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Prior to the sudden collapse of large companies following the turn of the century and the implication that the auditing of these enterprises had failed, the large public accounting firms sought to re‐engineer the audit. A comprehension attempt to convert that which had been designed as a social good into one more aligned with a commercial logic was halted by the legislative response to this departure from classic professionalism. Recent developments suggest that change in this direction is regrouping. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective analysis of the thoughts of the authors on the early development of the new audit approach.

Most of the information in the piece was garnered from conversations with public accounting partners during the era in question. Logical argumentation derived from the academic and theoretical literature is the primary method.

Attributes of the firms' strategies during this period are outlined. Features of the new audit are developed, especially as they vary from the traditional audit. These techniques and approaches are analyzed in terms of their ability to serve the public interest. This paper argues that motivating factors of the new audit will continue to be a force even in the more hostile regulatory environment of today.

An appreciation of the findings of the study is useful in maintaining a level of skepticism about changes to the audit that are advocated by audit firms. Users of audit services, regulators, and legislators would benefit from an appreciation of the recent past. The motivating factors underlying these changes to audit environment continue to operate over time as the social purposes of the audit are less likely to be converted by the firms to ones that can be commercially exploited.

The study contributes insights into the origins of the new business audit approach and related strengths and limitations. These factors should be considered as the approach is developed and moves forward into the future in order for the audit approach to be effective in performing its social functions.

The corrosion of concrete, and the factors causing or preventing it, present at least as complex a problem as metallic corrosion, and the two are frequently inter‐related. A vast tonnage of steel in all kinds of structures is protected by concrete from corrosion In the following article, the author outlines the various types of cement used in concrete, following this with a description of the chemical agents which can corrode concrete, such as organic acids, sulphates, etc. He then examines concrete as a means of preventing corrosion and also as a corrosive agent.

The first part of this article, published last month, was primarily concerned with a general approach to the problem and dealt with some of the materials used for corrosion resistant floors, including impervious membranes, PVC and polythene. This month, in concluding the article, the author gives details of several types of floor and their suitability in different industries.

HERE TO STAY. Thumbing through a pile of recent technical literature, our attention was distracted from the study of highly complex, novel and up‐to‐date methods and techniques of overcoming corrosion problems, by an article in the bulletin of the Lead Development Association on the restoration work in progress on Westminster Abbey.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understand the role of the statutory auditing profession in France. The study is theoretically based on distinctions between a functionalist view of professions and a neo-weberian view. Prior research, conducted in Anglo-American countries has shown that the auditing profession has focussed primarily on protecting the private interests of the profession. Hence, there is a need to conduct research on this topic in a code law country where the state is expected to play a significant role in protecting the public interest.

The methodology involves a content analysis of 148 disciplinary decisions issued against statutory auditors in France from 1989 to 2006. This analysis identified 21 types of violations grouped into public interest or private interest offences. Because visible offences are public and are more likely to threaten the reputation of the profession, these types of decisions are also studied with respect to their visibility.

The results reveal that in a code law country such as France the auditing profession tends to defend both the public interest as well as its private interests. The results also support the “visibility” effect.

The written disciplinary decisions have been anonymized so that the names of the auditors and the clients cannot be identified.

This paper differs from previous studies conducted in the Anglo-American context which show an emphasis on protecting the private interests of the auditing profession. Moreover, this study reveals the existence of “mixed” offences and underlines that a profession primarily focusses on these cases. Thus, the work reconciles in part the functionalist and neo-weberian perspectives. Lastly, this paper confirms the importance of the visibility effect.

SOME forthright remarks about domestic fittings and appliances were made at a recent meeting of the S.C.I. Corrosion Group by Mrs. A. Jackman of Queen Elizabeth College, where domestic and household sciences are taught. Speaking about general corrosion problems which arise in the household, she condemned the penny‐wise and pound‐foolish policy to which householders have been subject. Chromium plating, for example, catches the eye of the customer and lasts just long enough so that she will not return the article to the shop.

Aims to examine the changes to budgetary control and performance monitoring in the context of a series of World Bank sponsored public sector reforms.

