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The aim of the discipline of Operations Management is to gain competitive advantage. One more recent and lesser‐known Operations Management technique that is finding greater acceptance is the Theory of Constraints (TOC). This paper illustrates the use of a specific TOC technique termed “The Thinking Processes” to solve an airline industry case toward improved competitive outcomes.

Studies five successful chief ’ntrepreneur officers (CNOs) together with one failure. Looks at why the CNO is indispensable. Presents 36 characteristics of CNOs across six groups: eagerly embracing risk, passionately innovating, creating/harnessing disequilibria, empowering the middle management, empowering top management with complementing industry product and participants and with complementing capital products and providers. Uses numerous case studies to demonstrate theory and provide a number of questions and answers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative risks and benefits associated with defined contribution (DC) and defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. New regulatory and governance requirements and demographic changes have all significantly raised the costs and reduced the expected benefits to employers of operating DB schemes. In response, many employers have either closed down their DB schemes, closed the scheme to new members and/or to capped any further accruing of benefits for existing members. This decline in DB schemes and their replacement by less generous DC schemes, has been overwhelmingly seen by employees, the general public and Government as an unwelcome development that shifts significant pension risks from the employer onto the employee.

The paper evaluates claims that DB schemes are less risky than DC schemes and, whether their passing ought to be such a cause of concern.

The paper finds that DC schemes are not inherently riskier than DB schemes. Indeed, it is argued that the low operational, governance and regulatory costs and flexibility of DC schemes provide employers and employees with the most cost‐effective means of saving for a pension. In contrast, despite the appearance that the employer rather than the employee is the primary risk bearer in respect of DB schemes, it is shown that this is largely a fallacy. Such an arrangement merely substitutes an employer's covenant for some portion of an independent (of the employer) investment portfolio. This reliance upon an employer's promises to continue to support and fund the pension scheme imposes a raft of additional firm‐specific (i.e. non‐diversifiable) risks and regulatory and governance costs upon the members of both DB and DC schemes.

The paper provides a topical and useful review of the risks, costs and benefits of DC and DB pension schemes in the UK.

A conference on this theme was organised at the Cardiff Business School, 14–15th September, 1988 and a selection of abstracts of papers presented has been compiled.

Advocates of greater intangible asset reporting frequently make the criticism that the published financial statements of companies do not adequately reflect the value of intangible assets and hence provide potentially misleading information to the users of the financial statements. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether since the introduction of “fair value accounting,” particularly in respect of the treatment of acquired “goodwill” shown on consolidated balance sheets, these criticisms retain any validity. The paper investigates the extent to which it can be confidently asserted that the recognition of acquired goodwill and the post‐acquisition rules for recognizing any goodwill “impairment” has materially improved the information available to the users of financial statements and/or whether these developments have resulted largely in providing self‐interested managers with greater opportunities to engage in earnings and balance sheet manipulations that are of doubtful value to users.

The paper critically reviews the rules and the intentions of accounting policy makers in relation to fair value acquisition accounting and evaluates the empirical evidence relating to corporate behavior in this area.

Despite the presumed benefits associated with fair value accounting, it is shown that in practice managerial self‐interests and earnings management concerns appear to motivate many goodwill impairment decisions. However, as investors and analysts have always had the option to adjust, or indeed totally ignore, reported accounting numbers it is far less certain whether this reporting behavior actually misleads users or significantly reduces the information content (reliability and relevance) of the financial statements.

The paper provides an overview of the accounting treatment and reporting consequences associated with the introduction of fair value accounting in respect of acquired goodwill.

This paper aims to explore the development of the accountability ideals and practices of Quaker industrialists during the period 1840–1914.

The research employs a case study approach and draws on the extensive archives of Quaker industrialists in the Richardson family networks, British Parliamentary Papers and the Religious Society of Friends together with relevant contemporary and current literature.

Friends shed their position as Enemies of the State and obtained status and accountabilities undifferentiated from those of non-Quakers. The reciprocal influences of an increasingly complex business environment and radical changes in religious beliefs and practices combined to shift accountabilities from the Quaker Meeting House to newly established legal accountability mechanisms. Static Quaker organisation structures and accountability processes were ineffective in a rapidly changing world. Decision-making was susceptible to the domination of the large Richardson family networks in the Newcastle Meeting House. This research found no evidence of Quaker corporate social accountability through action in the Richardson family networks and it questions the validity of this concept. The motivations underlying Quakers’ personal philanthropy and social activism were multiple and complex, extending far beyond accountabilities driven by religious belief.

This research has originality and value as a study of continuity and change in Quaker accountability regimes during a period that encompassed fundamental changes in Quakerism and its orthopraxy, and their business, social and political environments.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the marketing of ethical and socially responsible investment (ESRI) funds to retail investors and to analysis the plausibility of the claims made in regard to their performance, achievements and prospects.

The paper presents an analysis of the claims and marketing strategy adopted in the ESRI industry's Action Guide for Financial Advisors document, produced for their National Ethical Investing Week, 2010.

The analysis indicates that the ESRI fund industry's Action Guide uses a number of unethical marketing techniques to induce retail investors into investing in ESRI funds and that many of the claims made on behalf of ESRI investing are implausible. Given the past history of mis‐selling in the investment fund sector, these findings ought to be of some concern to regulators and retail investors.

This is the first article that has linked the promotion and marketing of ESRI funds to possible mis‐selling practices.

The purpose of this paper is to report and comment on the High Court ruling on Icelandic bank's challenge to HM Treasury's use of emergency powers during 2008.

The paper outlines the facts surrounding the case and comments on the decision.

The High Court disagreed that the claimant's view of events accorded with the way the treasury in fact acted.

This appeal shows how two very differently motivated, yet equally well‐intentioned, regulatory regimes can come into conflict.