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Highlights the available information on the food industry, which shows that it is gaining in importance in Eastern Europe and the USSR. The importance of food manufacturing is compared with its importance in the United Kingdom. International trade in agricultural and food products, and British trade with Eastern Europe and the USSR, are discussed. It is concluded that there will have to be further rapid development of the food manufacturing industry, providing opportunities for British investment. There will also be opportunities for British industry to export high quality food products as demand increases.

This paper examines the effect of managerial insider trading on analyst forecast accuracy, dispersion and bias. Specifically, the authors test whether insider-trading information is positively associated with the precision of earnings forecasts. In addition, this relationship between Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) and the Galleon insider trading case is examined.

Pooled ordinary least squares (Pooled OLS) rregressions with year-fixed effects, firm-fixed effects, and firm-level clustered standard errors are used. Our proxies for forecast precision are regressed on alternative measures of insider trading activities and a vector of control variables.

Insider-trading information is positively associated with the precision of earnings forecasts. Analysts provide better forecast accuracy, less forecast dispersion and lower forecast bias among firms with insider trading in the six months leading to the forecast issues. In addition, bullish (bearish) insider trades are associated with increased (decreased) forecast bias. Insider trading information complements analysts' independent opinion and increases the precision of their forecast.

Regulators may pursue rules that promote the rapid disclosure of managerial insider trades, particularly given the increasing availability of Internet tools. Securities regulators may attempt to increase transparency and enhance the reporting procedures of corporate insiders, for example, using Internet sources with direct release to the public to ensure more timely information dissemination.

The authors document a positive association between earnings forecast precision and managerial insider trading up to six months prior to the forecast issue. This relationship is stronger after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prohibited the selective disclosure of material nonpublic information through Regulation FD. In addition, the association between insider trading and forecast accuracy has weakened after the Galleon insider trading case.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a reconsideration of Michael Buckland's important question, “What is a document?”, analysing the point and purpose of definitions of “document” and “documentation”.

Two philosophical notions of the point of definitions are contrasted: John Stuart Mill's concept of a “real” definition, purporting to specify the nature of the definiendum; and a concept of definition based upon a foundationalist philosophy of language. Both conceptions assume that a general, philosophical justification for using words as we do is always in order. This assumption is criticized by deploying Hilary Putnam's arguments against the orthodox Wittgensteinian interpretation of criteria governing the use of language. The example of the cabinets of curiosities of the sixteenth‐century English and European virtuosi is developed to show how one might productively think about what documents might be, but without a definition of a document.

Other than for specific, instrumentalist purposes (often appropriate for specific case studies), there is no general philosophical reason for asking, what is a document? There are good reasons for pursuing studies of documentation without the impediments of definitions of “document” or “documentation”.

The paper makes an original contribution to the new interest in documentation studies by providing conceptual resources for multiplying, rather than restricting, the areas of application of the concepts of documents and documentation.

There is evidence that students who attend Technical and Further Education (TAFE) prior to entering higher education underperform in their first year of study. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of self-efficacy in understanding the performance of students who completed TAFE in the previous year in a first year subject of microeconomics in a dual sector university in Melbourne, Australia.

The study utilises data collected by surveys of 151 students.

A student’s self-efficacy is positively associated with their marks in a first year subject of microeconomics. However, the relationship between final marks and self-efficacy is negative for those students who attended TAFE in the previous year suggesting that they suffer from the problem of overconfidence. When holding self-efficacy constant, using econometric techniques, TAFE attendance is found to be positively related to final marks.

The findings are exploratory (based on a small sample) and lead to a need to conduct cross institutional studies.

The research points to the need for early interventions so that TAFE students perform well in their first year of higher education. It also points to potential issues in the development of Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) programs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the inter-related impact of attendance at TAFE in the previous year and self-efficacy on the subsequent academic performance of TAFE students.

In a letter to the International Federation for Documentation of 19th October, 1951, Sir Hilary Jenkinson, Deputy Keeper, Public Record Office, and Chairman of Directorate, National Register of Archives, made certain friendly criticisms of the scope of its work, to which Dr. Ranganathan makes the following reply:

I have no doubt we have all heard of the schoolboy who received full marks for an essay that consisted of one single word. The point is, he scored full marks for accuracy as well as for brevity. The subject of the essay was ‘Snakes in Ireland’, and the essay consisted of the one word—‘None’.

Hilary Bradbury-Huang is professor in the Management Division of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Her research, scholarly activism, and teaching focus on the human and organizational dimensions of creating healthy communities. At OHSU she teaches in the healthcare MBA and physician leadership development programs. She also develops the action research approach to community based participatory research for health.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of workplace support measures offered by employers on the academic performance and satisfaction of distance-taught paramedic students.

Using a combination of quantitative, qualitative and open text data, the authors identified factors important for student success.

Dedicated study time was not a significant predictor of student pass rate, but was related to the quality of achievement as measured by pass grade. More important for success were less tangible factors such as relationship with a mentor and being part of a supportive peer group.

The number of respondents to the survey of graduates in the second part of the investigation was small (n=30; 8.9 per cent) and limited to one profession (Emergency care).

The support measures the authors have identified should be overtly built into new course design. Placements undertaken away from the primary workplace should be well organised, and students proactively supported while undertaking them.

The value of these findings is that they inform, and can be used to enhance, the experience of students on work-based learning programmes and also on degree apprenticeships.

As teachers at Monks Hill High School, Croydon we had increasingly become aware of the poor eating habits of some of the pupils. In spite of positive teaching about good nutrition in home economics, social education and science lessons the pupils' choice of food in the school diners did not reflect the healthy eating patterns advocated by modern nutritionalists. When, in the Summer of 1985, the opportunity arose to run a Healthy Eating Project in conjunction with the School Meals Service, the District Dietitian and the Health Education Department of the Borough of Croydon, we welcomed the idea.

Narrative accounts of subjective consumer experience are, in one form or another, an essential of qualitative market research. Ethnographic research and ethnographic poetry have obvious connections with the literary form, yet this form has had limited application. Based on the assumption that poetry as a craft is a somewhat limited narrative in ethnographic studies and specifically in studies that attend a consumer vulnerability agenda, this paper aims to contribute to a literary-based perspective. This paper advocates for ethnographic poetry as a consideration of disseminating qualitative data for those researchers immersed in ethnographic research with diverse and vulnerable populations.

The paper draws on a range of extant literature to draw out the distinguishing features of ethnographic poetry, in which to situate ethnographic narratives of two studies of consumer vulnerability. To assist in this, scholarly discussion in the paper is interposed with a series of interludes written in the ethnographic poetic style. These interludes are intended to epitomise merits of such an interpretive research approach.

This is a research paper seeking to draw attention to, and develop a relatively neglected research approach, ethnographic poetry. Researcher reflections, drawn from two ethnographic studies, suggest some tangible consequences of this research to generate further discussion of consumer vulnerability.

The overall aim is to extend discussion of the particular qualities of ethnographic poetry that might contribute to better serve qualitative research approaches, when conducting ethnographic research.

The paper advocates a stronger focus on ethnographic poetry to liberate the imagination of researchers and readers alike to enrich and compliment the analysis of narrative forms of qualitative data drawn from an ethnographic approach.

This paper addresses the concept of ethnographic poetry, stemming from narrative-based qualitative research, which will be entirely new to many researchers and practitioners. It suggests tangible benefits that this new perception could bring to ethnographic research.