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The fast food industry has become a focus of media criticism for its apparent lack of interest in environmental and nutritional issues. Demonstrates the scale of the industry′s response and provides an objective assessment of current initiatives which have been specifically designed to improve the image of fast food companies. The greatest momentum for change has inevitably been associated with the major American fast food chains which are introducing more environmentally‐friendly packaging, accessory‐recycling and lower fat products. In the process they are gaining a competitive advantage over smaller domestic fast food companies and this fact alone will ensure the introduction of more initiatives in the future. Care for the environment and for consumer health have consequently become high‐profile marketing concerns.

Publication in quality journals has become a major indicator of research performance in UK universities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the notion of “quality journal”.

The paper examines the situation in management studies and finds dizzying circularity in the definitions of “quality journal”.

The paper finds that what a quality journal is does not really matter: agreement that there are such things matters very much indeed. As so often happens with indicators of performance, the indicator has become the target. So, the challenge is to publish in quality journals, and the challenge rewards gamesmanship. Vested interests have become particularly skilful at the game, and at exercising the winners’ prerogative of changing the rules. All but forgotten in the desperation to win the game is publication as a means of communicating research findings for the public benefit. The paper examines the situation in management studies, but the problem is much more widespread.

This original and topical paper concludes that laughter is both the appropriate reaction to such farce, and also, perhaps, the stimulus to reform.

In discussing the subject of bread, or indeed any subject, one is of course confronted by the initial difficulty of definition. Nothing is harder than to define any concrete thing, no matter how common and well‐known it may be. This is not surprising when we remember that no one has ever succeeded in defining a definition. Perhaps the best attempt to do so is Pascal's, in the “Port Royal Logic,” and it is easy to drive a coach and six through the rules which he lays down for definitions to conform to. The only things that can be strictly defined are mathematical abstractions, such as a circle, which are formed on natural objects by pruning away their multitudinous properties till only two or three which can be expressed by a short and indisputable definition are left.

This monograph is written with the management trainer, development adviser or OD consultant in mind. People engaged in other types of training may find ideas and approaches which are useful in a different context. A precise definition of who “management” are may be difficult, but the one I wish to work from would include “managers, supervisors and any person engaged in management work”. Such a definition would include supervisors in an office but exclude their subordinates. This definition would also include professional staff in for example marketing, or operations research, who are involved in the processes of management within an organisation, even though they had no responsibilities for subordinates. This monograph is written in four sections, each dealing with a particular aspect of design.

THE enterprise of two London newspapers, the Tribune (for the second time) and the Daily Chronicle, in organizing exhibitions of books affords a convenient excuse for once again bringing forward proposals for a more permanent exhibition. On many occasions during the past twenty years the writer has made suggestions for the establishment of a central book bazaar, to which every kind of book‐buyer could resort in order to see and handle the latest literature on every subject. An experiment on wrong lines was made by the Library Bureau about fifteen years ago, but here, as in the exhibitions above mentioned, the arrangement was radically bad. Visiting the Daily Chronicle show in company with other librarians, and taking careful note of the planning, one was struck by the inutility of having the books arranged by publishers and not by subjects. Not one visitor in a hundred cares twopence whether books on electricity, biography, history, travel, or even fairy tales, are issued by Longmans, Heinemann, Macmillan, Dent or any other firm. What everyone wants to see is all the recent and latest books on definite subjects collected together in one place. The arrangements at the Chronicle and Tribune shows are just a jumble of old and new books placed in show‐cases by publishers' names, similar to the abortive exhibition held years ago in Bloomsbury Street. What the book‐buyer wants is not a miscellaneous assemblage of books of all periods, from 1877 to date, arranged in an artistic show‐case and placed in charge of a polite youth who only knows his own books—and not too much about them—but a properly classified and arranged collection of the newest books only, which could be expounded by a few experts versed in literature and bibliography. What is the use of salesmen in an exhibition where books are not sold outright? If these exhibitions were strictly limited to the newest books only, there would be much less need for salesmen to be retained as amateur detectives. Another decided blemish on such an exhibition is the absence of a general catalogue. Imagine any exhibition on business lines in which visitors are expected to cart away a load of catalogues issued separately by the various exhibitors and all on entirely different plans of arrangement! The British publisher in nearly everything he does is one of the most hopeless Conservatives in existence. He will not try anything which has not been done by his grandfather or someone even more remote, so that publishing methods remain crystallized almost on eighteenth century lines. The proposal about to be made is perhaps far too revolutionary for the careful consideration of present‐day publishers, but it is made in the sincere hope that it may one day be realized. It has been made before without any definite details, but its general lines have been discussed among librarians for years past.