The paper uses a longitudinal study of a state enterprise (the Ghana Food Distribution Corporation (GFDC)) in which the World Bank‐sponsored reforms were imposed. This paper especially draws on the dialectic of control from structuration theory.

The paper shows that budgetary practices at the GFDC did not change substantially, with the exception of the reporting practices. Budgeting remained politicised, delayed, directionless and ineffective. Reporting to the monitoring agency did not make any positive changes to accountability and performance and was thereby unable to serve public interests.

With hindsight, the authors wished they had undertaken more in‐depth investigations of workers' and farmers' roles in whole performance contracting scenarios and public sector reforms at the GFDC. The failure so to do was mainly because of a shortage of time and the difficulty of obtaining relevant data.

This paper has raised a number of important but neglected issues concerning the public sector reforms in less developed countries (LDCs) for aid agencies and policy makers.

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of Giddens' idea of the dialectic of control in the contextual study of management controls, including budgeting and performance in the public sector in LDCs. Also, the paper makes an important contribution highlighting the public interest role of management controls especially in the context of public sector reforms.

Manufacturers show a growing tendency to remove the skin from all fruits and vegetables before drying. Because of custom or the type of skin, some kinds, notably prunes and apricots, however, are rarely peeled. Peeling may be done by hand or by specially designed machines. Many types of knives, with straight, curved or guarded blades, and hand‐operated cutting machines are obtainable for peeling, trimming, coring and otherwise preparing the material to be dried. Machines for peeling and coring both apples and pears in one operation are available. Friction or rotary mechanical peelers are particularly well suited for handling roots and tubers. All peelers of this type depend upon the rasping effect of rough surfaces of cement, corundum, etc., forming some part of the lining of the peeler, when the product is rotated rapidly within the cylinder by a moving bottom. The material is introduced at the top and discharged by a side door. These machines are usually equipped with water sprays, which wash off the dirt and the particles of skin removed by the peeler. Other types make use of an open flame which chars the skin so that it can be brushed or washed off. Several types of lye peelers are available. All depend upon immersion in or spraying with hot (190°–200° F.) lye solution. The length of treatment must be determined for each batch of fruit. It should be long enough to permit the ready removal of skin by water sprays or by rubbing, but must not injure the flesh of the product being peeled. Following the peeling, the fruit or vegetable must be inspected and all remaining skin removed with trimming knives, especially adapted to different products. Lye is used to check the skins of prunes and grapes in order to facilitate drying. The fruit is in contact with the hot lye solution long enough to break the skin by many minute fissures or checks, but not long enough to loosen it. The concentration and temperature of the lye bath are similar to those for lye peeling. After the lye treatment the fruit is carefully washed to remove all traces of the lye bath before further processing. Fruits are sliced, cubed, shredded, or left whole. Vegetables are sliced, cubed, shredded, or chipped. The cutting is done by hand or by some one of the numerous machines on the market. Some of the machines consist essentially of rotating knives or cutting surfaces operated by hand or by power. In others the cutting surfaces are stationary and the product is forced against the blades. Special machines for cutting beans are made. In the most satisfactory type of cubing machine the slices are cut, carried to a die, and forced through by a plunger. Manufacturers find it desirable to pit or seed stone fruits, as pitted or seeded fruits dry more rapidly and sell more readily than those from which the pits or seeds are not removed. Machines for pitting, seeding and paring most fruits are for sale by food‐machinery manufacturers, but the greater part of dried fruits are pitted by hand. After the raw material is prepared in the desired form, no time should elapse before traying and subsequent treatments preliminary to its being placed in the drier. No definite rule can be given for determining the quantity of material to be placed on a unit area of tray surface. Experience will soon show the operators how much will insure even, rapid drying. Many of the larger fruits must be trayed only one layer deep. Overloading trays must be avoided. Trays should be light but capable of withstanding strain, and they should permit a maximum exposure of the materials. Trays of the type most often seen have a spreading surface formed either of wire screen or wooden slats held firmly in a narrow but rigid wooden or metal frame. Many of the trays now in use have been employed in sun or other drying. If new trays are made, the one‐man tray, about 2½ to 3 feet square, will be found to be the most convenient. Wooden‐slat trays can be more cheaply