PROCYCLICAL RETAIL LABOUR PRODUCTIVITY*

The influence of lagged adjustment and consumer spending on retail labour productivity is investigated. Both influences result in a procyclical productivity pattern.     

Measuring and Reporting The Nation's Finances: Statistics and Accounting

Measuring and reporting the nation's finances are based on government budgeting, national accounting and the accounting discipline, which are all fundamentally different. The nature and extent of these differences has rarely been made explicit. The most visible change in the accounting discipline in the second half of the 20th century was the emergence of codifications of accounting, with concomitant policy–making processes that allow for 'due process'. One result is that each codification is different within countries such as the UK and US, as well as between them. The codifications for government budgeting and national accounting are different again. The article offers some broad conclusions.     

Ethical Outsourcing in UK Financial Services: Employee Rights

Outsourcing is becoming a major option in British business, including the financial services industry, and it raises a number of ethical considerations. The author of this major ethical study contends that "Outsourcing seems to present a particular threat to employees ... because of the factors which have led to outsourcing and the way in which it tends to work." Mike Henderson is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and Senior Lecturer in Financial Services in the School of Financial Studies and Law of Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Pond Street, Sheffield S1 1WB, England.     

Action Teams That Work

A growing awareness of workplace hazards and identification of airborne contaminants, coupled with a changing safety and health regulatory environment, created an unexpected demand for new and innovative respirators in the early 1980s. 3M's Occupational Health and Environmental Safety Division broke new ground by taking the team concept further than ever before in the company. The division's Action Teams successfully designed, built and introduced products in less than half the time it would have taken previously. Robert Hershock, Charles Cowman and Douglas Peters describe how 3M learned important lessons about team selection, training, performance and motivation, the importance of project sponsors, and the role of middle management.     

The local economic impact of construction projects in a small and relatively self-contained economy: The case of Lancaster University

Whilst the local multiplier impacts of the annual operation of universities has been the subject of intensive research, the economic impacts of capital construction projects have been almost completely ignored. This paper presents the results of detailed analysis of capital projects at Lancaster University in 1993-The reasons for the radically different annual operation and construction multipliers estimated in the Lancaster study are examined. Despite the smaller size of construction multipliers it is argued that it is a serious mistake to estimate local construction multipliers by making simplifying assumptions on the size of the key parameters in the multiplier equations.