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Building a sustainable global business platform is increasingly a fundamental requirement for success in today's marketplace. What is less well understood by many companies is that international locations can bring with them concealed business establishment and mid‐ to long‐term operational risks that are specific and unique to each micro‐geography. This paper discusses some of the challenges and risks associated with the oversubscription of local resources.

The article discusses some of the issues a company is likely to encounter when establishing business operations in emerging markets. Observations and viewpoints have been derived from working in emerging markets and assisting companies select locations for business operations.

This article examines the hidden risks of international expansion. We find there are at three common challenges that are often encountered: labor market issues, land availability, and provision of utilities.

Executives charged with determining where to expand the company operations should be aware of the challenges associated with the over‐subscription of resources in emerging markets and plan accordingly. If you are not considering the issue of oversubscription of resources and are inflexible with project requirements, it is likely that the project will likely incur significant time delays identifying appropriate locations for operations, delays in the start‐up and challenges with long‐term sustainability of operations. In some cases, a lack of flexibility results in failure for the project.

One of the neglected roles of experiment is the creation of phenomena which then become the centrepiece of theory. The belief that seminal experiments in architectural design must now be reclassified to represent genuine paradigms of “created phenomena” is discussed. The remedy suggested is their analysis, critical evaluation and scrutiny of seminal texts to open the way for the development of topological approaches to design and extension of cybernetics into the field of architecture and construction.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision under the auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a consultation paper in late 2003 on the compliance function in banks. The aim of the consultation paper is to set out the views of banking supervisors and provide basic guidance for banks. Whereas there is no attempt to prescribe a uniform approach, a clear set of general principles is laid down for the role of the compliance function within banking organisations. Furthermore, recognition is given to the fact that diversity exists between banks with respect to their internal organisation of the compliance function and also to diversity in the legal and regulatory environment affecting the compliance function across jurisdictions. The core objectives of this paper are to examine the BIS approach to the compliance function and look at how this is likely to evolve. The authors draw on experience from the UK life assurance industry where substantial inroads have been made to embed a compliance competent culture within such types of financial institutions. A partnership approach is highlighted as essential to achieving a viable and meaningful compliance function. Finally, an ethical approach is explored as the possible future direction for banks. The first section reviews the new principles for the compliance function; the second section describes issues that arise; the third section analyses a partnership approach and explores an ethical approach; and the final section provides a summary and conclusion.

The global economic crisis has highlighted the continuing problem of tax evasion. For tax agencies to respond, an important antecedent necessitates knowing the extent of the problem. This study is the first to comprehensively review recent research on the tax gap. Our primary contributions are twofold. First, we argue that the tax gap, as conventionally defined, is conceptually flawed because it fails to capture behavioral responses by taxpayers adequately. Our second contribution is to review methods for measuring the tax gap and compare empirical estimates. We suggest that many of the most trenchant criticisms of conventional tax gap measurement (and the “hidden economy” measures that underlie them) leave only microdata-based measures of tax noncompliance as likely to deliver more reliable tax gap estimates. Even here, however, further work is required, on both conceptual and empirical aspects, before researchers are likely to deliver tax gap estimates suitable for policy analysis (e.g., implications for enforcement policy).

Lab‐Line Instruments, Inc, 15th Bloomingdale Ave, Melrose Park, Illinois, USA has announced its new six‐position folding Saf‐T‐Shield VI designed to protect the lab worker from explosions, flying glass, spattering liquid and flames.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the level of financial credit available in a country influences the level of trade credit provided to customers.

The authors examine the association between the supply of trade credit and the availability of country-level private financial credit using multivariate regression models that account for country-level heterogeneity, macroeconomic conditions and firm-specific characteristics. The data set is a pooled sample of publicly traded firms incorporated in 66 countries.

Supporting the re-distributional view of trade credit, robust results suggest that suppliers incorporated in countries with increased access to financial credit provide increased trade credit to their customers. Further results indicate significant differences in trade credit usage across geographical regions. Consistent with existing research using samples of US firms, the use of trade credit is correlated with firm-level measures of financial constraints and product market dynamics.

The authors provide one of the first studies to examine differences in trade credit extension across a large number of countries.

The paper sets out to provide a better understanding of the interfaces between second‐order change initiation by the “initiator” and the organizational contexts. It is an individual level study, and hence involves the dynamics experienced by the “initiator”. The type of second‐order change initiation under consideration is the book‐keeping model of cognitive replacement, i.e. a gradual and incremental replacement of the old cognitive framework.

A framework was developed using principles of complexity science to crystallize the thinking of the dynamics involved at the individual level initiation and organizational contexts. This formed the basis for the development of four research questions, explored using seven real world individual cases, taken from a variety of industry backgrounds.

The framework was refined using the case studies. The “initiator” goes through several stages in the gradual and incremental replacement of their cognitive framework. Four specific stages were observed: “embedded”, “embedded discomfited”, “scripted”, and “unscripted”. In each of the stages, issues in the interface with the organizational context were observed.

Although saturation was reached after five individual cases, the research is limited by the number of individual cases.

Four practical avenues to nurture creativity in an organizational context are discussed: nurturing appropriate levels of contradiction in the organization, nurturing and encouraging creativity in others, developing self‐containment in individuals, and forming “opportunity‐finding teams” at middle level management.

The understanding of the interfaces between individual level initiation and organizational context is limited. This research provides insights into this phenomenon.

IT is difficult to imagine the world of Work Study without the urbane ubiquity of Russell Currie, whose death on 28 August we deeply regret to record. Although he had been officially in retirement for a year or two his presence was immanent in any important gathering of those who had so long looked to him for the leadership that was always forthcoming. We can fittingly borrow an epigram he coined at the London Congress in 1963 as apt at this time. ‘The sun shone to greet your arrival; the skies weep for your departure.’

THERE are now so many meetings of the Library Association and its branches and sections that the good custom of recording meetings and the discussions at them has fallen into desuetude. In a way it is a gain, for when the discussion was commonplace the account of a meeting became a mere list of those who attended and spoke, bones without flesh; but in the days when The Library Association Record really was a record, its reports were a part of the educational and informational material of every librarian. Something should be done about this, because 1938 opened with a series of meetings which all deserved the fullest report. The principal one was the investiture meeting of the President of the Library Association on January 17th. The attendance was greater than that at any meeting of librarians in recent years, of course other than the Annual Conference. Chaucer House was beautifully arranged, decorated and lighted for the occasion, an atmosphere of cheerfulness and camaraderie pervaded the affair. The speeches were limited to a few preliminary words by the retiring President, the Archbishop of York, before placing the badge on his successor's neck; a brief, but deserved panegyric of Dr. Temple's services by Mr. Berwick Sayers; and then a delightful acknowledgment from His Grace. The serious point the Archbishop made was his surprise at learning the wide extent of the library movement and his conviction that it must be of great value to the community. His lighter touch was exquisite; especially his story of the ceremonial key, which broke in the lock and jammed it when he was opening a library in state, and of his pause to settle mentally the ethical point as to whether he could conscientiously declare he had “opened” a place when he had made it impossible for anyone to get in until a carpenter had been fetched. Altogether a memorable evening, which proved, too, as a guest rightly said, that one cannot easily entertain librarians, but, if you get them together in comfortable conditions, they entertain themselves right well.