The concept of patriarchy, one of the key thinking tools of the 1970s women’s movements, has been used and critiqued in many current and historical projects. This chapter enters the debate in an unorthodox way. Rather than define, defend, or critique the concept of patriarchy, it focuses on its capacity to articulate historically specific forms of relations between gender and generation.

The body of the chapter notes the continuities and differences in the way mastery and social infancy were connected in several episodes of thinking with patriarchy in Western social and political thought. Attempts to bring Roman law into a coherent system in early sixth-century ce, debates between defenders of absolutist rule and proponents of democracy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, nineteenth-century reconstructions of human pre-history and resurgent twentieth-century women’s movements have all left traces in ways of thinking about gender and generational relations today.

In the last two decades, new forms of activism and scholarship drew on the conceptual toolkit surrounding patriarchy. The last section of the chapter highlights two of these areas: research on child rights governance and the total social organization of labor, and writings on patrimonialism. Key insights from this work, the chapter concludes, can be used to argue that a focus on historically specific forms of the interface between gender and generation constitutes a useful aspect of thinking with patriarchy.

THE bulk of our hospitals, etc., were built about a century ago and when examined in the light of present‐day needs and future requirements they are found to be far from satisfactory. Millions of hours are wasted annually due to the inadequacies of the buildings, equipment and management. Most of these institutions are trying to give a more comprehensive service to a volume of patients twice as large as they were originally designed to accommodate.

Gives an account of how one primary school set about developing and implementing a sex education policy. Describes the processes of consultation, training and curriculum development involved. Provides a detailed description of topics studied by children at different ages, including lesson ideas.

This essay raises a concern about the trajectory that new institutionalism has been following during the last decades, namely an emphasis on heterogeneity, change and agentic behavior instead of isomorphism and conformist behavior. This is a crucial issue from the perspective of the philosophy and methodology of science since a theory that admits both change and stability as a norm has less scientific weight then a theory that predicts a prevalence of passivity and isomorphism over change and strategic behavior. The former provides explanations and predictions while the latter does not.

The paper offers an analysis of the nature, characteristics, functions and boundaries of institutional theories in the spirit of philosophy and methodology of science literature.

The power of the former institutional theory developed by Meyer, Rowan, DiMaggio and Powell lies in its generalization, explanation and prediction of observable and unobservable phenomena: as a typical organizational theory that puts forward directional predictions, it explains and predicts the tendency for organizations to become more similar to each other over time and express less strategic and interest-driven behavior, conforming to ever-increasing institutional pressures. A theory of isomorphism makes scientific predictions while its modern advancements do not. Drawing on Popper's idea of the limit of domains of explanation and limited domains of theories we present two propositions that may direct our attention towards the strength or weakness of institutional theories with regard to their explanations of organizational processes and behavior.

The paper draws implications for further theory building in institutional analysis by suggesting the nature of institutional explanations and the place of institutional change in the theoretical apparatus. Once institutional theory explains the tendency of the system towards equilibrium, there is no need to explain the origins and causes of radical change per se. Institutional isomorphism theory explains and predicts how even after radical changes organizational fields will move towards isomorphism, that is, institutional equilibrium. The task is, therefore, not to explain agency and change but to show that it is natural and inevitable processes that organizational field will return to isomorphic dynamics and move towards homogenization no matter how much radical change occurred in this field.

The paper discusses the practical problems with instrumental utility of institutional theories. In order to be useful any theory must clearly delineate its boundaries and offer explanations and predictions and it is only the former 1977/1983 institutional theory that satisfies these requirements while modern advancements merely offer ambiguous theoretical umbrellas that escape empirical tests. For researchers therefore it is important to recognize which theory can be applied in a given limited domain of research and which one has little or no value.