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Introduction This paper presents some empirical evidence about the way in which post‐graduate Business School students perceive their future job and career opportunities. In particular, it describes some of the job features which are valued by the student and, by implication, those which are unappealing.

AS industrial monitor and control systems grow in both size and sophistication, the demands placed upon the man‐machine interface (MMI) increase to the point at which there are significant advantages to be gained from separating the data distribution and display function from the rest of the system. One of the main benefits of such an approach is the elimination of ‘knock‐on’ effects from changes in the way the data is distributed, manipulated and displayed. In a system where data distribution and display are an integral part of the total monitor and control system, changes to one part of the system can result in unexpected and far reaching effects on the whole system. As a result, changes which would improve the MMI aspects of the system are often not implemented.

This study uses parametric hazard models to investigate duration dependence in US stock market cycles over the January 1929 through December 1992 period. Market cycles are determined using the Beveridge‐Nelson (1981) approach to the decomposition of economic time series. The results show that both real and nominal cycles exhibit positive duration dependence. The implication of this finding is that actual prices revert to their permanent or trend level in a non‐random manner as the cyclical component dissipates over time. This process is consistent with mean reversion in price and suggests that predictable periodicity in market cycles may exist. Only limited evidence is obtained that discrete shifts or trends in mean cycle duration exist. The length of market cycles appears not to have changed over the 1929–92 period.

The way of thought and vision and memory is that they often come upon you unexpectedly, presenting nothing new but usually with a clarity and emphasis that it all seems new. This will sometimes happen after a long period of indecision or when things are extremely difficult, as they have long been for the country, in most homes and among ordinary individuals. Watching one's life savings dwindle away, the nest‐egg laid down for security in an uncertain world, is a frightening process. This has happened to the nation, once the richest in the world, and ot its elderly people, most of them taught the habit of saving in early youth. We are also taught that what has been is past changing; the clock cannot be put back, and the largesse—much of it going to unprincipled spongers—distributed by a spendthrift Government as token relief is no answer, not even to present difficulties. The response can only come by a change of heart in those whose brutal selfishness have caused it all; and this may be a long time in coming. In the meantime, it is a useful exercise to consider our assets, to recognize those which must be protected at all costs and upon which, when sanity returns, the future depends.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the life of Tony Lowe, Emeritus Professor of Accounting and Financial Management at the University of Sheffield, who died on 5 March 2014. It celebrates Tony Lowe’s considerable direct contributions to accounting knowledge and, possibly more significantly, his indirect contribution through his enabling of a range of those associated with him at Sheffield to become scholars of distinction in their own right.

Publication review, personal reflections and argument.

Apart from providing insight into Tony Lowe's direct contribution to accounting knowledge through an analysis of a range of significant sole authored and joint authored publications, the paper gives rather more attention to his more indirect enabling contribution. In this regard it traces the development of initially the Management Control Association and subsequently the “Sheffield School” to Tony Lowe, clarifying the values that underlie these groups. It also clarifies how some of the key elements that have allowed the now global Interdisciplinary and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (ICPA) Project to exist and flourish are traceable to Tony Lowe and the “Sheffield School” he created.

This paper provides an important historical analysis of the direct and indirect influence of a unique scholar on the beginnings and development of particularly the now global ICPA Project. This history is personal and maybe selective and possibly limited because of this but hopefully will encourage others to investigate the claims further.

The history of the ICPA Project has only partially been told before. This is another part of this history that has not been analysed before on which further work can build.