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The Economic Secretary to HM Treasury, Miss Melanie Johnson, announced on 15th March that ‘N2’, the date on which most of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 will be implemented, will definitely take place before the end of November 2001. That important and long awaited announcement has been followed by a spate of government and parliamentary activity in order to put in place essential elements of the secondary legislation that HM. Treasury has the power to make under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FISMA). Much of that Act, important as it is to changing the structure, policy grounding and direction of UK financial regulation, is enabling in effect and leaves many key areas, such as, the scope of the general prohibition on carrying on regulated activities without authorisation or exemption, to be detailed by secondary legislation. On 9th May Miss Melanie Johnson made a further significant announcement in response to a parliamentary question, namely that the provisions of FISMA which confer rule‐making powers and status as the sole financial regulator on the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will be commenced on 18th June, 2001. This is necessary in order to enable it legally to ‘make’ and therefore finalise its by now very extensive Handbook of Rules and Guidance so that firms can prepare for N2 on the basis of its content. The following Orders and Regulations have already been made with the main effects as described.

The purpose of this study is to examine important operational issues related to strategic success factors that are necessary when implementing SCM plans in an organization.

A questionnaire was distributed to top and middle management within a large manufacturing firm, specializing in producing consumer and building products, to examine the importance and the extent to which the selected manufacturing company practiced the strategies based on these identified operational issues.

Reducing cost of operations, improving inventory, lead times and customer satisfaction, increasing flexibility and cross‐functional communication, and remaining competitive appear to be the most important objectives to implement SCM strategies. The responses by the survey respondents indicate that not enough resources were allocated to implement and support SCM initiatives in their divisions. In addition, they perceived that resource allocation could be improved in the areas of better information systems, greater commitment, setting clear‐cut goals, increased training, more personnel, and aligning SCM initiatives with current priorities and resource commitments.

The results will help to provide greater understanding of strategic and operational issues that support SCM framework and implementing SCM strategies to reduce supply chain‐wide costs and meeting customer service levels.

The results will be useful for business managers to understand and implement SCM plans in terms of their importance and the company's culture.

On 6th September, 2000 the SEC issued a press release accusing 33 companies and individuals of fraudulently using the Internet to make more than $10m in illegal profits by driving up the prices of more than 70 small stocks. The companies and individuals, including a bus mechanic, a car service driver and a self‐chilling can company, boosted the total market value of these stocks by $1.7bn, claimed the SEC, in announcing 11 civil fraud lawsuits filed in federal courts. ‘What used to require a network of professional promoters and brokers, banks of telephones and months to accomplish can now be done in minutes by a single person using the Internet and a home computer,’ SEC enforcement director Richard H. Walker said. Two weeks later, the SEC announced that it had settled an enforcement proceeding brought against a 15‐year‐old stock trader who, operating from a computer in a bedroom in his parents' home, had earned more than $270,000 in profits over a six‐month period by engaging in classic ‘pump and dump’ market manipulation of small over‐the‐counter stocks.

The G7 finance ministers, at a meeting in London on 8th May, 1998, called for international action to enhance the capacity of anti‐money‐laundering systems to deal effectively with tax‐related crimes, with a view to achieving the following objectives: the extension of suspicious transaction reporting to money laundering related to tax offences; the permission to money‐laundering authorities to the greatest extent possible to pass information to their tax authorities to support the investigation of tax‐related crimes; and the communication of such information to other jurisdictions in ways which would allow its use by tax authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers' motivation to accumulate obsolete items and their reluctance to dispose of material possessions.

The role of attachment to material possession in the construction of consumer identity provides a conceptual framework for the research. A video‐ethnography with eight individuals, who classify themselves as functional hoarders, individuals who accumulate objects privately and are unable to dispose without clear conscious motivation or control, constitute the primary data for this paper.

In investigating the underlying reasons for accumulating objects and resisting dispossession, informants show evidence of being reflective consumers who perceive throwing away as a threat to memory, to security, and to historical and ecological preservation. First, this paper confirms current literature regarding the role of possessions as symbols of interpersonal ties with others and as a cue to past experiences. Second, the paper supports that possessions provide a sense of security to the owner. Finally, this paper reinforces that preserving material objects cultivate a vision for the future. Ultimately, informants' motivations to accumulate, to keep, and to not‐dispose of objects reflects a desire to reassemble the fragments of their temporal experience into a unique space where memories, present, and life projects join together.

The accompanying film gives an opportunity for audience members to personally evaluate hoarding practices and to draw their own conclusion on the dynamic nature of material attachment and consumer identity in terms of past experiences, present orientation, and responsibility for the future.

Mindfulness is gaining popularity in the business world as a way to improve mental health and productivity in employees. However, the application of mindfulness for employees in the hospitality sector is still in its nascent stage. This paper aims to synthesize the evidence on the effectiveness of mindfulness practice on employees in this high-pressure service industry.

