research and development division under its director, Mr. B. P. Smith. Its aim is to increase the productivity of workers, particularly semi‐skilled ones engaged on repetitive tasks. Since the company claim that M.S.T. is as significant an advance on work study as work study originally was on rate fixing, it plainly calls for examination by experts.

The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This first British industry‐based study of the implementation of these calculative techniques makes use of the case study research tool to interrogate archival data relating to leading iron and steel companies. We demonstrate the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control early on (during the inter‐war period) by a single economic unit, United Steel Companies Ltd, where innovation is attributed to the engineering and scientific background and US experiences of key personnel. Elsewhere, significant management accounting change occurred only with the collapse in iron and steel corporate profitability that began to become apparent in the late 1950s. The process of accounting change is addressed and the significance for our study of the notions of evolution and historical discontinuity is examined. The paper is contextualised through an assessment of initiatives from industry‐based regulatory bodies and consideration of the economic circumstances and business conditions within which management accounting practices were the subject of radical revision.

Wickers Appointment JOHN H. MORGAN, lately in charge of research and development at Cathodic Corrosion Control Ltd., has now left that company to join the Vickers Group Research Establishment, Weybridge, where he will be working with Dr. C. F. Bareford's team, carrying out research for the whole of the Vickers Group.

The author provides a seven point plan for what 2004 holds. The predictions range from a tougher environment for company directors as investors fight back and a greater focus from financial reporting on the future and cash.