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Presents brief results of a study into factors that successful managers use to increase productivity in the UK and USA. Identifies ten common themes including use of talent, objective measurement and team building.

Discusses performance‐related pay schemes, highlighting their importance in stimulating individuals to higher levels of achievement. Explores how the engineer, the academic, the politician and the grocer′s daughter have all contributed to the present attitude towards reward and motivation. Outlines what exactly is rewarded and how, company‐wide profit share schemes are designed to promote greater acceptance of the profit motive and a climate of co‐operating and working together. Reviews six principles of reward and concludes with the views of the critics.

Describes how Joshua Tetley′s “Quality Pays” programme illustrates that the only way to achieve a real, sustainable competitive edge, is to commit the company to a service‐driven organisation. Traces the development of the Quality Pays programme and the need to develop an infrastructure to facilitate Quality Pays as an on‐going process. Describes the programmes basic aims and the training involved. Lists six key ingredients which enable companies to maintain the momentum and avoid some of the pitfalls of earlier quality service initiatives. Asserts that following these six ingredients should enable companies to develop a culture based on the premise that the customer is always right.

Examines the way organizations are establishing sustainable competitive advantage to combat the effects of the recession. Investing in training is pointed as one way of building on already available talent.

To be competitive in the future, companies will need to achieve three times the productivity with only one third of the number of people. Organizations must appreciate the increases in profit and productivity that can accrue from selecting and recruiting talented performers. The system of structured interviews, which enables interviewers to identify to what degree individual applicants possess the required characteristics, is being increasingly used. This system may considerably reduce staff turnover. Training should not be a Pavlovian reflex to every problem the organization encounters; people cannot be trained to be what they are not. Training refines and develops talent; it does not create it.

In a recent speech LORD ROSEBERY charged the people of this country with possessing, to an inordinate extent, the fatal gift of complacency, and he observed that the nation which is not progressive is retrogressive. “Rest and be thankful,” said LORD ROSEBERY, is a motto which spells decay, and those who have any experience of the methods of the manufacturers of the country will admit that this seemingly severe impeachment is by no means unfounded or uncalled‐for. Industries, of which at one time the English were masters, are now gradually falling into other hands. The workers of other lands are successfully competing with our own, and yet, in spite of this condition of our mercantile affairs, the spirit of complacency is rampant. The sons are content to continue in the footsteps of the fathers, oblivious of the fact that time and seasons do not stand still and that they may be overwhelmed by the advancing flood of competition. The trade conservatism which was in the past opposed to the introduction of the steam‐engine, the power‐loom, and other mechanical appliances, is still responsible for the extreme slowness with which English firms appreciate the necessity for such innovations in the conduct of their business as would place them in a position to hold their own in the markets of the world. In respect to the protection of pure food production Great Britain and the British manufacturers are still a long way behind. Although the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875 was one of the first Acts passed in any country to prevent the sale of adulterated food and drink, its machinery is cumbrous, and the subsequent Amendment Acts have not added materially to its efficiency; with the result that the Adulteration Acts do not compare favourably with those of many other countries. The spirit of complacency in regard to food products has affected alike the producer and the distributor, and the result is that in many instances there is no adequate inducement to produce anything but a mediocre article—such an article, in fact, as only escapes condemnation because of the faulty construction of the machinery of the law.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how firm size impacts pension workforce coverage with a particular focus on automatic enrolment (AE) to pension plans in small organisations.

The paper examines the alignment of government AE interests with those of small employers, their employees and pension providers to better understand how firm size impacts pension workforce coverage.

The alignment of interests between stakeholders (government, pension providers, employers and employees) differs between large and small organisations, and empirical findings from large organisations cannot be assumed to apply in small organisations.

The paper calls attention to the need for future empirical research and identifies a number of research questions for further analysis to examine how AE impacts pension participation in small organisations and advance the field.

The policy of automatically enroling employees into occupational pension plans, recently legislated for all eligible workers in the UK and under consideration in the USA and Ireland, was developed from research conducted in a small number of large organisations. Pension coverage is particularly inadequate for the large number of employees working in small organisations (1–49 employees). However, little research attention has been focussed on pensions in small organisations with pension policy makers assuming that legislated AE will work as effectively in small organisations as it did in large organisations. This paper addresses this gap in the field.

Discusses the long existing and confusing problems of establishing the relationship of who is, and who if not, a dependent worker. Reflects developments which have occurred in British law as it affects the employment field, plus an evaluation and analysis of some of the different types of employment relationships which have evolved by examining, where possible, the status of each of these relationships. Concludes that the typical worker nowadays finds himself in a vulnerable position both economically and psychologically owing to the insecurity which exists.

In his report for the year ending March 31st, 1957, Mr. W. A. Davenport, Chief Inspector of Weights and Measures for Buckinghamshire, makes some shrewd comments on the effects of the growth of self‐service shops on the purchasing habits of the ordinary housewife, and draws attention, as others have done, to certain aspects of this major social change that are not always entirely to the advantage of the buyer. The following is quoted, with acknowledgements, from the report:—