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Each alternate year the Distributive Trades Education and Training Council arranges a conference for University Careers Advisory Officers. The purpose of the conference is to outline management career opportunities for university graduates in retail and wholesale distribution, and the format usually followed is for a type of distribution to be discussed both by an executive and a management trainee. This year's conference was held at Lewis's store in Birmingham; W.J. Philpott, the writer of this report, was himself one of the speakers.

Various devices for capturing data at the point of sale are proliferating at a remarkable rate; the electro‐mechanical cash register, so we are told, is dead if not yet buried by electronics. Progress is proceeding with the development of a standard product numbering system; it does appear that until this is fully operational, non‐food retailing will get the lion's share of electronic cash register systems Some of these points were discussed at a recent conference sponsored by the British Computer Society in co‐operation with International Business Communications.

The forecast that average wages would rise by at least 10% by mid‐'77 and inflation would continue at 14% were two of the more depressing “prospects” put forward at a recent retailing seminar organised by stockbrokers, Philips and Drew. Speakers at the conference discussed share prospects in the retail sector for the benefit of an audience of potential investors—in the main representatives of insurance companies and pension funds. Financial analyst, Alun Jones, examined the outlook for the whole sector, while Kenneth Bishop, Finance Director, Debenhams; John Samuel, Director and Joint Secretary, Marks and Spencer; and Ian MacLaurin, Managing Director, Tesco Stores each looked at the prospects for their own companies. Below we summarise some of their conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate thought on the management of business alliances by considering the mismanagement of relationships between the allies, particularly France and Great Britain, in World War I.

The paper is not intended to be a work of history, although such works are used extensively, but, given the limitations of such a paper, an exhaustive analysis of the events in World War I is infeasible. Errors in selection of data are the responsibility of the paper's author.

The war did not develop as expected and the physical stalemate on the Western Front proved intractable to the routine thinking of the generals. The war involved the total economy of the nations involved in a way never before encountered and the steps the politicians had to take to gear up their nations brought them into conflict with the military. Although the nations opposing the Central Powers were allied, there was no single strategy, rather a series of national initiatives that were barely co‐ordinated with their partners. Unity of military command was achieved in the final months of the war and led to a greater effectiveness of the Entente armies. Firms that ally themselves need to overcome this tendency to concentrate on their own operations and be prepared to appoint an “alliance manager” with the power to make the partners work effectively as a team. The absence of clear thinking in strategy formulation and effective joint command in 1914‐1918 resulted in a Pyrrhic victory and terrible casualties and vast expenditure. Firms cannot afford such a “victory”.

The case is a warning to those forming business alliances that their aims must be harmonised with those of their partners, that the strategy is for the benefit of all partners, and some “sovereignty” must be sacrificed in the wider interests o the alliance.

This approach aims to cast an unusual perspective on alliances from which the value of existing theory is reinforced.

Assessing the impact of a quality improvement intervention on an organization is particularly difficult in a high contact service operation where the intangible service encounter is the unit of output. Frequently, accounting or financial data must be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention; however, these data may be problematic with respect to sample size and masking effects due to aggregation. Presents a systems model which describes metaphorically how an unstable process can continue to show no performance gains despite continued input of resources into improvement initiatives. A special type of Shewart control chart, known as the X‐chart, is developed as a methodology for assessing process performance after an improvement programme has been implemented. An X‐chart is used to analyse performance data collected in a real service setting where service quality standards were deployed in the front line phase of the operation. Although traditional analysis of variance concluded that there was no significant improvement in performance, the X‐chart indicates that real performance gains were occurring. The X‐chart provides management with an easy‐to‐use decision tool which can help assess the effectiveness of many different types of organizational change initiatives.

Volunteer organizations, where there is no employment relationship between the member and the organization, represent an interesting context in which to explore the effects of leadership and organizational commitment. We present the results from a study of 212 Canadian volunteer leaders from an international social/charitable organization. Volunteer leaders were more psychologically involved and committed to their organization than comparable leaders from a trade union. The volunteer leaders rated higher than their union counterparts in transformational leadership and socialization. Union leaders were more transactional and held stronger Marxist work beliefs. Both volunteer and union leaders reported similar humanistic views on work. There were no differences with respect to inter‐role conflict that both types of leaders experienced. Discussion of the results focuses on application of these findings to changing organizational environments and their interaction of work and non‐work issues.

