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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.

What currently constitutes participation in schools? Who decides what ‘counts’ as engagement and who is excluded by and in those decisions? When and how do those ideas change? How can broadening conceptualizations of voice, agency and participation – driven by the voices of individuals who do not rely solely on verbal speech to communicate – foster inclusivity in schools and community? In this chapter, we draw from our experiences as researchers, scholars, educators, colleagues and friends who live and work alongside non-speaking and unreliably speaking ¹ people who type, point or use other forms of augmentative and alternative communication. We lay out foundational concepts underlying experiences of neurodivergent communicators, followed by illustrative examples and action steps for change. Geared towards educators and support professionals working to sustain spaces more inclusive of a range of voices in schools, this chapter continues a productive conversation within the Disability Studies in Education (DSE) community around inclusivity in research and in practice.

This article combines 530 digitized Franchise Disclosure Documents and standard contracts with employer-identified job ads from Burning Glass Technologies to establish stylized facts about franchising labor markets and their relation to the vertical restraints and contractual provisions that limit the autonomy of franchisees vis a vis their franchisors. We report novel findings about the application of vertical restraints like Resale Price Maintenance, Exclusive Dealing, and No-poaching Restrictions, among many others, to a low wage workforce. A legal regime that favors the franchising business model incentivizes franchisees to profit at the expense of workers and to limit egalitarian tendencies operating in the workplace.

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.