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This paper extends the search for small firms and exchange efficiency effects on seasoned stocks to the new issues market on a sample of placings drawn from the UKs Official List, Unlisted Securities Market and Third Market. Tests of means and regressions are undertaken to examine the relationships between sizes of new issues discounts, sizes of firms, and the exchange on which their equities are traded. Despite the observation that new issues discounts tend to be larger for equities of firms traded on exchanges with lower listing requirements, there is little evidence that the differences in discounts are affected by firm size.

This article provides an overview of operational approaches to risk in financial institutions along with a more specific look at risk in banking. The coverage includes traditional approaches to the subject and more recent developments such as the use of computer simulation models.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

ONE area of business to which Work Study could profitably devote some attention is that of planned printing. Even in the second half of the twentieth‐century it is a subject of which many people seem quite unaware, although efficiency‐conscious companies could well find it to be a source of productivity and profit.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if recommendations from the General Medical Council (GMC), Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and Ayling Inquiry with regard to chaperoning are observed in the hospital setting by consultants performing intimate physical examinations, and to ascertain consultants' views on the availability, nature and role of chaperones.

A quantitative postal questionnaire was carried out based on the GMC and RCOG recommendations, and point 2.58 of the Ayling Inquiry. Participants were all consultants specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, colorectal surgery, breast surgery, urology, genito‐urinary medicine, and paediatrics in York and West Yorkshire Hospitals. The questionnaire covered consultant practice and views on the role of chaperones for intimate physical examinations.

A response rate of 70 per cent was achieved. All gynaecologists, paediatricians, urologists, colorectal surgeons and genito‐urinary physicians request a chaperone when performing female intimate examinations. A total 90 per cent of genito‐urinary physicians request a chaperone compared to only 39 per cent of colorectal surgeons and 28 per cent of urologists for male intimate examinations. Of the consultants 97 per cent reported that a chaperone was “always” or “usually” available. A total 94 per cent considered health‐care professionals to be appropriate chaperones. Cited roles of a chaperone include doctor protection (93 per cent), patient protection (84 per cent), patient comfort (73 per cent), and medico‐legality (72 per cent). Only 20 per cent of consultants stated they document the presence of a chaperone.

The paper reveals that consultants use a chaperone for all female genital examinations, but inter‐speciality differences exist for male intimate examinations in spite of national recommendations. A minority of consultants document the presence of a chaperone for intimate examinations. Consultants consider health‐care professionals to be the most appropriate chaperones, and believe chaperones add to patient comfort and protect both doctor and patient.

This article aims to alert readers to the procurement and acquisition activities of police agencies, to the risks that these entail, and to mechanisms for their effective management.

The article explores the ways in which acquisition by police is conducted and regulated. It examines these relationships between police and the private sector from the perspective of their benefits, such as costs and efficiency gains, and the risks they entail, including overdependency, corruption and lack of accountability.

Shopping by the public police is on the increase. Through procurement and outsourcing, police harness resources needed to cope with increasing demands on their services. Increased police activity in the marketplace, driven by changing ideological, economic and pragmatic considerations, represents a fundamental structural shift in policing. The article identifies appropriate institutional and procedural safeguards, and raises questions about the implications of commercial relationships for the future of public policing.

This article makes a contribution by flagging the increased reliance of police on externally provided goods and services, and by suggesting ways in which the procurement process can be managed to ensure both accountability and value for money.

This article applies the whistleblowing stages model to whistleblowing journeys as seen in British National Health Service (NHS) Inquiries.

It provides a qualitative analysis of Inquiry Reports since 2001, using Interpretive Content Analysis to allocate material to stages.

It is found that the Inquiry Reports show a wide variety of reporting mechanisms, but that most persons initially report internally. It seems to confirm recent suggestions that WB is often not a “one off” or simple and linear process, but a protracted process. While the simple stages model may be appropriate for individual “whistle-blowing incident” by a single whistleblower, it needs to be revised for the protracted process of raising concerns in a variety of ways by different people as shown in the Inquiry Reports.

The evidence is confined to the publicly available material that was presented in the Inquiry Reports.

It provides a template to apply to cases of whistleblowing, and provides some baseline material.

This paper is one of the first to explore the whistleblowing stages model using qualitative material to one setting over time.

THE IRISH, it would appear, are not a romantic race ! They do not appreciate their works of art, neither do they revere their great writers. As James Joyce so aptly put it—

The study of franchising as a small business growth strategy is only weakly researched and understood. This preliminary, qualitative investigation examines the experiences of 17 operational and five “failed” franchises in the UK, in translating their business concepts into a franchise format. It reveals that small firms select franchising as a growth strategy for both economic and idiosyncratic reasons, but that economic reasons tend to prevail. The findings suggest that franchising is a viable growth strategy for small firms and that per se it creates few major problems for growth‐oriented small businesses. It is argued that further research is needed, particularly into the experiences of “failed” franchises and into the problems encountered by growing small firms who do not adopt franchising as a growth strategy.