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For some years now, Management Studies Departments in polytechnics and technical colleges in Britain have encountered pressures to provide specific courses for the small business. Such pressures emanate from major national studies, such as the Bolton Report, ad hoc inquiries from particular enterprises, occasional contacts from Employers' Associations, and the aspirations of individual members of staff to develop work in that particular field. Moreover regular harangues from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Department of Education and Science are levelled at heads of departments through conferences and personal contacts to pay due attention to the needs of small businesses. Within course planning and development, the point is justifiably made that the resources obtained from public money financing the further and higher education sector should flow to small concerns as much as to large public corporations.

These two cases give accounts of technological innovation in a particular industry, ie bulk cargo handling and containerisation in the port industry. The geographical setting is the Pacific Coast of Northern California, more precisely at Sacramento and at San Francisco. The subject of technological innovation is a vast one, the extent of the port industry along the full length of the Pacific Coast is equally massive, and the complexity of relationships between ports as employers, stevedoring companies, shipping companies, employers' associations, the international union (ILWU) and its various Locals, and other unions, is phenomenal. Thus these two cases are merely tiny snap shots within that huge scenario. The information has been collected from the sources of visits to the locations, technical and specialist literature, and interviews with four individual people representing management and organised labour.

I remember some ten years ago taking my children north across the Woolwich ferry, making for the highest tower block of flats we could see, and taking the lift to the top floor as this was the only way to get a good view into London's docks. Stretched out below were the oblongs of water, holding the ships etched in black and white with vivid bands of colour round their funnels, overhung with the tracery of cranes and derricks. Today there is no need for such complications: one can drive straight through Gate 19 into King George V docks, along the wide empty roads to the waterfront. I saw two ships moored on the north side, “Bunga Orchid”, carrying containers which were handled by the traditional cranes, and “El Flamingo”, carrying timber. Each was some 6,000 tons and each was importing — historically the trade was either import or export at one berth, not both, for congestion precluded the double operation. Today there is no congestion. The great sheds and lines of grey cranes are still there, and with them the small brick block offices of the shipping companies who have long gone. In one such block on the south side, a small firm, Advanced Battery Systems (Pb) Ltd, has taken up residence, having started originally in temporary accommodation at what was once the Medical Centre of the National Dock Labour Board. From the upper floor of the company's new home the skyline of tower blocks, chimneys, cranes and the occasional church spire is bright on a sharp December morning.

In ICT of October 1977, Duncan Smith's article, “An Advanced Professional Qualification for Trainers” identifies a central problem: namely in what way should we develop, educate and train those executives who themselves are to hold the key role of directing the training activity within employing organisations. His analysis of the problem, and his proposals to solve it, raise some fascinating trains of thought for the management educator who works in the sector of the polytechnics and regional management centres. Where Duncan Smith focuses upon the role and the skills, knowledge and personal qualities necessary to fulfil it, I shall attempt to relate those ideas to the general framework of management education which has developed and is developing in Britain. Taking the point that that framework may well currently be deficient in coping with the demand that Duncan Smith has identified, I shall advance the idea that we can learn from contemporary developments in the USA. Such developments relate to exploiting the potential of the Doctoral programme to accommodate needs of this kind. In Britain we have available the skeleton framework for such action, by virtue of the range available within the Council for National Academic Awards. Within that framework exists the opportunity to pioneer new developments through the medium of the PhD, and a starting point for such pioneering could be established by working from the analysis of the British scene provided by Duncan Smith and drawing upon relevant comparative studies, such as the USA case which I present later.

As a result of an award made to the Anglian Regional Management Centre under the JW Platt Memorial Fellowship Scheme, which financial aid was supplemented by the resources of ARMC and Thurrock Technical College, a study visit to key centres of interest in Holland and Denmark was undertaken during June 1974.

A great deal of literature exists on such topics as the problems and challenges of British manufacturing industry, on the need to encourage the growth of small firms, and on the urban planning activities of revitalizing sections of our cities with new industry and new housing projects. That literature ranges through articles in the business press, colourful publicity brochures, pamphlets of guide lines and advice, and detailed research studies. But what is it like to launch and manage a small manufacturing company in a new urban development area? What is it like to work in such a firm?

South of Los Angeles, California, lies Orange County, skirting the Pacific Ocean. Its spine is the great San Diego Freeway. Within the county is the Coast Community College District, whose publication, ‘Accomplishments’, produced in October 1975, states baldly: ‘Established in 1974, to serve the residents of the coastal section of Orange County, California, the Coast Community College District consists of two colleges: Orange Coast College and Golden West College, and Orange County's only television station, KOCE‐TV, Channel 50’.

The design and launching of Master's degree programmes in management is a major task facing the polytechnics in Britain. Having existed for some six or seven years, they have achieved their initial objective of creating an appropriate range of first degree programmes, exhibiting the characteristics of career orientation, multi‐disciplinary structures, innovative learning methods and relevant assessment systems. The replacement of External London University Degree courses by Council for National Academic Award programmes has accompanied the conversion of the large colleges of technologies of the nineteen sixties into the polytechnics of the nineteen seventies. Many problems still exist in the first degree range: the provision of part‐time study versions to offset overgearing to full time students, the development of course network approaches, and the integration of sub‐degree work within total programmes of which first degrees are currently the main focus—in that connection the evolution of the Diploma in Higher Education could be a key item.

The public, as opposed to the private, system of higher and further education in the State of California broadly operates at three levels. The levels relate to the attainments of students on graduating from high school, and in sitting certain examinations to assess their appropriate level of placement. The top tier consists of the Universities of California, such as Berkeley, Los Angeles, Davis, Santa Barbara—labelled UC's, as in for instance ‘UC Davis’. In the middle is the California State University system, with some 20 campuses, each a college with individual identity, but all integrated within the total system. For the CSU system as a whole: Enrolments in fall 1974 totalled approximately 292 000 students who were taught by a faculty of 1600.

The concept of an Industrial Relations Centre is relevant in the UK today, in the light of the report ‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’, published by the National Economic Development Office, in June 1975. That report is the product of a Working Group on Industrial Relations Training for Managers, set up by the Management Education Training and Develop‐ment Committee of NEDO. It includes the recommendation: ‘…that an Industrial Relations Training Resource Centre should be established. The central aim of such a centre would be to assist companies and other institutions who wished to provide improved industrial relations training for managers…’ (‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’ 1.24)