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This article argues that business needs to look again at offering the support and assistance directors require.

Describes the case of a successful operations director in a large electronics company who could be considered a strong candidate for managing director of a new division the company is creating. But there is a rival for the job in the form of an established sales director in the company. Moreover, the chief executive has decided that, rather than be up‐front about the situation, he will let the two candidates fight it out. Highlights the advice and support the operations director has received through the BrainXchange.

Contends that asking for help in a business setting can sometimes be seen as being weak or not knowing your job as well as you should. Yet the problems that confront director‐level staff are often far from straightforward. Moreover, the sensitivity and confidential nature of the issues that director‐level staff must deal with mean that they often must solve the problem alone. Outlines an alternative way to help directors to achieve the results every business expects.

Puts forward an interesting solution to the problem of how best to advise and support people at the top of the organization.

Argues that many businesses worth their salt recognize that junior staff need mentoring and training. But just because a person goes up the career ladder does not mean that he or she should not continue to be offered help.

The study of “wisdom” is a subject normally outside the traditional bounds of management studies. Recent financial scandals and management blunders suggest that the time is ripe to introduce, via management development programs, an introductory study into the nature of “wisdom”, and followed by further study into the nature of “managerial wisdom”. Decisions are being made by people practising management which demonstrate that they do not know how to exercise good judgement, nor do they demonstrate that they have an understanding of what it means to be “wise”. This paper looks at the way philosophers have addressed the topic of wisdom from Greco‐Roman times. It includes references to wisdom in history and literature. The paper summarises some of the ideas and developments of more recent research published in psychology journals. It is an extension of ideas expressed in an earlier paper published in this journal viz. “Philosophy in management: a new trend in management development”. Both these papers suggest that management development studies should include areas of study more akin to the great classical tradition, where education is aimed at developing the “whole person”. An introductory study of “philosophy in management”, and “wisdom” in particular, are seen as two ways of expanding the present offerings in management studies

The aim of this paper is to compare modern internal control systems with those in medieval England.

This paper uses a modern referential framework (control environment, risk assessment, information and communication, monitoring and control activities) as a lens to investigate medieval internal controls used in the twelfth century royal exchequer and other medieval institutions. It draws upon an extensive range of primary materials.

The paper demonstrates that most of the internal controls found today are present in medieval England. Stewardship and personal accountability are found to be the core elements of medieval internal control. The recent recognition of the need for the enhanced personal accountability of individuals is reminiscent of medieval thinking.

It investigates internal controls in medieval England for the first time and draws comparisons to today.

THE end of October saw the return of most of our overseas visitors, continental and otherwise, to their homes, leaving with us pleasant memories of a mutually successful visit. The Englishman's proverbial difficulties with foreign tongues, even of neighbouring France, did not complicate matters unduly or reduce too much those interchanges which conference and school afforded. We can repeat our frequently‐expressed hope that there will be an ever increasing series of visits, both of the foreigner to England and of ourselves as foreigners to other countries. We would welcome longer stays in both cases. Nothing but good can come from them.

Supply chain management has been defined as ‘the concept of strategically co‐ordinating supply chains made up of businesses owned and run by different people, each with his or her own business objectives’ (Slack, Chambers, Harland, Harrison and Johnston, 1995, p.532) or ‘close, shared destiny relations with suppliers’ (Oliver, Delbridge, Jones, Lowe, 1995, p.54). These and other definitions stress the role of supply chain management as managing value across organisational boundaries, and this mandates new forms of (and new ways of managing) inter firm relationships.

The issue of motivation for foreign direct investment (FDI) is central to international business (IB) theory and empirical research. The most common starting point is Dunning’s four motives (4M) framework: market seeking, natural resource seeking, efficiency seeking and strategic asset seeking. This paper explores the genesis, development and application of the 4M framework and demonstrate how it has developed from an abstract typology and heuristic device unsupported by empirical evidence into a set of concrete behavioral assumptions with theoretical and methodological consequences for IB research.

The paper is mainly conceptual, based on relevant theoretical work on FDI motives, and partly methodological, concentrating on the importance of realism for behavioral assumptions in IB.

