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In recent years, quality assurance schemes have grown considerably in number and scope. Several useful benefits have been claimed for them including their value as marketing advantages. However, there appears to be a paucity of published research to support this claim. This paper, therefore, seeks to substantiate the claim that quality assurance schemes represent useful marketing advantages as well as determining the magnitude of the advantage. The study is based on conjoint analysis as it is argued that this is a more realistic and therefore, appropriate research technique than the direct elicitation approach embodied in simply asking consumers for their opinions concerning quality assurance schemes. The paper concludes that quality assurance is an influence on the consumer decision process for mince beef and in addition provides an indication as to its relative importance. It also speculates on the implications for quality assurance schemes in general.

In this issue, we have profiles from three very different work initiatives: a pioneering regional consortium in Northern Ireland with extensive international links; a social enterprise in Leicester producing craft products — its members tell us why they like it; and the National Clubhouse Association (United Kingdom).Do not forget, the Network page is your chance to share information or make contact with others. If you are involved in an innovative project, network or partnership that might be of interest to others, why not use this space to tell our readers about it? Contact: Adam Pozner at OUTSET. Telephone: 0181‐692 7141.

FEW BOOKS have been so enthusiastically received in England as The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane's novel of the American Civil War. In December 1895 it was welcomed unanimously by authors and critics alike, and caused a good deal of public excitement. The book arrived in England, in the words of Joseph Conrad, ‘with the impact of a twelve‐inch shell’. It has since come to be regarded as one of the most significant books in the development of modern American literature.

Margaret Thatcher enjoys an international reputation as a conviction politician. In her latter years as Prime Minister, and ever more since her resignation she has come to symbolize “principled politics” in contrast both to her own successor and her political opponents, who are perceived more ambiguously, bowing to public opinion and/or party pressure. Yet, in her early years as leader, it was Mrs Thatcher who was criticized as a “packaged politician”. Argues that she entrenched political marketing in modern British politics and her campaigns provided the model which her opponents have now followed. Set within a historical context, Examines the uses, successes and failures of marketing under Thatcher and argues that she managed to reconcile the superficially contradictory couplet of marketing and political conviction.

This article argues that there are two main barriers preventing imagining and actioning an inclusive, holistic strategy for prostitution reform in the UK. It identifies five key tenets needed to improve the situations for men and women involved in selling sex. Findings from innovative research methods are used to explore how community safety may be improved.

These notes on Sir Walter Scott by John Galt, here published for the first time, have been transcribed by Dr Hamilton B. Timothy, Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and Galt Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, from a manuscript among the material given him by Henry Gordon Harvey Smith, Q.C., a great‐grandson of John Galt, and his sister, Mrs Muriel Harvey Turner, of Winnipeg. John Galt's youngest son, Alexander, with whom Galt's widow made her home after the novelist's death in 1839, became the Hon. Sir Alexander Galt and Canada's first Federal Finance Minister; from him John Galt's library and miscellaneous papers passed to his youngest daughter, Annie Prince Galt, who married Dr W. Harvey Smith, a distinguished opthalmologist. (In 1930 he had the rare honour of holding at the same time presidency of both the British Medical Association and the Canadian.) His carefully augmented collection of Galt family papers, inherited by his son and daughter, has now been passed to Dr Timothy for use in connexion with his study, The Galts: a Canadian Odyssey. At the same time the family collection of John Galt's writings—in sixty‐eight volumes, many from the novelist's own library—was presented to the library of the University of Western Ontario. For permission to print these interesting notes we are indebted to Mr Harvey Smith and Mrs Turner. The annotations initialled C are by Dr Robert Hay Carnie of the University of Calgary.

Cultural portraits usually begin with a description of the context, but as this material is covered elsewhere in this volume, this introduction will be mercifully brief. At any time during the last four decades, there have been dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of Stanford University faculty and doctoral students interested in studying organizations. They have been scattered across the campus, often in small groups within larger schools and departments. They have been based in the Sociology Department and the Organizational Behavior and Strategy areas at the Graduate School of Business. There were always a handful at the Education and Engineering schools, as well as a scattering of individuals doing related work in Psychology, Political Science, and Anthropology. In spite of their numbers, before the Stanford Center for Organizational Research (SCOR) was founded in 1972, many of these faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and doctoral students felt rather isolated. They had little contact with colleagues across campus who shared their interest in organizations and little collective clout when resources were being distributed.

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of the book and discusses student diversity and institutional responses.

Methodology/approach – The chapter draws together literature and conceptual thinking about what student diversity is. It then analyses the drivers for increased diversity within higher education in the case studies in this book. Alternative approaches to diversity are presented, drawing on a synthesis of approaches identified in the literature. Finally, the chapter provides a summary of the other chapters and the associated case studies.

Findings – The chapter finds that diversity incorporates difference across a number of dimensions: education, personal disposition, current circumstances and cultural heritage. There are a wide range of reasons prompting institutions to recruit a diverse student population: a commitment to social justice, expansion and access to new markets, tapping the pool of talent, enhancing the student experience, national and/or regional policy, funding incentives, conforming with equality legislation, institutional research and personal commitment of staff. Institutions can respond to diversity in different ways. The idealised types are: altruistic (no institutional change), academic (little or no change), utilitarian (special access and additional support mechanisms) and transformative (positive view of diversity resulting in institutional development).

Research limitations – This chapter draws largely on the author's work in England and the United Kingdom and the case studies presented in this book.

Practical implications – This chapter is important as an introduction to the book, and providing frameworks to think about diversity.

Social implications – The framework for institutional change assists institutions to critically consider the response they make to a more diverse student population.

Originality/value – The paper provides original perspectives to conceptualising and responding to diversity.

The paper considers gender identities in higher education. It examines how people involved in university life engage in (re)creating gender identities and in (re)producing gender‐related expectations (and stereotypes) of managerial behaviour. The process of construction of feminine identities is explored through the discourses of academics from a UK university (mainly women who hold managerial positions). The paper reports findings from a series of in‐depth interviews with women managers (dean, associate deans and heads of departments) and with university academics (men and women) from a Business School, part of a large British new university. The school was of special interest because women held the majority of senior managerial posts. It appears that the process of construction of femininities is mainly developed around four (stereo‐)typical aspects generally associated with feminine management practices (multi‐tasking, supporting and nurturing, people and communication skills, and team‐work).

WE have now received the skeleton programme of, and the invitations to, the Annual Meeting of the Library Association which opens at Harrogate with a service at the Parish Church on Sunday, September 17th. The arrangements that are to be made locally are attractive; the picture of the interior of the Royal Hall, which we receive with the list of hotels and boarding houses, seems to promise a useful meeting place where perhaps the acoustics will be better than those to which we are normally accustomed at conferences. The Majestic Hotel, which has been chosen as headquarters, is not quite so expensive as some hotels which have hitherto been chosen although it is not cheap, and it has the advantage of being quite near to the meeting place.