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The purpose of this paper is to undertake an analysis of the implications of potential Scottish independence for inward foreign direct investment (FDI), multinational enterprise strategies and the local economy.

This paper takes a multidisciplinary approach drawing on literature and evidence in the international business and management, political economy and economic geography fields to analyse the role and impact of inward FDI in Scotland following possible Scottish independence.

Scotland continues as an attractive location for FDI, with greater diversity than hitherto. While the country’s comparative advantages in immobile natural resources provide some protection from uncertainty, weak embeddedness is a risk factor irrespective of independence. A range of transition costs of independence are identified, which could be high and of indeterminate duration, and some will be sector-specific. There are also new possibilities for tailoring of policies and potential reindustrialization opportunities in renewable technologies. The foreign investors most vulnerable to political risks and uncertainties are those whose market scope is the rest of the UK (rUK) either as exporters or value-chain integrators, in addition to the high political risk industries of energy, banking and financial services and defence. Scottish subsidiaries’ significance within their parent MNE groups will also be a major factor in determining responses to political risks and uncertainties.

Specific focus on the impact of potential independence on the foreign-owned sector as a major contributor to the Scottish economy.

Many managers of Indo‐French alliances consider culture to be a failure, rather than a success factor because they address the national or corporate level for cross‐cultural comparisons. In contrast, this study proposes using the Douglasian Cultural Theory (CT) to address the transactional level of culture. In so doing, it aims to overcome some of the limitations of the national, corporate and transactional approaches and provide a systematic framework for discussing the viability of international alliances.

An analysis of 48 ethnographic interviews and field studies was conducted in 25 Indo‐French alliances.

Through an analysis of the ethnographic interviews and field studies conducted, the paper offers the following guidelines to managers for the design of viable alliances: the commonly‐cited interdependence of the hierarchical and competitive solidarities is not sufficient to ensure the viability of international alliances; the presence of a third solidarity seems essential; an analysis of failed alliances reveals that fatalism is not the third solidarity we are looking for; and an analysis of viable alliances shows that the egalitarian solidarity plays a role in ensuring the viability of international alliances by building a bridge between the hierarchical and competitive solidarity, thereby preventing gridlocks.

Major methodological limitations of this study include over‐emphasis on ethnographic interviews for data and use of unsystematic criteria for identifying solidarities in Indo‐French alliances

Unlike the paper's predecessors, it recommends that cultural plurality, not cultural domination, leads to viable alliances. International managers often tend to impose their own thought styles on others, thereby neglecting the inherent wisdom of other thought styles. The paper stresses that cultural diversity without duality leads to viability.

This paper aims to provide an insight into the corporate greed and consequent corporate collapses of companies such as HIH, One.Tel and Harris Scarfe in Australia, while concurrently, Enron, WorldCom and other companies were attracting the attention of the accounting profession, the regulators and the general public in the USA. It is argued that the rise in economic rationalism and the related increased materialism of both the public and company directors and managers, fed the corporate excesses that resulted in spectacular corporate collapses, including one of the world’s largest accounting firms. The opportunistic behaviour of directors, and managers and the lack of transparency and integrity in corporations, was compounded by the failure of the corporate watch‐dogs, such as auditors and regulators, to protect the public interest. If the history of bad corporate behaviour is not to be repeated, the religion of materialism needs to be recognised and addressed, to ensure any corporate governance reforms proposed for the future will be effective.

(a) Equal Opportunities Commission, Overseas House, Quay Street, Manchester M3 3HN. (i) Information Technology in the Office: The Impact on Women's Jobs In January 1979 Communications Studies and Planning Ltd (CS & P) were granted one year's funding by the EOC to examine the impact which the new microprocessor‐based office technologies would have on staff. The main conclusions are:

A multimedia computer system is one that can create, import, integrate, store, retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of media materials in digital form, such as audio, image, full‐motion video, and text information. This paper surveys four possible types of multimedia computer systems: hypermedia, multimedia database, multimedia message, and virtual reality systems. The primary focus is on advanced multimedia systems development projects and theoretical efforts that suggest long‐term trends in this increasingly important area.