This narrative review identifies and integrates insights from journal articles researching mindfulness in the hospitality industry. Synthesis and reflective description of the literature reveal an exigent need for practice, policy-making and future research.

This review paper describes mindfulness-based interventions used in the literature. It shows how the practice of mindfulness stimulates a culture of well-being and effectiveness at work, consequently having a positive impact on the customer and the organization. It points to the role of mindfulness in helping hospitality employees deal with stress, depression, anxiety, burnout and emotional labor peculiar to this industry, lowering absenteeism levels and turnover intention.

This paper has implications for hospitality managerial practice, human resource (HR) policy development, employees at all levels in the hospitality industry, business coaches/trainers, educationists, students pursuing hospitality management and researchers.

This first review article on mindfulness in the hospitality industry lays the foundation to accentuate the need and benefits of prioritizing mindfulness in this sector. It provides directions for future research, application in HR management in hospitality and designing effective interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to approximate the impact that additive manufacturing (AM) will have on firm inventory performance (IP) and customer satisfaction (CS) when it is applied within the spare parts (SP) supply chain of manufacturing organisations. This research also explores the influence of customer sensitivity (CSy) to price and delivery lead time and supply risk (SR) within those approximations.

An online survey was used to collect the primary data for this research. Data were collected from 69 respondents working for organisations in two industrial segments within the UK manufacturing sector: “Industrial and Commercial Machinery and Computer Equipment” and “Measuring, Analysing and Controlling Instruments, Photographic, Medical and Optical Instruments”. The respondents worked for entities that were categorised in three groups: customers, suppliers, and entities that were both customers and suppliers. The groups that were self-identified as “customers” or “suppliers” answered 20 survey items each and the group that was identified as both “customers” and “suppliers” answered 40 survey items.

The results revealed that AM was considered a suitable vehicle for the fulfilment of SP demand. However, AM appeared to make no material difference to CS; the scenario used improved delivery time of SP but increased price. Also, AM was thought to improve IP through less reliance on buffer stock to manage SR and spikes in demand and less carrying of SP at risk of obsolescence.

The respondents worked for entities within two manufacturing industry segments within the UK and the insights garnered may not be indicative of similar organisations competing in other manufacturing industry segments within the UK or in other countries. In addition, approximately 82 per cent of the surveyed respondents worked for small organisations with fewer than 100 employees and the results may differ for larger organisations. Further limitations were the relatively small sample size and lack of open-ended questions used in the survey. Larger sample size and the usage of open-ended survey questions may lead to more reliable and valuable responses and feedback.

The findings from this research are considered to be of interest to practitioners contemplating adoption of AM and to developers of AM wishing to increase market share due to the positive reaction of entities within the industrial and commercial machinery and computer equipment, and measuring, analysing and controlling instrumentation industrial segments. This research raises awareness to the possible risks and rewards – from a range of perspectives, of AM to practitioners considering its adoption in the spare parts supply chain (SPSC).

The paper takes a novel perspective on AM in SPSCs by illuminating the supplier and buyer perspective based on empirical data. This research provides new insights about the appreciation of the use of AM in SPSCs of mostly small sized manufacturing companies located in the UK. This paper also gives new insights about the willingness/conditions of manufacturing companies in the UK to adopt AM for the provision of SP. The originality of this research is twofold: it broached the applicability of AM in the supply chains of the two targeted industrial segments, and as far as the authors are aware, the influence of CSy (e.g. to price or lead time) and SR on SPSC players’ attitude to AM is yet to be considered. Finally, this research adopted a systems theory lens and considered system-wide impact of AM introduction.

Using risk-related data often require a significant amount of upfront work to collect, extract and transform data. In addition, the lack of a consistent data structure hinders the development of tools that can be used with more than one set of data. The purpose of this paper is to report on an effort to solve these problems through the development of extensible, internally consistent schemas for risk-related data.

The consortia coordinated their efforts so the hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas are compatible. Hazard data can be provided as either event footprints or stochastic catalogs. Exposure classes include buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, livestock, forestry and socio-economic data. The vulnerability component includes fragility and vulnerability functions and indicators for physical and social vulnerability. The schemas also provide the ability to define uncertainties and allow the scoring of vulnerability data for relevance and quality.

As a proof of concept, the schemas were populated with data for Tanzania and with exposure data for several other countries.

The data schema and data exploration tool are open source and, if widely accepted, could become widely used by practitioners.

A single set of hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas will not fit all purposes. Tools will be needed to transform the data into other formats.

This paper describes extensible, internally consistent, multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas that can be used to store disaster risk-related data and a data exploration tool that promotes data discovery and use.