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In the last few years increasing attention has been paid to employee relations management within the multi‐divisional company. This has come about partly because of the recent growth in the incidence of such organisational structures within Britain and partly because of the growing realisation that employee relations management within multi‐divisional structures differs from other organisational structures; for instance the unitary or functionally organised company.

The Oxford Institute for Employee Relations (OXIFER) is a small research and teaching community based at Templeton College, Oxford. It aims to link advanced research with teaching and the widespread dissemination of findings, focusing primarily on the role of management in employee and industrial relations and examining aspects of employee relations. Four research projects are currently under way. The first, Development and Dissemination of the Industrial Relations Audit, involves identifying an organisation's existing industrial relations practices and comparing and contrasting these with the desired position as perceived by senior managers or a joint body of senior managers and union representatives. Line Management of Industrial Relations uses data from the audits conducted in the first project to study the industrial relations role of line managers. The Management of Employee Relations in the Multidivisional Company focuses on the strategic choices open to senior line managers and personnel management. Management of Change and the Contribution of Industrial Relations Training aims to gain a better understanding of the process of change in a variety of organisations with particular reference to the contribution which industrial relations training in its broadest sense can make to change. Common themes running through the projects are methodology, employment relations and the management of change and the apparent current managerial concern with quality.

Who to believe when every theory has its pros and cons? Where even deliberately having no strategy (e.g., the Nucor company) can be a successful tactic?

The purpose of this paper is to present an interview between Strategy & Leadership with the veteran observer and outspoken critic of corporate follies, Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, about the state of management and management education.

The questions are asked by Robert J. Allio, who has been both a senior academic and executive at Fortune 500 companies.

Professor Mintzberg comments on troubling trends in leadership and managing, the lack of effective management, inappropriate management education, the impossibility of teaching leadership, the process of creating strategy, the current management crisis and the dangers of shareholder value management.

As an alternative approach to leadership education, McGill University has developed the International Masters in Practicing Management (www.impm.org). In this program practicing managers share experiences with their peers.

Mintzberg blasts a variety of targets: “US corporations are seriously sick.”

Andreas Al-Laham has been holding the chair for strategic and international management at the University of Mannheim since September 2009. After his studies of economics and business administration at the Technical University of Dortmund he received his PhD (1996) and Habilitation (2000) degree at the same University, Faculty of Business Administration, Chair of Strategic and International Management. From 2000 to 2002 he worked as a visiting research scholar and visiting professor for strategic management and organizational theory at the J.L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada. Afterward he became professor of international management and business policy at the University of Stuttgart. In 2004 he took a professorship of strategic management at the CASS Business School, City University of London, UK. Up till today, he is visiting professor for General Management and International Strategy. Between 2006 and 2009 he held the chair for management and international strategy at the University of Kaiserslautern. He has written several books, for example! Strategisches Management. Theoretische Grundlagen-Prozesse-Implementierung (together with M. K. Welge), Organisationales Wissensmanagement. Vahlens Handbücher der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaft, Praxis des strategischen Managements (together with M. K. Welge and P. Kajüter) and Strategieprozesse in deutschen Unternehmungen. His current research focuses on evolutionary dynamics in the German biotech-industry, alliances and network dynamics as well as the internationalization of SME.

Girls’ access to education has improved in many of the world's developing countries. These countries are striving to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) requiring them to provide gender equality, promote the empowerment of women, and establish universal primary education (UPE) by 2015. The success of UPE in achieving gender equality in enrollment in those countries able to institute it is encouraging. Where previously girls trailed boys in their ability to access education due to parent inability or reluctance to pay the costs, they are now entering primary schools in comparable numbers (UNESCO, 1999, 2006).