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The capacity of trade unions to renew themselves clearly depends on a variety of political and organisational factors. British trade unionism has long been seen as defensive, sectional and reactive. If trade unions are to develop strategically, they will need their own positive agenda. This paper looks at the obstacles and potential for doing this, utilising comparative research in the UK and Sweden.

Although the influential group located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have argued that “teamwork” is at the heart of the lean factory; more recent works have identified “innovation” as the major driver “of growth in free market economies”. Others have gone further in suggesting that the global business environment has so fundamentally changed that it is the demands of the knowledge economy that are the crucial challenge to global organisations. They identify “tomorrow's winners” as those organisations able to “search out and mobilize untapped pockets of technology and market intelligence” to add significant value to their operations. In this paper two of these “global practices” are analyzed in terms of the management of their introduction at the Curitiba plant of Volvo do Brazil. First, the development of team‐based forms of work organization is analyzed within the context of the changing nature of patterns of global human resource development. Secondly, the increasing utilization of lean production techniques is located within the context of the development of a global production strategy within the Volvo Truck Company. This paper attempts an understanding of the nature of the relationship between team‐based forms of work and lean production within a framework which recognizes the increasing importance of organisations attached to innovation – in the sense of a hybrid system of learning from the best practice of other organisations. In doing so it will assess how far we can claim the presence of a new production paradigm being developed within the plant.

There has long been a debate concerning whether the technical division of labour should be structured around the individual or the group. With the developing of lean production and other forms of work organization under advanced manufacturing, teamworking has emerged as a central focus of redesigning production. However, considerable conceptual confusion remains, as well as sharply opposed models drawing on Japanese and Northern European traditions. Provides a framework for understanding the potentially different configurations of teamworking by distinguishing between technical, governance and normative dimensions. Explores these in the context of evidence from case studies of Volvo truck plants in Sweden. The variations observed in different production environments emphasize the point that there is no authentic, linear tradition, or undifferentiated package in theory or in practice.

The capacity of trade unions to renew themselves clearly depends on a variety of political and organizational factors. British trade unionism has long been seen as defensive, sectional and reactive. In contrast, Swedish unions have a reputation for interest and involvement in organizational innovation. This contrast is broadly confirmed in our case studies, though political and economic changes pose severe problems for traditional strategies in both countries. If British trade unions are to develop strategically, they will need their own positive agenda on the central workplace and societal issues. Looks at the obstacles and potential for doing this in the sphere of work organization, utilizing comparative research in the UK and Sweden.

An appeal under the Food and Drugs Acts, reported in the present number of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, is an apt illustration of the old saying, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In commenting upon the case in question, the Pall Mall Gazette says: “The impression among the great unlearned that the watering of the morning's milk is a great joke is ineradicable; and there is also a common opinion among the Justice Shallows of the provincial bench that the grocer who tricks his customers into buying coffee which is 97 per cent. chicory is a clever practitioner, who ought to be allowed to make his way in the world untrammelled by legal obstructions. But the Queen's Bench have rapped the East Ham magistrates over the knuckles for convicting without fining a milkman who was prosecuted by the local authority, and the case has been sent back in order that these easygoing gentlemen may give logical effect to their convictions.”

In race‐centered societies dominant racial populations create and maintain society through constructing collective representations of The Other Races. These collective representations of racial subordinates by the dominant are cultural commodities produced through typification and stereotypical processes and structures. They became powerful sources of socialization which institutionalize race‐centerness in societies through normalizing cultural interpretations of social and political stratification categories defined as races.

To provide a concise briefing on the most topical issues and relevant implications from the top 400 management publications in the world.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the argument in context.

The article is detailed and clearly written although may be a little hard to follow for readers without detailed automotive sector knowledge. However, there is much to be learnt about how to select and apply “what works” instead of just following an existing production model.

Provides implementable strategies and practical thinking that has influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

This study examined the effect of professional identification on several job attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career satisfaction), and explored the moderating roles of gender and organizational tenure on these relationships. Informed by social identity theory, gender role theory, and organizational socialization theory, several hypotheses were developed and tested with a data set consisting of 309 salaried lawyers collected in Hong Kong. Regression analysis revealed that (1) professional identification had a significant positive effect on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment, (2) gender moderated the relationship between professional identification—job satisfaction and professional identification—organizational commitment, and (3) organizational tenure moderated the relationship between professional identification and job satisfaction as well as the relationship between professional identification and career satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The relationship between the size of state audit budgets, audit responsibilities, professional characteristics of staff, risk, and tax and expenditure limitations is explored. Bivariate relationships are examined and then a model is estimated which controls for size, complexity, financial risk factors, and political risk factors. This provides a framework for considering the incremental influence of specialized audit inputs. Both "brand names" and size have been used in past research to proxy for quality dimensions intended to differentiate the audit product provided by different suppliers. This research extends such work by considering characteristics of the auditing services as reflected by specific inputs and by using cost data rather than audit fee data. The states are observed to differ in their responses to financial and political factors by spending resources on peer review, continuing professional education, certifications of professional staff, and expertise in both the computer science area and in law. A positive association of cost and auditor differentiation, implicit in past audit fee literature is corroborated.

The traditional archival accessioning of records when they are no longer required by their originators has led to problems, especially in the case of electronic records. This has created not only huge backlogs but also either the non‐receipt of electronic records or their receipt with vital contextual or structural metadata missing. The solution put forward by Bearman, Hedstrom, Dollar and Kandur is the metadata systems approach. This approach involves archivists in managing the context and structure of electronic records rather than their content. This is achieved not only through using electronic records’ existing metadata, but also through archivists influencing the design of electronic records systems to provide them with the metadata they need. MacNeil, however, has reservations about the metadata systems approach, and feels that archivists’ influence on metadata for potential secondary use contravenes the archivist’s primary duty to protect and preserve. This article posits that the positive effects of archivists’ influence on metadata far outweigh the negative.