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Over the past fifteen years, many organisations have restructured and, in the process, reduced their workforces dramatically. Some of this re‐engineering has been due to such influences as global competition, economic uncertainty, technological change, government deregulation as well as a growing demand for better and faster goods and services. The overall effect of such “downsizing” has not always resulted in desirable outcomes. What lessons have been learned? Are managers using these lessons to reshape organisational strategies, especially those dealing with human resource management?

The purpose of this study is to construct a robust index and subindices to measure the quality of corporate governance for 266 firms listed in South Africa from 2004 to 2021.

Public information on the compliance of King Code of Good Corporate Governance is used to construct a main index predicated on provisions relating to board characteristics, accounting and auditing and risk management. These categories are transformed into three subindices. All constructs are scored with binary coding and equally weighted.

Cronbach’s alpha test reveals that the index and subindices are highly reliable measures of corporate governance. The principal component analysis supports the construct validity of all measures.

The index is limited to only three corporate governance subcategories and only focuses on South Africa.

These corporate governance indices provide governing authorities, policymakers, investors and other market participants direct information on the quality of corporate governance in South African firms.

As South Africa lacks a formal corporate governance indicator, the development of an appropriate corporate governance index and subindices contributes towards understanding the quality of corporate governance in South African firms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to conduct robustness tests on corporate governance indices designed for South African companies.

A decline in participation in research studies as people age is inevitable as health declines. This paper aims to address this by collecting data from a group of participants to examine their reasons for declining attendance and suggestions for maintaining attendance as participants age.

This research used a postal self-completed questionnaire including open and closed questions. The questionnaire was sent to those participants who have declined to attend further clinic visits. Results were analysed using thematic content analysis.

The study had a 51% response rate. Participants reported difficulty with travelling to the clinic, and health as the main issues in addition to family demands and a lack of understanding regarding the continuing participation of a singleton twin.

This study could only include data from responding participants, answers to open question also included comments from participants regarding their twin.

An anonymous questionnaire was sent to all individuals in the Keeping Together project. It was therefore not possible to identify if responses were from both members of a twin pair.

Maintaining participation in longitudinal studies is of crucial importance to enhance the value of data. Retention of participants in studies may change as people age and health becomes impaired. Suggestions for maintaining and improving the retention of older participants have been identified and are generalisable to other longitudinal studies of ageing.

The purpose of this paper is to address the heat and mass transfer effects in three-dimensional flow of Maxwell fluid over a stretching surface with convective boundary conditions. Mass transfer is considered in the presence of first order chemical reaction. Conservation laws of energy and concentration are based upon the Soret and Dufour effects. Convergent series solutions to the resulting non-linear problems are developed. Effects of Biot and Deborah numbers on the Sherwood number are decreasing. Local Nusselt reduces with an increase in Eckert numbers. It is also interesting to note further that variations of Prandtl and Biot numbers on the Nusselt number are increasing while Sherwood number decreases with an increase in Prandtl number.

The involved partial differential systems are reduced to the ordinary differential systems using appropriate transformations. Series solutions by homotopy analysis method are constructed and analyzed. Graphical results are presented and examined in detail.

It is found that roles of Deborah and Biot parameters on the Nusselt number are opposite. However, the Sherwood number is qualitative similar for both Biot and Deborah numbers. It is also interesting to note further that variations of Prandtl and Biot numbers on the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are similar.

The purpose of present communication is to investigate the three-dimensional flow of Maxwell fluid over a stretching surface with convective condition. Analysis has been carried out in the presence of mass transfer with first order chemical reaction and Soret and Dufour effects.

The current issue of Vocational Training, Information Bulletin No 2/3, published by the Commission of the European Communities, contains two interesting items on women's employment. The first of these, by Deborah King, is reproduced in full below. The second item appears on page 15 under the heading ‘A survey of the situation and problems concerning the education, training and employment of women in the EEC’. This is a lengthy treatment of the subject, running to 18 pages of A4, of which we have reproduced the summary here. Although we now have equal opportunities legislation and sex discrimination legislation, the reports highlight areas in which there is much room for improvement — for example in the provision of day care facilities for children. Lack of this provision can be one of the main factors preventing a woman from returning to work while her family is young, yet where is the lobby for day nurseries in the UK? The report also draws attention to the hidden pool of female unemployment. Many married women who would enter employment if suitable job opportunities existed are unemployed, yet they do not claim unemployment benefit and so do not appear in the statistics. Readers wishing to read this report in full can obtain single copies of the Bulletin, price 65p, from HMSO, PO Box 569, London SE1 9NH. 01–928 6977, ext 365. The Bulletin appears four times a year and a subscription costs £2.00. When ordering, it is necessary to specify in which language you wish to receive the publication.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the boundary layer flow of an Oldroyd-B fluid with Newtonian heating.

Series solutions are found by homotopy analysis method.

Temperature profile increases with an increase in conjugate parameter. Increase in parameter β and Prandtl number Pr decreases the temperature profile.

This work does not currently exist in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Cattaneo-Christov heat flux model for an Oldroyd-B fluid.

Cattaneo-Christov heat flux model is utilized for the heat transfer analysis instead of Fourier’s law of heat conduction. Analytical solutions of nonlinear problems are computed.

The authors found that the temperature is decreased with an increase in relaxation time of heat flux but temperature gradient is enhanced.

No such analysis exists in the literature yet.

The authors presented the time-dependent flow of an upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) fluid in the presence of chemical reaction, thermal-diffusion and diffusion-thermo effects. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Recent technique namely homotopy analysis method (HAM) is utilized to compute the solution of the problem.

Chemical reaction has opposite effects on the concentration field for the destructive and constructive cases. The Deborah number acts as a retarding agent.

Combined effects of thermal-diffusion, diffusion-thermo and chemical reaction are analyzed.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

E-learning is an increasingly popular form of education for college students (Allen & Seaman, 2007). There are a number of best practices for teaching online courses (Lewis & Abdul-Hamid, 2006) which should be followed by leadership educators. In addition, for a wide variety of reasons, women comprise a significant portion of the distance education population. Because of their differing communication styles and needs (Tannen, 1989, 1991), women may have a harder time being perceived as valuable members of the virtual community. They may also find the experience less meaningful than their male counterparts (Harper, 2007). If leadership education is to be successful moving into the 21st century it must be welcoming to female students. Suggestions for improving online learning are provided, especially for female students.