The authors demonstrate that the shift in the 4M framework from abstract typology to a set of concrete behavioral assumptions has important implications for the development of IB theory and methodology. A critical issue has largely been ignored: the role of realism in the assumptions on which theory and its empirical testing are based and the possible consequences of unrealism in key behavioral assumptions. The authors show that attempts to “fix” the problems inherent in the 4M framework will inevitably fail and suggest ways in which it is possible to inject more realism into behavioral assumptions underlying FDI motivation.

The authors demonstrate that the applicability of the 4M approach, for either firms or policymakers seeking to attract FDI and maximize the benefits from it, needs to be more clearly understood in the context of the particular decision.

Many countries see the attraction of FDI as central to their plans for economic growth and indeed the propensity for industrial development and moving up the value chain. The understanding of FDI motive has, in recent years, been recognized as central to this. The authors offer an important nuance to this understanding.

The paper offers both theoretical and methodological insights for IB scholars interested in FDI motivation.

Butt can be placed within the framework of what George Boyce (1995, pp. 18–19) terms colonial patriotism. Butt's analyses of Ireland's economy and development during the next years brought together the several strands that marked out an Ireland of citizens, an Ireland of sort which has emerged at the turn of the present millennium. What were the influences on Butt and what is his place in the development of political economy? His position is best characterised as eclectic and distinct from the other early holders of the Whately Chair. Drawing upon but not endorsing classical political economy, Adam Smith, Longfield, Jean-Baptiste Say and others, Butt defies pigeonholing. His economic analysis emerged slowly, and initially, there was little hint that he would expand on Longfield's position which essentially was a theory of profit (McGovern, 2000, p. 5). However, Butt moved beyond Longfield's analysis and whereas the latter remained in the classical tradition on free trade, he did not. He expanded Longfield's approach that crucial to the determination of the price of goods was the importance of applying a unit of whatever resource to its marginal use, concluding that the factors of production were remunerated in relation to the utility they created in their least efficient, marginal employment (Boylan & Foley, 2003, Vol. 2, p. 10). His importance, it has been observed, was in drawing attention to the potential resource mobilisation and distribution aspects of protection and in assessing the benefits and weaknesses of protection in relation to the complexity of specific circumstances (Boylan and Foley, 2003, Vol. 3, p. 5). Butt's Whatley lectures have received most attention although it will be suggested that certain of his other writings were as important or even more significant as indicative of his ideas on political economy. In his first Whatley lecture (Butt, 1837a), appropriating the title ‘Introduction’, Butt outlined somewhat verbosely the scope of what he intended to address and adopted the high ground about the purpose of political economy. He declared it was ‘to teach certain truths connected with the social condition of man – it attempts to explain the nature of the causes by which is brought about that singular machinery of society by which Providence has set man to supply each other's wants, and thus receive and confer a mutual benefit’ (1837a, p. 23). Butt addressed the question of production and the creation of ‘utility’. Employing the illustration of cotton stockings, Butt demonstrated the complex interchange required to produce even the most mundane of articles (1837a, pp. 25–26). ‘When you purchase your pair of cotton stockings’, he noted, ‘you are positively commanding for your own personal comfort and accommodation, not only the services of thousands of your cotemporary fellow creatures, but the accumulated results of the labours of generations that have long since passed away’ (1837a, p. 28). Thus, he maintained, political economy ‘teaches the laws which regulate the production, distribution and consumption of wealth’ (1837a, p. 30).

THE earliest catalogue of Cambridge University documents was compiled by Mr. William Rysley, in 1420. Most of the documents enumerated in this list are still extant. An interesting List of the Documents in the University Registry, from the year 1266 to the year 1544, was communicated to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society by the Rev. H. R. Luard, B.D., then University Registrar, on March 6th, 1876. From this, it appears that “The earliest document which the University possesses is so late as the year 1266. The earliest in the Record office is dated 16th July, 13 Hen. III., i.e. 1229. This is a permission to scholars of the University of Paris to come to England, and remain for purposes of study.”