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The concept of outsourcing is a recognised business planning strategy; senior corporate management and facilities services have been progressively outsourced in the UK for many years. However, transforming an outsourcing business plan into an effective and balanced operating contract remains challenging. Getting your outsourcing project properly positioned in the business, procuring the right integrated facilities contractor and then subsequently mobilising and managing the contract can be a difficult journey to navigate. This paper describes how to approach the principles and practicalities of outsourcing noncore services and how to make sure that some of the principal pitfalls along the road of the outsourcing project are avoided. It finally offers some ideas on how to get the most out of a project in the long term.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the genre of tabletop fantasy role‐playing games and provide guidance in building an initial collection.

The first part of the paper is designed to present the development of tabletop fantasy role‐playing games in a historiographic model, tracing the history of these games from the 1970s to 2006. The second portion is a bibliographic essay and critique of several noteworthy fantasy role‐playing games, including analysis of the settings and systems of each game.

The paper provides a history of the development of fantasy role‐playing games and provides guidance on how to start a collection. The study recognizes a lack of academic research on the topic and seeks to provide a brief introduction.

The paper provides a clear concise history of role‐playing game development and balanced advice for librarians who wish to begin collecting role‐playing games.

This paper begins to fill the need for academic study of the subject and provides practical advice for collection development librarians.

This study aims to make the reader aware of recent changes in the white supremacist movement and how such changes have altered the ways in which the movement can be combatted.

The authors study the movement in two periods: from 1970 to 2005 and from 2006 onward. The authors contrast the two periods and discuss the legal and financial issues within each.

The authors find that while legal concepts such as vicarious liability and respondeat superior apply today just as they did before, new tools are needed to fight the new means of financing the movement.

The main limitation of this study is the lack of quantitative data. Because the “alt-right” became popular around 2015, there has not been enough time for the construction of detailed data sets.

While many law papers have explored the white supremacist movement, the financing side has gone under-analyzed in scholarly research. This is important in light of the rise of the internet, online payment processors, cryptocurrencies and remote organizing and fundraising.

The 2017 Charlottesville rally was organized and financed via podcasts, online forums, encrypted chats and anonymous payments. Since then, the movement has mostly gone underground and has become more violent and radical as many members have come to believe that marches and politics do not help them.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no papers in finance that deal extensively with this topic. The authors believe that the severity of the issue and the importance of its funding make this study a valuable source of information. The recent changes occurring within the movement are likely to become even more critical to its success or failure in the future.

Perceived differences in the composition of goods and services forms the basis of a significant degree of analysis of the firm internationalisation process. In particular, product inseparability is highlighted as a distinguishing feature of service offerings and purports to explain the different approaches to internationalisation strategy adopted by service firms. The research, however, proposes that the division of goods and services into distinct products is outmoded. Rather, it is important to understand the extent of service components that embody, or are embedded in, a product offering. The authors argue that this “service embeddedness” influences the process by which a firm internationalises. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on ten case studies of Australian international firms, this paper examines the impact of service embeddedness on a firm’s internationalisation process.

The research underlines that firms approach internationalisation with a view of ensuring that the various activities that combine to form their product offering are available to their international clients.

From an academic perspective, a dichotomous approach to products (good or service) underestimates the role that embedded services have on a firm’s internationalisation process. The research, therefore, has implications for researchers and practitioners as it highlights the importance of delivering products internationally that comprise of both good and embedded service components.

The research develops a deeper understanding of the extent and nature of separability within individual product categories from international production and operations perspectives.

LAST MONTH we wrote in anticipation of the Annual General Meeting at the National Conference in Nottingham. This month we are able to comment on the event itself, which was duly held on September 12th.

The aim of this paper is to explore the reasons why businesses, having adopted total quality management (TQM), fail to sustain their reforms over time. In order to gain insights into the pressures that, despite good intentions, can make full implementation of TQM problematic, a case study approach is used. The research indicates that a lack of attention to the human element of change, especially inconsistent senior management support, a lack of involvement of supervisors and middle managers in planning for change, and lack of attention to groups of staff affected negatively by the changes, explain why businesses may face difficulty sustaining reform programs.

This paper presents the outcome of research related to application of formal rules and standard procedures in EAsʼ procurement of goods and services for foreign aid-funded projects. Executing agencies are entrusted to implement foreign aid-funded projects on behalf of respective governments and they are required to satisfy a combination of rules of their multiple principals, mainly donor organizations and respective government ministries. The theoretical framework of this study is guided by agency theory. The findings indicate that the processing of procurement related information and awarding contracts by the executing agencies in the context of Bangladesh is heavily dependent on the informal working systems or “unwritten ground rules”. These are driven by downward hierarchical verbal and non-verbal instructions. The study has adopted a qualitative method following a grounded theory approach.

After over three decades of residence in the metropolis, the British Council of Productivity Associations (BCPA) has moved upstream to Henley‐on‐Thames — or to be more precise to Henley — The Management College, known simply over the years and over the world as Henley. As a centre for its Local Productivity Associations (LPAs), the BCPA's location will not be unique to Henley; it has itself established other centres for Forecasting, Employment Policy Studies, International Management, Management Development and Advisory Services, and Research Programmes. It has close links with similar educational institutions in many parts of the world, having helped to establish them — in Australia, Ghana, India, Pakistan, New Zealand and the Philippines. It has assisted in the design of educational programmes in the management colleges of Nigeria, Jamaica, Mexico, Denmark, Turkey, Norway, and Argentina, and New York University. It has a special link with Brunel University for the development of post‐graduate studies in business management. It also has its own subsidiary company, Henley Open Management Education (HOME), known as Henley Distance Learning. There are obvious advantages in being linked to such an influential and internationally respected management educational institution.

The purpose of this article is to examine the proposition that the benefits from environmental improvements accrue disproportionately to the rich.

No doubt there are quite a few managers who flinch at the prospect of listening to Clive Jenkins — and paying for it.