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The Common Agricultural Policy involves a substantial part of the European Community's multi‐billion pound annual expenditure. Close to the heart of many Member States with their need to respond to demands of the agricultural community, the policy has often resulted in a failure to ensure that effective and adequate means to monitor, scrutinise and police a complex and costly activity are in place. In the UK the Intervention Board has taken the opportunity to develop its own response of an integrated fraud prevention, detection and investigation strategy that is now paying dividends in the protection and policing of the expenditure of public funds.

The case study is presented of a small enterprise operating in the furniture industry in the East Midlands. To preserve business confidentiality the name of the company has been changed and sensitive financial information has been omitted at the company's request. The case study is designed to illustrate the operating context of the business and its relationship with the business support infrastructure. It is not an illustration of either good or bad management practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how supply and demand interact during industrial emergence.

The paper builds on previous theorising about co-evolutionary dynamics, exploring the interaction between supply and demand in a study of the industrial emergence of the commercial inkjet cluster in Cambridge, UK. Data are collected through 13 interviews with professionals working in the industry.

The paper shows that as new industries emerge, asynchronies between technology supply and market demand create opportunities for entrepreneurial activity. In attempting to match innovative technologies to particular applications, entrepreneurs adapt to the system conditions and shape the environment to their own advantage. Firms that successfully operate in emerging industries demonstrate the functionality of new technologies, reducing uncertainty and increasing customer receptiveness.

The research is geographically bounded to the Cambridge commercial inkjet cluster. Further studies could consider commercial inkjet from a global perspective or test the applicability of the findings in other industries.

Technology-based firms are often innovating during periods of industrial emergence. The insights developed in this paper help such firms recognise the emerging context in which they operate and the challenges that need to overcome.

As an in depth study of a single industry, this research responds to calls for studies into industrial emergence, providing insights into how supply and demand interact during this phase of the industry lifecycle.

My title comes from Blanche Geer's (1964) famous paper ‘First days in the field’. When she was about to do the preliminary fieldwork for the project that became Becker, Geer, and Hughes (1968) on liberal arts undergraduates, she reflected on her own student ‘self’. That young woman had a taste for ‘milkshakes and convertibles’ (p. 379), which to Geer as an adult woman seemed incomprehensible and foreign. Being British, my life has never included any enthusiasm for milkshakes or convertibles which do not figure in UK culture, but the phrase has always enchanted me, and I have always wanted to use it as a title. This autobiographical reflection is in two main parts. The first half is a reflexive examination of my current life and scholarly work. In some ways that will seem to be the self-portrait of a somewhat uni-dimensional workaholic with an uneasy relationship with the symbolic interactionist intellectual tradition. The second part of the piece is an account of my family history, childhood and adolescence spent with my eccentric mother, and the reader is invited to understand the choices made in adulthood as largely contrastive: designed to ensure my life was as unlike my mother's as possible. Just as Geer looked back to her college years and found her youthful self strange, I look back to my childhood and see a very different person.

Prior research has shown evidence of earnings management in financial reports of US and Australian firms changing chief executive officer (CEO). This paper examines whether corporate boards, with certain characteristics associated with strong corporate governance, are effective in controlling any earnings management in the financial reports of Australian firms that change CEOs. Since hiring, monitoring and replacing the CEO are key roles of the board of directors, research in this specific context is considered particularly appropriate. After controlling for contemporaneous and lagged profitability in the year of CEO change, we find evidence of negative unexpected accruals in our sub‐sample of firms where the CEO resigned. For this group, larger boards and a higher proportion of independent directors appear to limit observed negative earnings management. In the case of CEO retirements there is evidence of positive unexpected accruals in the period of CEO change. However, none of the board characteristics show any significant relationship with unexpected accruals. In the period after CEO change, we find no evidence of positive unexpected accruals for CEO resignations and none of the board characteristics show any significant relationship with unexpected accruals. For CEO retirements, our analysis indicates that a higher proportion of executive and affiliated director shareholding goes some way towards counteracting the observed positive unexpected accruals. When lagged unexpected accruals are included in the regression equation to control for accrual reversals, CEO duality significantly increases the already positive earnings management found in CEO retirements in the period following CEO change.

Campus wide information systems (CWIS) are the newest development in the electronic campus, providing information on many aspects of campus life. This article gives a brief overview of CWIS development in the United Kingdom as at summer 1993. As yet there is no definitive CWIS, so a range of third generation systems were looked at in detail at the Universities of Birmingham, Bradford and Stirling. Within each, attention is given to differences in organisational policy, functionality, software and information provision. An appraisal of the specific case studies was undertaken both onsite and remotely via a national gateway. A comparison of the systems draws out features that should be available on an ideal CWIS. Future developments, including the advent of standards such as X.500 and Z39.50 and the adoption of common software, will lead to greater interaction between institutions. All of this coupled with the development of hypermedia and multimedia will ensure CWISs will become a powerful tool in the provision of information.

The paper aims to introduce the reciprocal expectations (RE) approach to co-leadership and outlines the complex environments within which public services operate.

A case study of two government departments is undertaken to apply the RE approach within a public services context.

The application of the RE approach to co-leadership resulted in the mending of broken relationships, thereby providing the basis for stable, effective government, and restoring Ministerial confidence in the government departments.

Strong and effective co-leadership can be achieved when attributes of trust, honesty, and clear expectations are facilitated and mutually adopted.

The organizational context of elected and professional leaders in government is complex, unique, and requires special attention. The RE approach is original, and the case studies contribute to the knowledge of co-leadership and the benefits of the RE approach to good governance practice.