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Contracting practice and theory is based upon a legal framework which impedes the attainment of value, defined as quality and cost containment. The manufacture of complex, highly technical infrastructure is especially impeded. Constraints of the legal framework are being overcome through innovative infrastructure contracting practices which maintain competitiveness and accountability, and simultaneously foster collaboration among the participants. Some of these innovations are discussed along with five projects which utilized one or more of them. A management framework for contracting based on a competitive/collaborative model is offered which emphasizes value, cooperation, long-term relationships, accountability and stewardship.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on pedagogy as a crucial element in postgraduate research undertakings, implying active involvement of both student and supervisor in process of teaching and learning.

Drawing on Australian higher degree research supervision practice to illustrate their argument, the authors take issue with reliance on traditional Oxbridge conventions as informing dominant practices of supervision of postgraduate research studies and suggest pedagogy as intentional and systematic intervention that acknowledges the problematic natures of relationships between teaching, learning, and knowledge production as integral to supervision and research studies.

The authors examine issues of discursive practice and the problematic nature of power differentials in supervisor‐supervisee relationships, and the taken‐for‐grantedness of discursive practice of such relationships. The authors do this from the perspective of the student involved in higher degree research programs, a departure from the bulk of the literature that has as its focus the perspective of the supervisor and/or the institution.

The paper examines the perspective of the student involved in higher degree research programs, a departure from the bulk of the literature that has as its focus the perspective of the supervisor and/or the institution.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore the question of whether there is an optimal level of time pressure in groups.

Design/approach – We argue that distinguishing performance from productivity is a necessary step toward the eventual goal of being able to determine optimal deadlines and ideal durations of meetings. We review evidence of time pressure's differential effects on performance and productivity.

Findings – Based on our survey of the literature, we find that time pressure generally impairs performance because it places constraints on the capacity for thought and action that limit exploration and increase reliance on well-learned or heuristic strategies. Thus, time pressure increases speed at the expense of quality. However, performance is different from productivity. Giving people more time is not always better for productivity because time spent on a task yields decreasing marginal returns to performance.

Originality/value of chapter – The evidence reviewed here suggests that setting deadlines wisely can help maximize productivity.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the convergence and divergence aspects of the Russian modernisation experience of c.1450–c.1600 and its role in both Russian history and management history.

This study combines in-depth data collection from multiple sources such as Russian Chronicles, eyewitness accounts (mostly by foreigners) and papers in history and management. The applied methodology also includes an examination of Ivan III’s modernisation initiative and its implementation in c.1450–c.1600. The analysis is conducted with an eye to understanding the extent to which Russian experiences converged or diverged from those found in Western Europe.

Russian modernisation is usually associated with Peter the Great. Early initiatives, such as those that occurred in Russia between 1462 (the ascent of Ivan III) and 1606 (the Time of Troubles) are overlooked. This paper, however, argues that without these earlier modernisation efforts Russia would not have survived as a country. Given the central role that Russia has played in European and world history, and understanding of this period is key to comprehending the modern world and global systems of management.

This paper seeks to understand a decisive period in Russian history and Russian management, highlighting the extent to which Russian experiences both diverged and converged with those found in Western Europe.

The paper helps us to understand both the successes and problems of Russian management since the 15th century.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this study is the first to consider Russian modernisation during the period c.1400–c.1600 with an eye to current debates in convergence/divergence theory.

Postmodernist ideas – most particularly those of Foucault but also those of Latour, Derrida and Barthes – have had a much longer presence in accounting research than in other business disciplines. However, in large part, the debates in accounting history and management history, have moved in parallel but separate universes. The purpose of this study is therefore one of exploring not only critical accounting understandings that are significant for management history but also one of highlighting conceptual flaws that are common to the postmodernist literature in both accounting and management history.

Foucault has been seminal to the critical traditions that have emerged in both accounting research and management history. In exploring the usage of Foucault’s ideas, this paper argues that an over-reliance on a set of Foucauldian concepts – governmentality, “disciplinary society,” neo-liberalism – that were never conceived with an eye to the problems of accounting and management has resulted in not only in the drawing of some very longbows from Foucault’s formulations but also misrepresentations of the French philosophers’ ideas.

Many, if not most, of the intellectual positions associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History – that knowledge is inherently subjective, that management involves exercising power at distance, that history is a social construct that is used to legitimate capitalism and management – were argued in the critical accounting literature long before Clark and Rowlinson’s (2004) oft cited call. Indeed, the “call” for a “New Accounting History” issued by Miller et al. (1991) played a remarkably similar role to that made by Clark and Rowlinson in management and organizational studies more than a decade later.

This is the first study to explore the marked similarities between the critical accounting literature, most particularly that related to the “New Accounting History” and that associated with the “Historic Turn” and ANTi-History in management and organizational studies.

Focuses on processes of course approval, which lead to enhancement of the curriculum and student learning. Findings from a recent study concerned with the question: To what extent does quality monitoring impact on the student experience of learning? showed the curriculum, and how it was approved, to be significant factors in enhancing student learning. It is argued that the focus for quality in a rapidly changing world should be on the attributes of graduates, with quality monitoring concerned with improvement and enhancement of student learning. Where quality monitoring does have a positive impact on student learning, through the approval and ongoing monitoring of the curriculum and its outcomes, then these processes should be improved. This should be through a process which fosters collegiality and encourages pedagogical discussion amongst academic colleagues. A series of prompts or questions, which seek to challenge teachers and enhance dialogue with colleagues, is proposed.

IF THE Guinness book of records is still watching these columns, I can now tell them that, after all, Mrs Carole Bignell's hope (NLW February p30) that she had established a record by registering her daughter as a library member at the tender age of two weeks must be dashed. Ken Bowden, District Librarian at Bacup, Lanes (where he gets his copy of NLW a little late), writes that not only did one of his neighbours enrol his daughter when she was five days old some years ago, but that Ken's own son entered the world in February 1977 and was enrolled at Bacup on his third day. Any advance on three days?