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How do you ensure that representatives can confidently sell a complex product to a sophisticated audience? This was the problem faced by a European pharmaceutical company whose salesforce and managers needed to understand the features and benefits of its novel “high tech” molecule – and be able to convey these to hospital consultants. The challenge was to make the training accurate and clear, yet lively and motivating. It had to engage representatives as well as product and marketing managers across Europe. This case‐study article describes how the challenge was met.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the critical success factors (CSFs) between two groups of European mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China and Chinese M&As in Europe.

In the paper, a mixed-method research design which combines primary case study with secondary questionnaire survey is applied.

The findings from the case study show the main differences with respect to CSFs between the two groups are related to: importance of relationship building in Chinese culture, Chinese culture trait of high power distance, Chinese decision process, complicated Chinese approval process for foreign companies doing M&As in China, integration of acquired Chinese/European company, and relatively new phenomenon of Chinese acquisitions in Europe. The Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test from the questionnaire survey provides statistical support for significant difference between the two groups regarding the factor of involvement and commitment of acquiring companies’ entrepreneurial CEO/chairman in the M&A process.

This paper is among the first attempts to conduct a comparative study which provides new insights into the differences between the CSFs in European M&As in China and in Chinese M&As in Europe.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Three hundred and sixty‐seven members of the general public were interviewed in Surrey and Greater London in an attempt to ascertain whether they employed the representativeness heuristic when interpreting the corporate personas of UK building societies and banks. The representativeness heuristic is a simple decision‐making rule whereby an individual draws inferences about an organisation according to how closely it is perceived to resemble other organisations regarded as typical of a particular group (‘banks’ for example). It emerged that many respondents did indeed apply the representativeness heuristic in this context, resulting in their ignoring or paying little attention to a specific item of objectively useful information. The findings of previous research which concluded that building societies have ‘warmer’ and friendlier images than conventional banks are generally supported. An important observation was that building societies which in recent years have converted themselves into banking PLCs are still regarded by large numbers of people as possessing the same image attributes as unconverted building societies.

This conceptual paper aims to explore the possibility of human beings reaching a virtual form of immortality.

The paper is an investigation of the path from an early example of human knowledge to the birth of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots. A critical analysis of different point of views, from philosophers to scientists, is presented.

From ancient rock art paintings to the moon landing, human knowledge has made a huge progress to the point of creating robots resembling human features. While these humanoid robots can successfully undertake risky tasks, they also generate ethical issues for the society they interact with.

The paper is conceptual, and it does attempt to provide one theory by which human beings can achieve the dream of immortality. It is part of a work in progress on the use of AI and the issues related to the creation/use of humanoid robots in society.

This paper provides an overview of some of the key issues and themes impacting our modern society. Its originality resides in the linking of human knowledge to collective knowledge and then of collective mind to the hyper-collective mind. The idea of humans reaching immortality is burdened by the imperative need to define ethical guidelines for the field of AI and its uses.

Outlines previous research attempts to explain the behaviour of second moments of price and return distributions and theories of how Big Players (i.e. those with enough discretionary power to influence the market but little sensitivity to profit/loss consequences) affect the volatility and informational efficiency of markets. Contrasts the 1883‐1892 fluctuations in the exchange value of the Russian rouble under interventionist (i.e. big player) and non‐interventionist finance ministers; and analyses the statistics using GARCH techniques. Shows that under the Big Player, both unconditional variance and the persistence of conditional volatility increased. Suggests that policy regimes affect the degree of noise‐trader influence and calls for further research.

The purpose of this study is to compare the information disclosed by leading Australian audit firms in their first-time audit firm transparency reports. Australia has mandated the preparation and release of transparency reports by audit firms in 2013 to provide better information to stakeholders about audit firms, their governance and their internal governance systems. These reports promote increased transparency regarding issues which are believed to contribute to audit quality.

The paper takes the form of an archival analysis where the authors summarise the governance and other information for the 21 leading Australian audit firms as disclosed in their first-time 2013 transparency reports.

The authors find that audit firms meet the minimum transparency report disclosure requirements, but have different approaches to governance in the areas which may impact audit quality. These areas include: the internal quality control systems, independence practices, continuing education and partners’ remuneration structures. The authors identify specific areas where transparency reports may give rise to future research opportunities.

Australia is one of the first countries to require audit firms to publish transparency reports, and this is the first study to examine these reports. By summarising transparency report disclosures, we present a comprehensive picture of how Australian leading audit firms govern and oversee their business activities. This is useful to transparency report preparers, report users and regulators.