International trade in financial services is a topic of some importance both to the financial services sector itself and in international trade negotiations. Unfortunately, intrinsic problems in defining and measuring trade in services, combined with a lack of data in many countries, have made...

By focusing on the dynamics of action inquiry strategies, this paper has framed the way in which the process is characterised and the potential of this approach for applied management research. The relationship between improved knowledge through action and improved action through reflection is...

Some of the key issues facing banks in the UK are analyzed in order to become better at selling in the personal banking market. These issues concern attitudes about organizational changes for sales, including those of personnel and physical organization. Implicit in them are matters of changes...

This study estimates a variable cost model of the UK water industry. From this variable cost function, estimates of economies of scale and economies of capital utilisation and capacity utilisation are made. The data used in the study consists of 20 English and Welsh water companies. The results...

Some twenty years ago, research was conducted by the author into the investment motivations of a sample of small firms in the south of England. The results were published in the International Small Business Journal 1984. This research has been updated between 1999 and 2002. The results were...

Based on the belief that it is behaviour which constitutes risk rather than procedures, the paper focuses on the awareness of behavioural aspects in risk management techniques and the consequences that arise out of this awareness. It questions the traditional thinking that risk management is...

This paper, set in the context of a rationale for financial regulation, considers how the Financial Services Authority’s (the regulator) approach to establishing compliance competent organisations in the life assurance sector (the regulated) has evolved from a prescriptive approach to one of...

The Treasury's report "Institutional Investment in the United Kingdom: A Review" (the Myners Review) suggested in 2001 that various sectors of the UK equity market may be suitable for active investment management, tacitly assuming that some sectors are efficient whilst others are not. The...