The global financial crisis was triggered by the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2007 and the reverberations of this are now being felt throughout the world. The crisis was greatly exacerbated by the behaviour of banks, which has inevitably made the position of any country that...

The Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) is an 11-year old organization whose mission is to promote green chemistry throughout the chemical enterprise and around the world. GCI focuses both on disseminating science-based knowledge and information for sustainable impact, as well as the process of...

This article builds upon current scholarship regarding regulatory enforcement to analyze and theorize the little-researched context of public bodies' handling of consumer complaints against firms. The analysis is based on a case study of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which is a British...

The launch of the Small Business Service in the United Kingdom stimulated a review of small business policy and support in the United Kingdom. The Service inherited a substantial number of policies and initiatives which have been criticised for their poorly stated aims and overall lack of...

The broad focus of this paper is the divergence of implemented policy from intended policy in UK small business support. The Small Business Service (SBS) is the United Kingdom's most recent attempt to provide coherent support for small business. With its structure of local franchisees and...

Investors in People (IiP) plays a central role in the UK government's policies for workforce development. Small firms have been a particular focus of government support with IiP along with claims that the scheme will enhance the performance of these firms. However, it is argued in this paper...

The current agenda in many countries for public service reform was provoked by certain Widespread perceptions of public service failure. However, failures are now appearing with the reform agenda itself. In order to understand these, it is necessary to go back to the characteristics of the pure...

This article examines corporate governance arrangements and the adjustment paths of British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. Both firms have been facing similar adjustment pressures, stemming from the globalization and liberalization of telecommunications markets, privatization, and technological...

The authors' concern is with the relationship between household income and property value, within the context of the debate about the fairness of council tax-the property-based system of local taxation in England. Although located within this particular debate, the fundamental issue of the...

This article is concerned with the nature of the contracting relationship, in local authorities. After considering some of the implications of a basic model elf contracting (principal-agent theory) and questioning some of its implications, we briefly examine whether the Compulsory Competitive...