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We reviewed the fiscal 2003 financial statement footnote disclosures of the fifty states and the 100 largest cities in the United States (US) to ascertain the nature and extent of derivative activities among US state and municipal governments. There were 23 state governments and 23 municipal governments that have engaged in such transactions with an aggregate notional value approaching $32 billion. These governments enter into these transactions primarily to hedge the interest rate and cash flow risks associated with their long term variable rate demand obligations and auction rate debt. Our findings also indicate that the widespread implementation of GASB TB 2003 - 1 has improved the quality of state and municipal disclosures with respect to their derivative activities. In June 2008, the GASB issued its Statement 53 which mandates the accounting measurement of these derivative financial instruments at their fair value on the statement of net assets and promises to further improve their footnote disclosure.

Research shows that companies with a diverse leadership perform better financially. Having a diverse board encourages constructive and challenging dialogue which is key to the effective functioning of any board. However, in the UK, women and black and minority ethnic (BAME) employees still lag behind when it comes to representation at senior management and board level. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of having a diverse talent pipeline of women and BAMEs and offer practical solutions on how this can be achieved.

A mixture of data, analysis, experience and practice forms the basis of the paper, drawing from research on diversity, leadership development, executive boards and developing the talent pipeline. It looks at current initiatives being used in organisations to develop aspiring leaders.

Executive boards are ill representative of the diversity of the working population. Having diversity in the boardroom allows for rich dialogue and better business decisions. In order to address the issue, organisations need to develop a talent pipeline that includes women and BAMEs. There are practical solutions that can be applied to achieve this. Not only does this make good business sense from an economical perspective, it also helps to maintain empowered, motivated and engaged employees.

This paper outlines initiatives that organisations can apply to develop the talent pipeline for women and BAME employees and in doing so, retain high performing, aspiring leaders, whilst supporting action to increase diversity and inclusion in the boardroom.

This paper examines a user categorisation of documents related to a particular literary work. Fifty study participants completed an unconstrained sorting task of documents related to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas carol. After they had finished the sorting task, participants wrote descriptions of the attributes they used to create each group. Content analysis of these descriptions revealed categories of attributes used for grouping. Participants used physical format, audience, content description, pictorial elements, usage, and language most frequently for grouping. Many of the attributes participants used for grouping already exist in bibliographic records and may be used to cluster records related to works automatically in online catalogue displays. The attributes used by people in classifying or grouping documents related to a work may be used to guide the design of summary online catalogue work displays.

Judging from the titles in this year's survey, 1982/83 was the “Year of the Bibliography.” Wherein half of last year's reviews were bibliographies, almost three‐fourths of this year's are (11 out of 15): much of this can be attributed to the computer. The outstanding (and anachronistic) exception to this general truth is Beers' Bibliography, which was compiled laboriously by hand.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Provides a bibliography of CD‐ROM for librarians, covering case studies, costs, product evaluation guidelines, databases, CDI, downloading/copyright and CD vs. online, for use when making decisions about the adoption of CD‐ROM.

A demographic time bomb is ticking in many school jurisdictions. Up to 70 per cent of present leaders in the private and public sectors will retire within the next five to ten years as the “baby boomers” move on. While succession planning has become a major initiative in the private sector, leadership succession in education tends to hew to old paths. Where are new educational leaders to come from? How should their succession be orchestrated? The traditional source of succession at the secondary level, the department headship, is no longer an attractive route for many teachers. Many potential leaders do not perceive the role of principal or assistant principal in a positive light. These roles are increasingly being associated with managing the standards/standardization agenda with which many professionals profoundly disagree. While it is premature to declare a leadership crisis in education, it is not too early to call on policy makers to attend to the growing need for succession planning at all levels in education. Based on an examination of change over times in four schools in Ontario, this article addresses issues of leadership succession in education and, more precisely, examines the influence of principals’ succession on the principals themselves and their schools.

This paper seeks to examine the calculated intangible value (CIV) method as a measure of intellectual capital (intangibles) in enterprises. The aim is to show the benefits and disadvantages of the method and its actual relation to intellectual capital.

The authors present a conceptual, theoretical and empirical analysis of CIV to assess its validity as a measure of firm's intangibles.

The result of the analyses is that CIV is connected to all types of capital assets (physical, financial, combined physical and financial and intangible) and thus it does not unambiguously relate or measure firm's intangible value(s). CIV should be seen solely as a measure of financial efficiency derived from companies' return on assets (ROA). CIV measures an overall financial recognized comparative advantage in comparison with competitors within the same branch of industry. There is no evidence to support the simplistic assumption that a company's CIV is a measure of its intellectual capital.

CIV is used quite widely for purposes of measuring intellectual capital in companies and industries. However, its validity has never been subjected to critical examination. The results of this paper provide valuable information on the reliable measurement of intellectual capital and the further development of these measurements.

This article seeks to explore the difference that adult support and protection legislation may have made to work with adults at risk of harm in Scotland.

The article is based upon findings of a joint academic and practitioner qualitative research project that interviewed 29 social service practitioners across three local authorities.

The legislation was seen as positive, giving greater attention to adults at risk. Views about the actual difference it made to the practitioners' practice varied, and were more likely in new rather than ongoing work. Three differences were noted: duties of investigation, protection orders and improved shared responsibility within the local authority and across other agencies, but to a lesser extent NHS staff. Overall it gave effective responses, more quickly for the adults at risk. Whilst the law brought greater clarity of role, there were tensions for practitioners in balancing an adult's right to autonomy with practitioners' safeguarding responsibilities.

The paper demonstrates that a dedicated law can improve safeguarding practice by clarifying the role of social work practitioners and the responsibilities of other agencies. The right to request access to records and banning orders were seen as valuable new measures in safeguarding adults at risk. As such the study from the first UK country to use dedicated adult safeguarding law offers a valuable insight for policy makers, professionals and campaign groups from other countries, which might be considering similar action.