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Asserts that for quality to become part of a company′s natural way of working it needs to be accepted by everyone. Describes how J.I. Case, by utilising its people, has turned itself around and is now focusing on the future. Suggests reasons why the implementation of quality is not always successful. Discusses the company′s approach. Asserts that too often quality is seen as product quality only and the benefits of involving everyone are ignored. Concludes the company will look to the future by utilising people to produce quality products and services, on time at competitive costs/prices.

Describes the rationale behind a course designed by the trainees, employees themselves, in conjunction with external expertise and delivered to small groups over a 12‐month period. A “drip” feed across a diagonal slice of the structure in small (12 maximum) cross‐functional groups, awareness and education programme aims at creating a learning organization, enhancing thinking skills and developing a deeper team awareness in support of company strategies focused on customer satisfaction and utilizing all employees. In this article, listening, communicating, recognizing internal as well as external customers and complementing improvement on a continuous cycle are discussed as a means of allowing the manufacturing deliverables of quality, delivery and cost improvement to be a way of life.

An understanding of JIT is needed before a successful strategy can be developed. Reading, discussion and evaluation of experience are the starting‐points. A total JIT framework can then be developed and individual elements identified and defined. An integrated socio‐technical approach secures numerous benefits from successful implementation. People are the integrators and facilitators. An implementation analysis technique is proposed with actual results recorded. A pilot installation improves the prospect of success. The text draws on the experience of the writer during the development of JIT at Cummins Engine Company.

Change is inevitable but too often ignored, particularly with respect to management development. Innovative, but not necessarily revolutionary, programmes were implemented through a collaborative programme between industry and local business schools. Content directly related to business strategies, performance and continuous improvement increases team building and team performance and supports improvement in quality, employee involvement, financial control and productivity. The collaborative programme, through a drip‐feed approach – half day, full day or residential modules at three‐to‐six week intervals, with clearly defined assignments based on individual and group management issues were completed between modules. Accreditation was achieved and allowed participants to move towards a formal Certificate in Management qualification.

The series of articles focuses on the need to ignore the many acronym‐based initiatives and programmes that tend to drive business performance. The author recommends that people must play a critical role in any performance improvement initiative people working in an effective team environment and with senior management visible involvement. A tool, Cost of Quality, is described in some detail. Utilizing people and Cost of Quality can reduce cost and change an organisation’s culture. Part 2 provides a framework for use of Cost of Quality, suggesting that it can help reduce costs and increase margins.

“It is generally accepted that the food industry must be scientifically based to cope with the problems, particularly of public health, which arise as new processes of growing, manufacturing, packaging and preserving food depart even further from traditional ways.”

This two‐part article focuses on the need to ignore the many acronym‐based initiatives and programmes that tend to drive business performance. The author recommends that people must play a critical role in any performance improvement initiative. People should work in an effective team environment and with senior management visible involvement. A tool, cost of quality, is described in some detail. Utilizing people and cost of quality can reduce cost and change an organisations’ culture. Part 1 highlights the need to focus on behaviour for new initiatives and projects to be successfully installed in a company. Cost of quality as a performance improvement process can be a major driver of change producing substantial cost reduction and performance improvement within any business.

The fund management sector plays an important role in society. The sector exists in close proximity to the accounting profession and the concerns of the paper reflect themes discussed by accounting scholars, particularly financialization, inequality and life within elite professional service organizations.

This is an interpretive study of the fund management field based in the UK. It is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with individuals with personal experience of the field, combined with reflections from the researcher's own experience as a practitioner within the field.

The paper describes the backgrounds and motivations of individuals entering the field, the recruitment processes through which they are admitted, and the different strategies used to gain admission to the field. It explores the habitus of successful professionals in the field and the effects of this habitus.

An important social implication of the paper is the problematization of the fund management industry's dislocation from broader society.

By identifying the different strategies employed by applicants from different backgrounds, it highlights the role of reflexive agency and the complicity between agent and field. Recognizing that professional fund management is organized as a game, it suggests that individuals are so committed to the game they know they are playing that they fail to realize that they are also drawn into a different game, namely the absorbing game of being a fund manager.

Reports received from all quarters indicate much movement in library affairs, partly as a result of the approach made to municipalities by the Library Association, partly because of the agitation initiated by Walthamstow, which we record in part elsewhere. The difficulties of the political and industrial situation do not seem to make a satisfactory milieu for an improved library situation, but, nevertheless, some of the most successful ventures of the past have seemed to be forlorn hopes. It is so now; the overwhelming weight of public opinion is clearly in favour of removing the disabilities from which libraries suffer. The questions asked and answered in the House of Commons recently show that the Local Government Board is not well posted as regards the position of opinion; but the Library Association is now in a position to relieve that august body from the difficulties of ignorance.

Structural and marketing changes in the grocery trade, rising costs and the need for greater efficiency, are all focussing attention on physical distribution as a cause for concern. This year the Institute of Grocery Distribution Convention chose as its major theme physical distribution as the critical link in the UK food marketing mix. One of the principal speakers at the IGD Convention, held at Stratford‐on‐Avon in September, was Gurth Hoyar‐Millar, Sainsbury's Planning & Development Director. He drew attention to certain defects in the planning system which have a direct impact on the distribution process.