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Superconductivity has been around for most of this century. In 1911 Kamerlingh Onnes, a Dutch physicist, discovered that the resistance of mercury to electric current dropped effectively to zero at 4° Kelvin. This extremely low temperature — 452°F below zero — was able to be achieved by his production, three years earlier, of liquid helium.

Of the many warnings of dangerous food given by the Government between 1988 and 1992, it is only with listeriosis that there is any evidence of improvement. The whole basis of Government action on BSE has now been shown to be flawed in that the extraordinarily optimistic hope that cattle would prove to be a dead‐end for the infection has been discredited. The chance of a large number of people succumbing from a BSE‐like illness next century is about 70 per cent. The salmonella in eggs problem is not solved because contaminated infected laying flocks have been replaced by further infected flocks. Intensive farming is beset by problems additional to that of microbial safety. These include evidence of reduced nutritional quality of the food, particularly of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Moist food processing and retailing still provide major risks to consumers because new legislation is too lax. Thus most cooked food can be kept indefinitely at temperatures of 50°C or 8°C. One bacterium which can grow at low temperatures is E. coli 0157, the incidence of which has increased during the last few years. This is transferred through food from cattle and causes acute gastro‐enteritis, followed by kidney failure, particularly in children.

Evidence for the spread of the agent responsible for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) continues to accrue. Hopes that the ban on feeding concentrates to cattle in July 1988 would result in the resolution of the epidemic have not been fulfilled, since the number of BSE cases continues to rise. It is proposed that the infective agent of BSE is primarily a cattle pathogen, perhaps initially spread by contaminated feed, but in recent years propagated chiefly by maternal (vertical) transmission with variable manifestation of the clinical disease. If this is correct, the implications for farming, and possibly also for human health, are grave.

This article begins by charting some of the key phases in the development of records management practice in central government in the United Kingdom in the last two decades. The parallel developments of closely related disciplines, such as information resource management, document management, archives administration and information and library management in a wider context, has resulted in fragmentation in the way information in organisations is managed. This in turn has reduced the impact of records management in particular not least, the author believes, because the term itself is not widely understood nor the practice of the discipline highly regarded. He proposes ways to change this concluding with the proposal to rename it ‘information logistics’.

Using a contingency approach, this study examines the moderating effects of personality and compensation schemes on the budgetary participation ‐ performance relationship. The data collected from a random sample of 303 chartered management accountants in Hong Kong was used to test three hypotheses. Multiple regression analyses found that both personality and compensation schemes interacted singly as well as jointly with budgetary participation in affecting performance. Post‐hoc tests further reveal that managers who perform better when they are highly participative in budget processes, are internally‐oriented, and receive a high variable‐pay income. The results are of interest not only to researchers but also to practitioners in management selection, job placement, and compensation package designs.

At the annual meeting of Cow & Gate Ltd., in April, the Chairman of the Company said: “I think everyone looks forward to the day when the Ministry of Food ceases to exist. This is not meant in any way to reflect upon the ability with which this Ministry was administered during the war and immediate post‐war years, but a Ministry of Food should not really be necessary in peace‐time. Before the war the milk industry was largely governed by the Milk Marketing Board, and we have great admiration for the Board’s activities; but it was representative only of the producers’ side of this great industry. The distributive and manufacturing trade in the British Isles has grown out of all knowledge since 1939, and this country has relied more and more upon home manufacture as well as home production, both during and since the war. If some of the powers at present delegated to the Ministry of Food are to be placed in other hands, they should in all fairness be shared by the producers, distributors and manufacturers, who have at least an equal stake financially and who should be equally capable of discharging these duties in a conscientious and publicspirited manner. In my opinion, moreover, the day is long outlived when it can possibly be expedient or in the public interest to allow a statutory body representing purely producers’ interests to be the sole arbiter in regard to such a vital matter as the nation’s milk supply.”

This research examines the interactive effect of accounting controls (Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets, External scanning, Results monitoring and Cost control) and task uncertainty on budgetary slack with a sample of 104 marketing and production managers. The results indicate that two accounting controls (Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets and External scanning) reduce the extent of budgetary slack creation in high task uncertainty situations, but not in low task uncertainty situations. Budgetary slack is lowest when the intensity of accounting controls and task uncertainty are both high. Whilst Emphasis on meeting tight budget targets has a significant effect on slack for both the production and marketing managers, External scanning has a significant effect only for the marketing managers.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

This article aims to depict the pivotal role Octavia Hill, Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett played in the field of social entrepreneurship. The article aims to examine the contributions made by these remarkable women who made valuable theoretical and practical contributions to the emerging field of social entrepreneurship.

Synthesizing articles from history journals, writings about the figures of interest, published works by the figures themselves and other resources, this paper illustrates how Hill, Addams and Follett made valuable contributions to social entrepreneurship and questioned the rectitude of unadulterated capitalism.

This paper concludes that Hill, Addams and Follett refuted the viewpoint that self-interest and single-minded self-survival were the best ways to live and to conduct business. By their actions, the women showed that they did indeed bring “capitalism in question”, by recognizing the importance of seeking others’ interests.

This article highlights the contributions made by Hill, Addams and Follett, who made valuable contributions in the field of social entrepreneurship which is made evident by their work with housing settlements, community center development, etc.

This study examines the moderating effect of feedback on the relationship between budgetary participation and performance. The responses of 79 managers, drawn from a cross‐section of Australian manufacturing companies, to a questionnaire survey were analysed using a multiple regression technique. The results show that independently, budgetary participation and feedback have no effect on performance. The results confirm that the higher the level of feedback, the more positive is the relationship between budgetary participation and performance.