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Short-term military simulations of scenarios or conditions that U.S. military personnel might meet are generally the largest, in terms of cost and personnel, of all operational training events. That at least six such exercises were scheduled for September 11, 2001 raises serious questions about whether or not the events of 9/11 were at least partially orchestrated by U.S. command.

In light of the aforementioned military exercises and the fact that the 9/11 Commission's Final Report barely mentions them, neither were they significantly discussed nor investigated during the hearings, this essay briefly explores four key questions that will hopefully stimulate further inquiries, investigations and perhaps subpoenas that will ultimately break the silence and force declassification of the information surrounding the war games.1.Has there been a high-level suppression of information about the military drills?2.Might the military drills have been a significant factor in the success of the attacks?3.Who was in charge of the military drills and what motives may have been operating for this person?4.In what way might Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States for the attacks, be a link that connects to the person in charge of the games to another tragedy that may have been “an inside job” – i.e. Senator Paul Wellstone's death, and how might Moussaoui connect all of this to the Pentagon?

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

The purpose of this paper is to test the replicability of Hofstede’s value-based dimensions – masculinity–femininity (MAS–FEM) and individualism–collectivism (IDV–COLL) – in the field of consumer behavior, and to compare cultural prioritizations with respect to disposable income budgets across the world.

The authors asked 51,529 probabilistically selected respondents in 52 countries (50 nationally representative consumer panels and community samples from another two countries) what they would do with their money if they were rich. The questionnaire items targeted Hofstede’s MAS–FEM and IDV–COLL as well as a wider range of options deemed sufficiently meaningful, ethical and moral across the world.

The authors obtained two main dimensions. The first contrasts self-enhancing and altruistic choices (status and power-seeking spending vs donating for healthcare) and is conceptually similar to MAS–FEM. However, it is statistically related to Hofstede’s fifth dimension, or monumentalism–flexibility (MON–FLX), not to MAS–FEM. The second dimension contrasts conservative-collectivist choices and modern-hedonistic concerns (donating for religion and sports vs preserving nature and travel abroad for pleasure) and is a variant of COLL–IDV.

The authors left out various potential consumer choices as they were deemed culturally incomparable or unacceptable in some societies. Nevertheless, the findings paint a sufficiently rich image of worldwide value differences underpinning idealized consumer behavior prioritizations.

The study could be useful to international marketing and consumer behavior experts.

The study contributes to the understanding of modern cultural differences across the world.

This is the first large cross-cultural study that reveals differences in values through a novel approach: prioritizations of consumer choices. It enriches the understanding of IDV–COLL and MON–FLX, and, in particular, of the value prioritizations of the East Asian nations. The study provides new evidence that Hofstede’s MAS–FEM is a peculiarity of his IBM database with no societal analogue. Some of the so-called MAS–FEM values are components of MON–FLX, which is statistically unrelated to Hofstede’s MAS–FEM.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb027847. When citing the article, please cite: Michael Cross, (1984) “Flexibility and Integration at the Workplace”, Management Research News, Vol. 7 Iss: 4, pp. 1 - 6.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb027847. When citing the article, please cite: Michael Cross, (1984) “Flexibility and Integration at the Workplace”, Management Research News, Vol. 7 Iss: 4, pp. 1 - 6.

We examine the allocation of a pre-determined amount of aid from a donor to two recipient countries. The donor suffers from cross-border pollution resulting from production activities in the recipient countries. It is shown that the recipient with the higher fraction of aid allocated to public abatement and with the lower emission tax, receives a higher share of the aid when the donor allocates aid so as to maximize its own welfare. Competition for aid reduces cross-border pollution to the donor when recipients use the fraction of aid allocated to pollution abatement as a policy to divert aid from each other. But, it increases cross-border pollution when recipients use the emission tax to divert aid from each other.

The move towards greater flexibility in working practices, catalysed by the introduction of new technology, has for a long time promised women a better deal in the workforce, including offering an opportunity to combine employment with family responsibilities and personal interests. But what is the reality behind the shift to new work practices? Following Jane Phillips' discussion of part‐time working in the last issue, Dr Michael Cross, Fellow of the City University Business School and until recently a Principal Research Fellow at the Technical Change Centre, looks at contemporary approaches to flexible working in the UK and the forces bearing on their progress.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the combined effect of shape distortion and bend angle on the collapse loads of pipe bends exposed to internal pressure and in-plane closing bending moment. Non-linear finite element analysis with large displacement theory was performed considering the pipe bend material to be elastic perfectly plastic.

One half of the pipe bend model was built in ABAQUS. Shape distortion, namely, ovality (Co) and thinning (Ct), were each varied from 0% to 20% in steps of 5% and bend angle was varied from 30° to 180° in steps of 30°.

The findings show that ovality has a significant impact on collapse load. The effect of ovality decreases with an increase in bend angle for small thickness. The opposite effect was observed for large thickness pipe bends. The influence of ovality was more for higher bend angles. Ovality impact was almost negligible at certain internal pressure denoted as nullifying point (NP). The latter increased with an increase in pipe bend thickness and decreased with increase in pipe bend radius. For small bend angles one NP was observed where ovality impact is negligible and beyond this point the ovality effect increased. Two NPs were observed for large bend angles and ovality effect was maximum between the two NPs. Thinning yielded a minimal effect on collapse load except for small bend angles and bend radii. The influence of internal pressure on thinning was also negligible.

Influence of shape distortions and bend angle on collapse load of pipe bend exposed to internal pressure and in-plane closing bending has been not revealed in existing literature.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.