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Times change and techniques change, but the essence of managing people, products, money and markets, and of the decisions which relate to them, remains the same. In May 1963, volume one issue one of the Journal of Scientific Business (which became Management Decision in 1967) was published. Its coverage dealt with many perennial issues of management: “A new look at the role of the specialist”, “The role of the universities in management education”, “The use and abuse of test market research”. In the first of a series of management classics, we are pleased to reprint a short article in which Elizabeth Sidney, then Director of Studies of the Institute of Directors' Communication Training Programme, looks at the assessment interview and makes points which remain fresh and challenging for managers 23 years on.

Discusses counselling in management with reference to appraisal and stress factors. Defines modern stress points including new technology, privatisation and relocation. Calls for counselling to be legitimised in management as a necessary part of the task.

This paper reports on a study of the efficacy of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand's (the Institute) Professional Accounting School (PAS) programme in developing a set of competencies in candidates. The study surveyed Institute candidates' perceptions of their competence levels for 16 specified skills at the commencement and conclusion of the 1999 PAS programme. The findings indicate that candidates perceived their levels of competence, for both cognitive and behavioural skills, to have been significantly improved by the PAS programme. Tests of two secondary hypotheses in the study indicate certain gender‐ and firm‐based differences in the perceived level of competence of candidates. The results of the study provide the Institute with feedback on the PAS programme and facilitate the further development of the programme. Other professional accounting bodies may consider replicating this study using data collected on similar programmes. The results of such studies may then be compared to enhance the existing knowledge of competency development in professional accounting education.

SO MANY swipes have been taken at the interview as an aid in the selection process that it is encouraging to find that there are some not inexperienced people who still have time for it. In ‘The Skills of Interviewing’ two well‐known teachers of management subjects with considerable experience of interviewing in industry discuss the whole range and pattern of the interview and its place in selection.

OUR good custom, as we deem it, to wish our readers a larger measure of happiness and success than heretofore we repeat for 1947. There are many signs in the libraries to give encouragement to the hope that they, the libraries, are now so well established everywhere that the old evils of complete disregard, penury and restriction will not recur and that, gradually but surely, the aims and the purpose for which we stand will be realized. That they may be so for all readers of The Library World is, we believe, the best possible New Year wish.

A MOVEMENT based on what many will think a revolutionary idea is spreading rapidly through Germany's industrial and commercial life. Since anything which may be a contributory factor in so successful an economy is important it is worth considering.

There is a growing consciousness of the need for general management training. This article examines some of the reasons for this and suggests how the increased demand for such training should be met. It also highlights some of the problems which need to be overcome before general management courses can become fully effective. This article is based partly on research undertaken with Michael Argyle, Lecturer in Social Psychology at Oxford, for the Acton Society Trust. The results of the research were published last month in ‘Training Managers’ (Acton Society Trust, 10s 6d)

WHEN WE WERE nothing more than a small column, we learned that there were two kinds of Englishmen: the majority who were convinced that it was never necessary to learn a foreign language, for all foreigners spoke English (or understood it provided you shouted loudly enough!) and a tiny minority who took the trouble to master at least one foreign tongue and to go to that country where it was used and sell British goods to them.

TO operate effectively in his environment a man should seek to appreciate the sources which created it. There are few better ways for the work study man, or others concerned with the efficient running of the industrial machine, to do so than by digesting Management Thinkers, published at 40p in the Pelican Library of Business and Management.