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Investigates how large UK multinational firms evaluate individual and multiple banking relationships, and how they exercise control over their portfolios of banks. The identification and description of how firms do this is important for those banks marketing a wide range of financial services to the corporate sector. Between 1986 and 1990, 15 confidential corporate case studies were developed from interviews with UK firms. The case firms were a sample of 15 large UK‐based multinational companies (MNCs) drawn from the FT100. Senior finance personnel were interviewed during 1986‐90 in all 15 firms using a semi‐structured questionnaire. Uses a theoretical perspective to interpret this decision behaviour and explores the nature and function of these decision rules.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The latest information from the magazine chemist is extremely valuable. He has dealt with milk‐adulteration and how it is done. His advice, if followed, might, however, speedily bring the manipulating dealer before a magistrate, since the learned writer's recipe is to take a milk having a specific gravity of 1030, and skim it until the gravity is raised to 1036; then add 20 per cent. of water, so that the gravity may be reduced to 1030, and the thing is done. The advice to serve as “fresh from the cow,” preferably in a well‐battered milk‐measure, might perhaps have been added to this analytical gem.

How can large international financial firms go green in authentic ways? What enhances ‘Net Zero action’? Changes in global banks, fund managers, and insurance firms are at the heart of green finance. External change pressures – combined with problematic firm predispositions – exacerbate barriers to change and promote scepticism about authentic Net Zero change. Field research reveals main elements, connections, and interactions of this question by considering financial firms as complex socio-technical systems (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). An interdisciplinary/holistic narrative approach (De Bakker et al., 2019) is adopted to design a conceptual framework that can support a green ‘behavioural theory of the financial firm’ (green BTFF). The BTFF presents an international version (Peng, 2001) of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991; Hart, 1995; Teece et al., 1997).

The approach of this chapter is aimed at closing knowledge gaps and realign values in financial markets and society. By raising awareness about organised hypocrisy and facades (Brunsson, 1993; Cho et al., 2015; Schoeneborn et al., 2020) in financial firms the chapter aims at overcoming the gap between ‘talking’ and ‘walking’ in the financial sector. The chapter defines testable firm-level hypotheses for ‘Green Finance’ (Poterba, 2021) as well as – by implication – tests for ‘greenwashing’.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Problems arose in the “market for information” (MFI) during the “dot.com” boom, the Enron case, Northern Rock failure and during the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the MFI through field research and theoretical sources. It also aims to understand the MFI during relatively stable periods and during periods of rapid change, crisis and failure. It seeks to use these insights to propose changes to reduce the possibilities for negative change and problems in the MFI.

Field studies are used to develop an “empirical narrative” for ongoing MFI structures, processes and outcomes during relatively stable periods. The paper develops a “theoretical narrative” to extend the understanding of the MFI empirical insights.

The paper reveals that the MFI structure that includes knowledge and social context is central to ongoing MFI economic processes for MFI agents. Outcomes include changes in markets, firms and others. Changes and problems are means to understand interactions between the MFI social structure, knowledge, actions and outcomes as they rendered visible the previously invisible issues.

The paper shows that a coherent combination of new empirical narrative and theoretical narrative is essential to develop a critical stance, new policy prescriptions and new regulations to deal with problems and changes in the MFI. This provides the frame to propose changes in the “world of knowledge” and in (concentrated and elite) social and economic structures in the MFI. It proposes: making explicit shared knowledge in the MFI, monitoring change processes and promoting active formal learning.

The great difficulties which attach to the fixing of legal standards of composition for food products have now to be grappled with by the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Agriculture to consider and determine what regulations should be made by the Board, under Section 4 of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1899, with respect to the composition of butter. As we predicted in regard to the labours of the Milk and Cream Standards Committee, so we predict now that the Butter Committee will be unable to do more than to recommend standards and limits, which, while they will make for the protection of the public against the sale of grossly adulterated articles, will certainly not in any way insure the sale of butter of really satisfactory, or even of fair, composition. Standards and limits established by law for the purposes of the administration of criminal Acts of Parliament must of necessity be such as to legalise the sale of products of a most inferior character, to which the term “genuine” may still by law be applied as well as to legalise the sale of adulterated and sophisticated products so prepared as to come within the four corners of the law. It is, of course, an obvious necessity that official standards and limits should be established, and the Board of Agriculture are to be congratulated upon the manner in which they are endeavouring to deal with these extremely knotty problems; but it is important that misconception on the part of the public and the trade with respect to the effect of the regulations to be made should be as far as possible prevented. All that can be hoped for is that the conclusions at which the Committee may find themselves compelled to arrive will not be such as to place too high and too obvious a premium upon the sale of those inferior and scientifically‐adulterated products which are placed in such enormous quantities on the food market.