Book Review Should you be starting from here?

Elizabeth Vallance, Business ethics at work, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. xi + 191, £10.95, ISBN: 0 521 405688     

Government monitored codes of practice in the United Kingdom

This article examines the operation of codes of practice in the United Kingdom. It is concerned with those codes of practice which, though initially prepared by various trade associations, are brought into operation only after consultation with and approval by the Office of Fair Trading. After briefly explaining the statutory background and scope of the nineteen current codes (listed in the Appendix), the author discusses three aspects. First, do codes improve consumers' rights? The codes generally both recite selectively the rights of consumers under the existing law and add to those rights by recommending ameliorating trade practices. Examples are given of existing rights and, more extensively, of such recommended improvements. The question is raised whether the aggregation of legal rights and suggested practices may lead to confusion for consumers. Secondly, the monitoring of codes is considered. Monitoring is undertaken by the Office of Fair Trading to discover the degree of compliance by members of trade associations; reports on the laundry, footwear and motoring codes are used as illustrations. The third issue is viewed as crucial — the need for sanctions for non-compliance and the problem of enforcing the standards set by the codes. It is suggested that an extension of the “assurance” procedure under Part III of the Fair Trading Act 1973 may offer a solution, or more contentiously, that the creation of a new statutory duty “to trade fairly” could provide the answer.     

The Impact of Competition and Trade Unions on Workplace Reform and Organisational and Technological Change

This article addresses two research questions, firstly to test the hypothesis that organisational and technological changes are more likely to occur in the traded goods sector, in the private sector relative to the public sector and in more competitive product markets. Secondly, to examine whether trade unions have a positive or negative effect on the implementation of different types of workplace reforms, and organisational and technological changes. The analysis supports the hypothesis that workplaces in the traded goods sector are more likely to implement organisational and technological changes. It also indicates that workplaces in the private sector are more likely to implement certain types of reforms, whereas workplaces in the public sector are more likely to implement others. However, this study does not provide conclusive evidence that competitive pressure in product markets increases the probability that a firm will implement each workplace reform mentioned in this study. The evidence on unions provides tentative support to the view that more unionised workplaces are less likely to implement the reforms in question.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Last year saw the most coordinated cyclical upturn in the world economy since the early I970s, with OECD output rising 4per cent, industrial production and world trade even more rapidly. The boom in demand, which followed five years of continuous expansion, has outstripped supply and prices have begun to accelerate. To tackle inflation, the G7 monetary authorities have tightened policy over the last year, reversing the short-lived drop in interest rates necessitated by the stock market crash. This tightening may have to go further, especially in Germany and Japan where the effects of a rising oil price and higher indirect taxes are being exacerbated by currency depreciation. Although the rise in interest rates came too late to stop inflation rising, it has beet pursued with sufficient vigour to prevent inflation from seriously breaching the 5 per cent level. It is on these grounds that we forecast a relatively soft lending for the world economy on output, with growth continuing at 2.5–3per cent, accompanied by a limited reduction in inflation which stays in the 4–5per cent range. Progress on current account balances is also likely to be sluggish: in the absence of a serious attack on the budget deficit, the US deficit is likely to stay in the region of $140bn a year.     

State Spending: What to Cut, Where, and Why

The growth of government has abscured the erstwhile clarity of its tasks Geoffrey Wook, of City University Business School, considers cuts in state spending that would clarify the function of government, reduce its burden on the taxpayer, and re-establish its central and limited purpose.