constructed than wire‐screen trays, but they have a high rate of upkeep. These trays, however, are not affected by sulphur fumes or fruit acids, for which reason they are preferred for most fruits. The trucks for conveying loaded trays are of two general types. In one a skeleton frame is provided with cleats, upon which the trays rest. The cleats are from 2 to 4 inches from centre to centre above one another. These trucks are made of various combinations of wood or angle iron. The other, which may be called the stack type, has a low floor supported by wheels 3 to 5 inches in diameter. The trays are piled or stacked one above the other, and the desired space between them is maintained by the raised sides of the trays. Various alterations may be made for convenience in handling and loading. The original method of preparing fruits and vegetables for drying consisted in washing, peeling when desirable, cutting, and traying. By this method most dark‐coloured materials made fairly presentable dried foods, but light‐coloured fruits and vegetables did not. The attempt to overcome this difficulty led to the introduction of blanching, or processing, and sulphuring. The blanching, or processing, agent is usually steam or hot water, which helps the product to retain its natural colour. In the steam treatment the material is subjected to live steam for the required period. In blanching by hot water, the temperature is maintained at 190° F. to the boiling point, depending on the material being treated. As a rule, steam blanching is preferred to blanching in liquid, because the loss of soluble constituents of the food is less, a better flavoured product results, and the use of steam is ordinarily more convenient. Light‐coloured fruits (apricots, peaches, pears, and at times grapes and figs) are sulphured in order to prevent discolouration during and after drying and to facilitate drying. Sulphuring plasmolyzes the cells and makes permeable the semipermeable cell membrane, thus facilitating the diffusion of water from the interior to the surface. When the general plan of operation makes it desirable, the fruit on trays is sulphured in an enclosed chamber, provided with an entrance for the sulphur gas and an exit for a draught. The chamber is usually large enough to hold one to two loaded trucks. Preferably the sulphur is burned in shallow pans stacked one above the other in zigzag formation. This method gives a large quantity of sulphur dioxide in a comparatively short time. Sometimes a sulphur stove is placed outside the chamber and the sulphur fumes are carried into the chamber by flues. Sulphuring should always be as light as possible to accomplish the desired results. The type of equipment best adapted to any particular use depends upon several factors. If the products are to be dried for home or farm use, then the equipment should be as simple as possible. If the dried material is to be prepared in large quantities for sale to the public, then the type of equipment will depend to a great extent upon the nature of the product desired. To meet these needs many devices have been originated and patented, so that all phases of drying are well covered. Materials can be dried more rapidly and at lower temperatures in vacuum than at atmospheric pressure. Such foods as are extremely susceptible to damage by heat are more safely dried in vacuum. However, vacuum driers are seldom used in large‐scale operations on the usual commercial grades of dehydrated fruits and vegetables. The apparatus is too expensive and usually the advantages gained are not sufficient to compensate for the added cost of equipment and operation. Enzymes are not inactivated by evaporation alone, and it will be found desirable in many cases to inactivate them by blanching or by other means if vacuum drying is used.

FINANCIAL fears are only less cruel than those of war, and lead men into extravagances which they would repudiate indignantly in their cooler moments. If the doings of the Economy Committee at Manchester in relation to children's libraries, as described in the article by Mr. Lamb in our last issue, are true, we have in them an example of a kind of retrenchment at the expense of the young which we hope is without parallel and will have no imitators. Some reduc‐tion of estimates we hear of from this or that place, but in few has the stupid policy which urges that if we spend nothing we shall all become rich been carried into full effect. Libraries always have suffered in times of crisis, whatever they are; we accept that, though doubtfully; but we do know that the people need libraries.

This paper uses a stakeholder approach to examine how the role of accounting and the status of accountants changed over a 30 year period (1970 to 2000) in a major Australian government trading enterprise. Data are gathered from semi‐structured interviews with organizational participants and documentation. The study provides support for the importance of stakeholders in shaping organizational processes and practices, including accounting practices, and for the effects of changes in stakeholder constituency and agenda on such practices. The study also provides evidence of the roles accounting and accountants may play in implementing a stakeholder agenda, including both instrumental and symbolic roles, and how the status of accountants may rise and fall commensurate with those roles.