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The implementation of the EC′s programme to liberalise the financial services sector as part of the movement towards a Single European Market will significantly reduce the costs of entry into non‐domestic markets for Community banks. Reducing entry costs will increase competition in banking markets, but it is unlikely that all segments of the banking market will experience the same patterns of change. The large‐scale corporate market already displays a high volume of cross‐border trade, while retail markets may be inaccessible for many non‐domestic banks, except by acquisition. The small‐ and medium‐sized corporate sector is widely regarded as an attractive niche market at the European level and it is suggested that there are particular gaps in this market in the UK. These gaps may make such a market susceptible to increased competition from non‐UK Community banks, although at the same time, improvements in the product offerings to this market by UK banks may provide the basis for a strategy to protect existing domestic markets and develop into new non‐domestic markets.

THE VALUE OF ABSTRACTS AND THEIR USE ‐ MCB is not a company to rest on its laurels. In the vernacular of modern‐day management literature, the company can rightly claim to be a learning organization; one that seeks to regenerate and develop itself in accordance with current trends, most notably those in customer and market requirements.

Among the top management issues covered in this section are: leadership to promote change; issues of corporate culture; effective international strategy; environmental leadership; investment in Eastern Europe; and developing “world‐class” manufacturing strategy.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is split into four sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Change and Intervention; Management Styles and Techniques; Leadership and Decision; Communications.

Foreign direct investment was obviously going to be central to the economic regeneration of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. However, the demise of the formerly centrally‐planned system was accompanied by the widespread collapse of the old union structures. While these have been replaced, at least in part, by a spontaneous growth of new unions, they have a limited membership and are fragmented in their organization. The usual result is that multinational companies need exhibit little concern regarding the views of their acquired workforce. This paper highlights the rather exceptional case of the Hungarian airline industry in which a moribund, albeit new, union was revitalised to the extent of being able to challenge successfully the overseas employer of its members. While to date unusual, the example may offer lessons for worker organizations throughout the region.

In this paper, the basic tenets of the European industrial networks research tradition are introduced. It is argued that the network approach offers a particularly powerful descriptive tool for analyzing contemporary interorganizational business exchange. The network approach is applied in a case study of a Finnish SME sector furniture manufacturer’s focal net. The case study should be understood as an example of how the network approach can generate meaningful analyses and provide practical implications for capability development, marketing and purchasing, and strategy development.

The outcome of this research is twofold. First of all, it gives the reader insight in the evolution of the main activities, and the growth pattern of two groups of surviving small and medium enterprise start‐ups: at the one hand “Vlerick”‐starters who have enjoyed management training at the Centre of SMEs at De Vlerick School voor Management (Belgium), and at the other hand a group of “Others” who have not. Second, some of the research findings reveal clear evidence for the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and managerial techniques, planning skills and the business growth pattern of the enterprises of both groups. Even so, certain combinations pointing towards the likely catalysing effect of management training on growth‐related entrepreneurial and managerial attitudes and towards the influence of those attitudinal differences on planning skills and the enterprise growth pattern were identified. Throughout the paper explanatory value of interrelations between : sets of entrepreneurial and managerial qualifications; planning attitudes; and business survival and growth rates of starting SMEs is sufficiently established.

Export grouping schemes are a commonly used vehicle for promoting international competitiveness, but their success rate is patchy. A perennial problem is the value of continuing the formal group structure itself. In this paper we examine the nature and role of export groups using the results from two in‐depth Australian case studies. The focus of analysis is on export groups as structuring devices rather than structures. They are viewed as action learning exercises in which knowledge and resource creating and self‐organizing processes are nurtured, these processes in turn shaping the evolution of interfirm relations and networks. Building on earlier work by Wilkinson and Young the dance metaphor is extended to depict and analyze export groups as dance parties. Dance themes are used to illustrate and dramatize issues arising in the design, development and evaluation of export grouping schemes and are related to the real experience of the two case studies examined.

Linking informational network and organizational change theories with the multi‐faceted transformations taking place in global competition, in particular the economic recession in the Asia‐Pacific and information technological progress, the paper focuses on two major issues: first, the task facing Japanese companies in accommodating themselves to new trends pushed ahead primarily by changes emerging in the info‐communications industries. It is demonstrated that major challenges are facing Japanese‐style organization and management practices along with the advent of informational network industrialization. Essentially, Japanese business networks are forced to transform their organizational structure in conjunction with open networking and management practices. Second, the paper focusses on the impact of the economic slump in Asia on the strategies and management of Japanese production networks in the region. It is argued that impending domestic restructuring will extend in much the same way to the Asian production networks, while integrating these into new types of international production complexes.

This paper describes the status quo of the Austrian franchise situation. Judging from current trends, the future of franchising seems to have a bright outlook in Austria. The growth in franchising is a result not only of the increasing number of homegrown systems, but also of the influx of foreign franchise systems. Recently, there has been an increase in information and consulting activities as a result of the growing demand. Owing to the fact that little research on franchising in Austria has been done so far, there is a wide area for further investigation on this subject.