In the recently issued Report of the Local Government Board Dr. A. W. J. MacFadden refers to the inadequate methods of meat inspection which have long been under consideration, and in regard to which the special experience gained during the war has, in his opinion, greatly strengthened the grounds for instituting changes. Attention, for example, is forcibly directed to the lack of system in the inspection and the facility which is afforded for the unchecked disposal of cow carcasses for human food. Dr. MacFadden points out that a very considerable proportion of the cows slaughtered annually in this country are seriously affected with tuberculosis, while under conditions which normally exist in England and Wales only a small proportion of these cows ever come under inspection at the time of their slaughter. It must be borne in mind that, whatever inspection may be given to meat after it has been dressed and cut into portions for sale, it is generally quite impossible to detect whether or not the meat was derived from an animal in a diseased condition. Dr. MacFadden strongly advocates the promotion of public abattoirs and the compulsory closing of private slaughter‐houses. In the summer of 1918 considerable anxiety was shown by a number of medical officers of health as to the soundness and wholesomeness of the frozen meat which was being delivered in their districts. Some consignments were rejected by the local authorities and returned to the distributing centre. Public anxiety on the score of health, reports Dr. MacFadden, was largely allaved by the activity shown by medical officers of health and their staffs throughout the country in protecting the country against danger from this source, and much credit is due to them for the success achieved at a time when the border‐line between safety and danger was often ill‐defined, and when all the circumstances offered temptation to a policy of chance. The vast quantities of foods required by armies led to organised inquiry into the sanitary condition of food‐preparing premises. This involved literally thousands of visits by the Board's inspectors of foods to such premises of all sizes and descriptions in different parts of the country, and careful records have been kept of the conditions found and of the improvements effected. A survey of these records shows that while in a number of the larger factories work has been carried out under conditions likely to ensure the production of sound and wholesome foodstuffs, in many others, even of this class, the opposite has been the case, while in a large proportion of the smaller factories and food‐preparing places the conditions disclosed were unsatisfactory in the extreme.

Before leaving the subject of the relations of the Public Analyst to the Medical Officer of Health it is desirable to refer to a matter which sometimes gives rise to difficulties and to disagreements between the two officers. Apparently by a legal oversight the duty of looking after the water supply of a district is allotted to the Medical Officer—but there is nothing to show in what way and to what extent he is to be personally occupied in carrying out this task. It also happens that water is specifically excluded from the scope of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts, and, in view of these circumstances, some Medical Officers have adopted the idea that their duties are not to be limited to administrative work in this connection, but that it is also incumbent on them to make the necessary analyses; while in other, and perhaps more frequent instances the local autherities, particularly in country districts, deliberately place that burden on the shoulders of the Medical Officer when arranging the conditions of his appointment.

The initial shock of devaluing the currency, after so many promises that it would not take place, has passed; only the uncertainty and apprehension remain. It seems an idle exercise to compare the present state of the country's economy with other periods in recent history, such as when in the first Labour Government, we went off the gold standard; at that time, shock was indeed profound and again, the French were cock‐a‐hoop, but the position was complicated by the huge inter‐indebtedness of the Allies in the First War. Or the first devaluation after the Second World War, but both periods were also characterized by public waste and profligate spending. Now, we have to obtain foreign loans and financial backing to keep going, and it is this aspect of the present devaluation which will probably far outweigh any positive advantages. The country's massive external debts were increased by approximately one‐seventh overnight, probably wiping out completely all the repayments made at such great effort since the War. Devaluation of the currency cannot be seen as anything but a grievous blow to the country, presaging hard times ahead for everyone. When promises were being made that devaluation would not take place, there can be little doubt that these were honestly made and, at the time, believed in, for no Government of a country with imports always exceeding exports, would impose such a burden on its people willingly. It must then have been forced upon them.

We explore how scholarly understandings of and the practice of organizational transformation have evolved since Bartunek and Louis’s (1988) Research in Organizational Change and Development chapter. While Bartunek and Louis hoped to see strategy scholarship and OD approaches to transformation inform each other, strategy literature has drifted away from transformation toward more continuous change. OD practice has focused on the implementation of its own versions of transformation through Large Group Interventions, Appreciative Inquiry, the new dialogic OD, and Theory U. Based on a discussion of Theory U, we call attention to the importance of individuals as an important source of new ideas in understanding and practicing large-scale change.