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This paper uses the metaphor of the movie classic the Wizard of Oz to represent the online experiences of young adults. Just like the twister that turns Dorothy’s world upside, down the Internet has arrived to transform our black and white lives into the Technicolor hyper‐reality of the Land of Oz. What are the consequences for young Dorothies of today when they explore the yellow brick information superhighway? Phenomenologically informed qualitative research was used to explore the Internet experiences of older adolescents and young adults. The findings identify, financial, temporal, social, logistical and emotional barriers and indicate that although the Internet is an intrinsic facet of young adults’ lives, it falls well short of an obsession. The implications are that marketing practitioners need to pay closer attention to the genuine fears and concerns directed at the Internet rather than assuming that young adults’ responses are enthusiastic and positive.

Two prospective synchronous regional audits involving three tertiary plastic surgery units in mixed service hospitals were carried out to study delays in the management of emergency patients and their possible causes. Each audit was over a one‐month period. These prospective studies investigated “fasting times” (the length of time that an individual patient was fasted prior to definitive management) and “injury to theatre time” (the time span from the time of injury to the time of surgery for patients going to the operating theatre). Results are analysed and discussed and recommendations for improvement are offered.

This paper provides illustrations of more creative ways of encouraging adolescents to recount their consumption experiences, specifically relating to internet use.

The research was conducted “in school”, amongst 14‐17 adolescents in Scotland. The paper discusses initial quantitative methods using self‐completion questionnaires and diaries before exploring in greater detail two projective techniques used in subsequent qualitative sessions: “auto‐driving photoelicitation” and then “psycho‐drawings”.

The paper focuses primarily on methodological issues although it does provide a brief summary of the thematic interests influencing young people’s new media use and barriers inhibiting more enthusiastic use.

Too much youth research is undertaken with insufficient consideration of how best to involve young people. This paper describes how innovative research methods can help young people more fully recount their consumption experiences.

Australian fiscal federalism possesses a greater degree of vertical imbalance than comparable federations elsewhere due to a concentration of revenue-raising powers at the level of the Commonwealth government and a concentration of expenditure functions at the state and local government levels. Efforts to deal with this problem have focused on intergovernmental grants. While substantial literature exists on the financial nexus between the Commonwealth and state governments, little research effort has been expended on the local government grants process. The present paper seeks to remedy this by documenting the evolution and role of the local government grants process.

The aim of this paper is to explore the tensions and basis for conflict within relationships that embed and connect networked companies involved in the planning of advertising, with broader relevance for professional service organizations.

Framed within a social network perspective, this interpretive study draws on 22 in‐depth interviews to discuss the emergence and consequences of conflict within relationships shared by advertising creatives, account managers, researchers and media planners located in Scotland.

The paper identifies four dominant themes which contribute toward relational conflict: the intensity of involvement in advertising planning, the emergence of role ambiguity, cultural stereotyping, and conflicts of interest.

The paper provides a valuable antidote to studies reliant on dyadic client‐agency perspectives. Adopting a network perspective, it recognizes the importance of the multiple, simultaneous relationships involved in advertising planning. It offers a critical perspective on advertising relationships, considering the emergence, characteristics and consequences of tension and conflict inherent. The discussion reveals ongoing struggles for control over the process of advertising planning, and considers the implications of overt and covert actions on perceptions of network trust. The paper provides a spectrum of outcomes, ranging from collaborative tension to intra‐organisational conflict. This study is most relevant to academics and managers involved in professional services.

The account planning discipline practised in advertising agencies is a central element of a formal system for planning advertising campaigns on behalf of clients. Precise definitions are hard to find, but it is an intellectual process, to exercise quality control. The present study builds on another by the same researchers, which analysed the principles and practice of account planning from the advertising agency perspective. Its objectives were to: determine its role in the development of clients’ advertising campaigns; examine the working relationships involved; assess clients’ expectations and satisfactions; and evaluate its impact on current and future marketing planning. It was found that propensity to take advantage of agency account planning expertise ranged along a spectrum from high to low. High‐propensity clients exhibited a natural predisposition to co‐operation and collaboration, sought the agency’s planning input from the start, and believed in direct involvement with both planners and creatives. Low‐propensity clients regarded control as paramount, and therefore preferred co‐ordination to collaboration.

Mortgage defaults within a neighborhood may tip the scales whereby a vicious cycle of disinvestment and deterioration in the surrounding neighborhoods begins. This paper aims to examine the impact that mortgage default has on properties in the same ZIP code and neighboring ZIP codes.

Hypothesizing that neighborhoods' susceptibility to cascade failure can be measured by the rate of acceleration of mortgage failures within the neighborhood, the paper introduces a model to investigate whether or not this vicious cycle is such that mortgage failures multiply, and there is a tipping point at which the downward cycle accelerate.

The paper applies the model to data for the Los Angeles metropolitan area for the period 2006-2007 and finds evidence of a tipping point.

The paper is limited by the availability of data with respect to both time and space.

A failure tipping point will provide a signal that mortgage crisis is pending. Reacting to this signal could allow financial markets to avert such crises in the future.

Some neighborhoods may resist being labelled as one with significant mortgage failure activity. This resistance may cause a negative reaction to these results and implementation for the findings.

To-date, no evidence of a mortgage failure tipping point has been discovered in the literature.

Aircraft maintenance engineer licensing commenced in the United Kingdom in 1919, and in the U.S.A. a few years later, for the good reason it was considered essential to aircraft safety that the persons maintaining aircraft should have a high level of competency. Both States held that it was a function of the State to assess the competency and award the licence, although subsequently there have been some deviations from this principle in the United Kingdom.

SEPTEMBER, by a traditional impulse, has always represented to some minds the beginning of the most active period in the library year. This year the month that sees the close of the holiday season, the shortening day and lengthening evening, holds fairer promises and greater difficulties than any in the past six years or perhaps in the past twenty‐five. It sees large programmes in prospect but many fences to be surmounted and, if the physicists are right, the beginning of a new era. It is doubtful if, in so short a space of time as that which has elapsed since we last wrote, so many important events have occurred. The entirely new political alignment may have its effects on our post‐war policy. We hope the library will never again be the protege of a political party because that means that it becomes thereby the target of the opposition—as was the case when in London a change of party in local government brought about the wreck for a generation of at least one library service which had the misfortune to have been initiated by the other party. We have however, no immediate apprehensions about public libraries in present circumstances.

Account planning as a discipline has been somewhat obscured from academic view. In practice, it has played a significant role in the development of the marketing communications (especially, advertising) industry although it has been adopted in varying forms and with differing emphases. It has been misunderstood by many. This paper offers a summary of the insights gained from the papers contained in this special issue of Marketing Intelligence & Planning; papers that represent many years of experience in the field; papers that are a mix of academic and practitioner perspectives. Collectively, they describe this faintly mysterious discipline more completely than any other published source of which we know. What is clear from the papers is the absence of any agreed succinct description or definition of what account planning should be in the current and anticipated future marketing communications environment. This paper attempts to remedy this situation by proposing a definition of account planning derived from this collective work which others may wish to accept, develop, repudiate or (best of all) debate.