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Long derided, or at least ignored, by North American business, Latin American enterprises have taken adversity, debt, inflation, and political turmoil to heart. The result: some surprising success stories and increasing interest by outside firms.

Our second annual listing is nearly 50% larger than last year's. The reason: a growing interest in software‐aided strategic planning.

Describes how the former warehouse manager at UK furniture‐installation company Rubicon Developments Ltd was trained to become a top manager and so free the firm's two directors to spend more time obtaining new business and diversifying the company.

Explains the background to the training, the form it took and the results it has achieved.

Details how the directors delivered the 16‐week tailor‐made program, after themselves attending a course on preparing to teach in the lifelong‐learning sector.

Highlights how the ex‐warehouse manager developed new skills in areas such as cost management, report writing, delegation, conflict resolution, commanding respect in the workplace, finance, time management, project management, change management, sales and marketing, management reporting through Microsoft Excel charts, effective monitoring of quality systems and setting realistic targets.

Highlights an important success in the area of lifelong learning.

Reveals that close monitoring of the employee's progress helped him to complete the program within the allotted 16 weeks, even though he had done little studying in the previous 30 years.

In recent years, retailers have come to the fore in the development of distribution systems in the UK. With this move has come the greatly accelerated use of “distribution service companies” to provide tailored, dedicated, contractual solutions to the distribution needs of retailers. This article reviews the development of this trend, identifies the major causes of it, considers the advantages and drawbacks of contract solutions, examines a number of specific cases and speculates as to what further penetration dedicated contracts may achieve in both retailing and other distribution areas.

The aircraft manufacturing industry places a high priority on safety and spends many billions of pounds in developing and testing new military and civil aircraft to the highest safety standards.

Draws on the findings of a major research project funded by the New South Wales Department of School Education in Australia which sought to examine the school‐community interface and communication in government comprehensive high schools in that state. Data were drawn initially from nine schools in Western Sydney with three of these schools being the subject of in‐depth follow‐up study. These studies revealed the significant role played by senior school executives, particularly the principal, in the development of communication methods in schools and their influence on school culture and climate. Examines decision making and communication methods in the three schools within the context of each school′s environment and draws implications for school leadership, staff morale, and staff, student and community attitudes. A key finding is that there is no “recipe” for success as a principal. Rather, a contingency approach is advocated whereby individual principals adopt a personal position across a range of important considerations, these positions being dependent on contextual and personal factors. The case studies suggest what these positions could be.

Working as a consultant in the field of team development, I frequently find myself at odds with people who have different perceptions about the nature of the work. This confusion was actually expressed in print when in 1980, following the publication of my article on team problem diagnosis, another consultant wrote of his “simpler” method. This turned out to be the “LIFO” system. Again, similar misunderstanding arose in 1982, within a large client organisation in the public sector. The client had undergone major reorganisation, and it had been decided to create an internal consultancy role, a central function of which was to be team development. I was engaged to train those appointed to the role, with emphasis on the skills required by internal consultants. It came as some surprise therefore to be told during a seminar with some of the organisation's directors, that “team building” had recently been conducted in the area concerned. I had not yet trained the internal consultants. It emerged of course that their “team building” and my “team development” were entirely different processes. Impatient to “get things moving”, the organisation had initiated a programme of “team‐building” activity based on packaged exercises, mainly concerned with the analysis of management style.

CF Industries’ products nitrogen fertilizers are a crucial input to making agriculture productive enough to feed the world. However, its products are undifferentiated commodities. Throughout parts of its history, CF has struggled to be consistently profitable, yet over the last decade it has been very profitable. The case provides an opportunity to examine how CF manages to create value and capture it as profits despite being in a commodity business.