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The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Any historical survey of the way in which consumers have organized themselves into associations for their own mutual benefit and protection should really begin with the role played by the consumer co‐operative movement. But, as Jeremy Mitchell (former Head of Information at Consumers' Association and now Director of the Consumer Affairs Division at the Office of Fair Trading) has pointed out, the co‐operative movement was not really a consumer association at all: ‘The fact that the consumer, in a co‐operative society, is the formal owner of the means of distribution seems to have little significance in practical terms. By analogy, it can be compared with the consumer's formal ownership of the means of production in a nationalized industry, or the individual shareholder's formal ownership of a joint‐stock company.’

One of the enabling factors of effective supply‐chain management is the effective use of information technology (IT). Highlights a number of IT trends which can be grouped together as four key themes. These four key themes affect the way in which technology is used to support logistics operations in order to deliver competitive advantage. Shows how some of these themes have been developed and utilized to provide an in‐cab computing system which delivers competitive advantage to Exel Logistics. Concludes by showing how the four themes will support future trends in logistics.

The paper provides an overview of recent developments in the provision of networked moving image and sound resources for UK higher and further education, initiated by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee). The outcomes of the Imagination/Universities Network Pilot Project based at the universities of Glamorgan and Glasgow are outlined, and details are given of the work of JISC’s Moving Pictures and Sound Working Group, including the setting up of two national services (a Managing Agent and an Advisory Service) for moving picture and sound resources. Information is also given on four major new projects in this area funded as part of JISC’s programme to develop the DNER (Distributed National Electronic Resource) for learning and teaching, and the technical opportunities and challenges presented by networked moving picture and sound development are discussed.

This case presents a series of decision points along with a simple process for ascertaining underlying source(s) of disagreement, which represents an important managerial tool. The president of First Mates' Wholesale Boating Supply Company is faced with the reality of missing year-end earnings projections and breaking a 30-year streak of successive earnings increases. He has asked all his direct reports to meet with their teams and brainstorm about ways to finish the year in strongly and successfully. The case presents a number of those ideas for students to debate and discuss as they decide which ones the company should pursue.

This paper examines employee relations management in a non‐union sector, showing how employers in the hotel industry remain relatively free to manage in an arbitrary and determined fashion, in spite of an increasingly wide net of statutory employee rights. These management practices are effected in the way the workforce is structured, and in the differential treatment of workers in the same organisation. Notably “peripheral” unskilled workers, which are in the majority, are subjected to a more “hard” form of human resource management and are made more vulnerable from lack of eligibility to employment protection rights. Employers are not constrained from dismissing workers and fail to comply with many minimum legal requirements or observe the law in spirit. “Determined opportunism” represents an extreme instance of a “retaining control/cost‐control” style of management.

DTAG is a consortium of long‐established providers — Brathay Hall Trust, Endeavour Training, Lindley Educational Trust, Outward Bound and the YMCA — loosely associated with Project Trident, the National Association of Outdoor Education and formerly with the Industrial Society. Contact can be made through Bertie Everard at 2 Fern Grove, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL8 7ND.

Within the broad sweep of educational and training processes aimed at the development of people, there is a particular approach to which the label development training has come to be applied. Central to this approach is this cyclical process depicted below: