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The various opportunities and strategies afforded to commercial banks by the advent of the Single Market in 1992 are identified and assessed. Proposed European financial legislation is outlined and the implications for commercial banks are examined. Particular emphasis is focused on the banker‐customer relationship, considered to be the single most important barrier to entry confronting commercial banks in Europe. Empirical evidence is analysed, both in terms of the emerging strategies of individual institutions and the developments in selected European countries to support the findings.

The next month or two behind us and this decade will have passed, to merge in the drab background of the post‐war years, part of the pattern of frustration, failure and fear. The ‘swinging sixties’ some called it, but to an older and perhaps slightly jaundiced eye, the only swinging seemed to be from one crisis to another, like the monkey swinging from bough to bough in his home among the trees; the ‘swingers’ among men also have their heads in the clouds! In the seemingly endless struggle against inflation since the end of the War, it would be futile to fail to see that the country is in retreat all the time. One can almost hear that shaft of MacLeodian wit christening the approaching decade as the ‘sinking seventies’, but it may not be as bad as all that, and certainly not if the innate good sense and political soundness of the British gives them insight into their perilous plight.

In this study we consider the role of business management in delivering good in society, from the perspective of the philosophical work of Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Alfred North Whitehead. We find that Whitehead's process explanations of the nature of experience and consciousness articulate meaningfully with Smith's idea of ‘self-love’ and Marx's conceptualisation of ‘rich-experience’. As a result, we argue that business practice must reconnect with society in a more appropriate understanding of a good as something beyond a mere economic entity. Using principles of process thought, we make recommendations as to how this might be achieved in daily management practice.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

The application of category theory to interoperability to increase understanding of the problems and to facilitate the development of practical tools for their solution.

Category theory is naturally suited to handling interoperability. The use of first order predicate logic in many information systems may be justified through its completeness. However, the work of Gödel shows that such systems are undecidable if they rely on formal systems of number and/or sets. For interoperability dyadic higher order logic is required, which is neither complete nor decidable if based on sets. However, pure category theory is still axiomatic so is also neither complete nor decidable. Applied category theory based on cartesian closed categories for process is natural and is both complete and decidable. Gödel's theorems therefore do not apply.

The paper finds that composed adjunctions appear particularly well‐suited for modelling interoperability, with composition of distinct functors for mapping across a number of levels and of endofunctors for business process interoperability. The monad/comonad category provides a powerful abstraction of the business process. The development of a tool based on categorial principles written in Haskell may be a way forward but only as an initial set model approach.

This paper applies categorial constructions which permit a natural formal approach to interoperability.

The environment continues to command serious attention as a key consideration in the corporate strategy process, both within the specialised environmental management literature and increasingly from the general management literature (Avila and Whitehead 1993, Porter and van der Linde 1993, Shrivastava 1992). One important area of academic examination is that of corporate environmental behaviour.

In the past few years, many Australian organisations have either undergone or been planning a change from a hierarchical bureaucratic culture to a team‐based one. Much faith in the potential success of this kind of change appears to have been based on stories of transformations which worked well in overseas organisations, notably Japanese and American companies. One important issue for Australian organisational leaders was to come to terms with how the cultures of local and overseas companies were similar to or different from each other. For example, if the value systems of both local and overseas organisations tended to converge rather than diverge, the probability of developing a team‐based culture in Australian companies was relatively high. This paper critically examines stories of Australian organisations which are moving to a team‐based culture, from an adult communication management perspective. In particular, the paper aims to identify communication management variables which contribute to the successful implementation of teams in those organisations. Finally, conclusions and implications are drawn for maintaining high performance in team‐based organisations through effective communication management practices. ‘The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order’ — Alfred North Whitehead.

In the aftermath of the Enron scandal, the critics of free enterprise have blamed this system for inflated and out of control executive salaries, particularly those of the chief executive officer (CEO). The present paper defends the marketplace against these charges. In section I we argue that the market has passed the Enron test with flying colors. Section II gives the background of the financial situation relating to CEO salaries. Sections III and IV are devoted to, respectively, the tax court and the appellate court; section V looks at the reaction of the former to the latter; and in section VI we defend the “independent investor” test. We look at this issue from a political economic perspective in section VII and conclude in section VIII.

This paper examines the role of managerial curiosity as a critical factor in determining the future impact of disruptive information technologies in a global organization. Specifically, this paper presents curiosity as a managerial characteristic that plays an important role in identifying disruptive information technologies and facilitating their early adoption. Further, it uses resource‐based theory as a theoretical lens to illustrate how managerial curiosity can be a source of sustained competitive advantage. Finally, it examines the individual decision styles that are best suited in assessing disruptive information technologies.

President Bill Clinton has had many opponents and enemies, most of whom come from the political right wing. Clinton supporters contend that these opponents, throughout the Clinton presidency, systematically have sought to undermine this president with the goal of bringing down his presidency and running him out of office; and that they have sought non‐electoral means to remove him from office, including Travelgate, the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster, the Filegate controversy, and the Monica Lewinsky matter. This bibliography identifies these and other means by presenting citations about these individuals and organizations that have opposed Clinton. The bibliography is divided into five sections: General; “The conspiracy stream of conspiracy commerce”, a White House‐produced “report” presenting its view of a right‐wing conspiracy against the Clinton presidency; Funding; Conservative organizations; and Publishing/media. Many of the annotations note the links among these key players.