The objective of this paper is to show how Internet technologies have the potential to facilitate the achievement of transparency within public sector organisations. This change will also have a major impact on the way in which public sector organisations interact with their environment and in particular with users of their products and services. The connectivity that automatically results from Internet technologies can exert a very powerful influence in encouraging a free flow of ideas around the organisation, permitting individuals and organisational units to converge and inter‐connect. It is shown how the “open” systems nature of Internet technologies can facilitate greater co‐operation and communication across organisation units both internally and externally. There are significant benefits to be accrued from employing Internet technologies at the interfaces between the public sector organisation and other agencies and suppliers. At the citizen interface, it is shown how a number of public sector organisations have adopted Internet technologies, which in turn has allowed them to be more responsive to the needs of citizens. In the future, the expectations of the individual will continue to rise with increasing demands for online accessibility to organisations. Although there are considerable barriers to the full implementation of Internet technologies, the connectivity of the Internet presents public sector organisations with an immense opportunity to enhance the way in which they fulfil the needs of users of their products and services. Public sector organisations that do not embrace the technology will continue to have major problems achieving efficiencies and delivering the value demanded by citizens, particularly in the light of shrinking public sector budgets.

Polyphenols possess anti-allergic activities. Catechin is one of the polyphenols that are abundantly present in the Acacia catechu. In this study, the authors investigated the effect of catechin isolated from A. catechu in an experimental mouse model of ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic asthma.

Catechin was isolated from A. catechu, and phytochemical analysis was carried out by ultraviolet visible and thin-layer chromatography (TLC), high pressure thin-layer chromatography was used for the determination of an amount of catechin present. In a first set of an experiment, the authors have carried out dose-dependent evaluation of catechin on histamine synthesis in normal rats. In another study, allergic asthma was induced in BALB/c mice by intraperitoneal injection of 50 mg OVA dissolved in 4 mg aluminum hydroxide dissolved in 0.2 ml saline on Days 0 and 14. Catechin was given orally at the dose of 100 mg/kg, once a day from Day 1 to Day 35 and after which various respiratory parameters such as tidal volume, respiratory rate and airflow rate, biochemical parameters such as histamine release from mast cells, bronchoalveolar (BAL) lavage fluid analysis and histopathology of lungs were carried out.

Catechin showed significant (p < 0.05) improvement in respiratory parameters such as tidal volume, respiratory rate and airflow rate, as well as biochemical and hematological parameters such as blood histamine, serum bicarbonate and nitric oxide levels as compared to the disease control group. The treatment also showed inhibitory effects on histamine synthesis in rat peritoneal as well as BAL mast cells. Also, a significant (p < 0.05) improvement in lung histopathology was observed with catechin.

From the present study, the authors can conclude that catechin exhibited potent anti-allergic activity by inhibition of histamine synthesis by inhibition of histidine decarboxylase enzyme. The study suggests that catechin has therapeutic potential for the treatment of allergic inflammatory disease in humans.

Several power law relations are found to occur in bibliographic studies of scientific journals, articles, and citations. These can be interpreted in a self‐consistent manner in terms of growth parameters of articles, journals, and citations. Similar models have been proposed earlier in physical, biological, and behavioural sciences.

From earliest times the land and all it produced to feed and sustain those who dwelt on it was mankind's greatest asset. From the Biblical “land of milk and honey”, down through history to the “country of farmers” visualised by the American colonists when they severed the links with the mother country, those who had all their needs met by the land were blessed — they still are! The inevitable change brought about by the fast‐growing populations caused them to turn to industry; Britain introduced the “machine age” to the world; the USA the concept of mass production — and the troubles and problems of man increased to the present chaos of to‐day. There remained areas which depended on an agri‐economy — the granary countries, as the vast open spaces of pre‐War Russia; now the great plains of North America, to supply grain for the bread of the peoples of the dense industrial conurbations, which no longer produced anything like enough to feed themselves.

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.