London Office Research Articles

Negociação e resistência na cidade de Bonny no século XIX: O caso do Rei William Pepple

This paper intends to present the dynamics of the crisis of "traditional" power in Bonny Town during the XIXth century, in front of the constant British interventions in local politics. The aim is to show how this Atlantic relations were important to configure the local socio political structure emphasising the situation of contact that dominates the scene in the west African coast. The work also makes a brief presentation of the historical formation of the Niger Delta societies and the main body of sources are Richard Francis Burton's travel writings, who was British consul to the Bight of Biafra within 1861-1864, and also the consular reports found at the Public Record Office in London.

Indian Labour, Labour Standards, and Workers' Health in Burma and Malaya, 1900–1940

Indian labour migration to Burma and Malaya in the late nineteenth century was an important dimension of British colonial rule in Southeast Asia and coincided with the region's greater integration into the international economy. Compared to the Chinese, Indians formed an important minority only in these states where they filled a critical need in the urban manufacturing sector (Burma) and the plantation sector (Malaya). Their importance declined after World War Two, both in absolute and comparative terms. There were fewer millionaires and traders among them and their emigration to these territories was largely regulated by law. Moreover, the specific political and economic relationship between the Colonial Office in London and these territories determined recruitment patterns and influenced employment relations and working conditions. In turn, these impacted on the living conditions and mortality suffered by workers and shaped the structure of health services.

Education and Training of Special Collections Professionals, Librarians, and Archivists in Canada

I would like to open with two recent national events. The first concerns Library and Archives Canada/Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (LAC/BAC), a new institution created by federal legislation proclaimed on May 21, 2004, in a merger of the National Archives and the National Library. The National Archives was the older of the two entities. Established in 1872, it was the first cultural agency created after Confederation in 1867. An active collector from the outset, the Archives maintained offices in London and Paris, collected documentary art, photographs, and artifacts (including war trophies during the First World War), as well as books . . .

Strategy, power and negotiation: social control and expatriate managers in a German multinational corporation

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates on HRM in head office/subsidiary relationships and the uses of expatriates in corporate strategy, focusing specifically on the literature that argues that expatriates are used by the head offices of multinational corporations primarily for social control. Taking Erving Goffman's theories of strategic self-presentation, I suggest instead, on the basis of a detailed ethnographic study of the expatriate staff of the London office of a German multinational bank, that, in fact, not only do the local managers use the presence of the expatriates to resist head office's practices, but that the expatriates themselves employ their position strategically, to negotiate between both parties according to their own interests. This creates a situation characterized less by domination and resistance than by dynamic negotiation between different groups with different strategies engaging in particular forms of self-presentation, in which no group ultimately prevails. I conclude by arguing for the development of a new way of considering international management in theory and practice, taking into account the influences on the managers and their organization, and the strategies of individuals and groups within the MNC.

How a new cable-less land seismic survey acquisition system was born

John Flavell Smith recounts how Scottish company Vibtech is winning over the sceptics with its cable-less onshore seismic acquisition system in which key ingredients are technologies originating from the mobile communications and Internet communities. The Vibtech story started quite by chance. Vibtech co-founders Bill Park and John Flavell Smith had worked together at GECO in the UK during the late 1980s and both had subsequently returned to Scotland. In 1995, Flavell Smith saw a small advertisement that Park had placed in the press looking for field personnel and called him. They arranged to meet up and that was the starting point for the Vibtech journey. Both recognized the need to rid land and transition zone seismic systems of the messy and problematic digital cables and connectors which are responsible for huge logistical, troubleshooting and HSE issues. If this could be done, then system channel counts could increase and explorationists could concentrate once more on data quality and not on the logistics of moving massive recording systems. To achieve this, they had the idea of applying techniques from the burgeoning mobile telephone and internet markets to seismic instrumentation. Vibtech was founded to explore those ideas and the world’s first Cellular Seismic acquisition system was born. This would be the first time that a seismic acquisition system capitalized on technologies developed for other industries and integrated them into the system architecture, breaking the mould of seismic instrumentation design, which had historically used bespoke engineering solutions. The great advantage of this design philosophy was that emerging new technologies could be incorporated into the system without the need to completely re-design the system. Vibtech has constantly seized upon these opportunities to refine its systems. The huge operational benefits of cable free and light weight systems are obvious and are the holy grail for the seismic designer and operator alike. These benefits have been widely discussed previously in this publication, by Burger (2000), Jack (2003), and Heath (2004), to name a few. It is interesting to note that Vibtech’s competitors have recognized that its approach to delivering a cable free system is on the right path and have recently changed their plans to follow. Vibtech has now designed, developed, and commercialized a full-scale seismic acquisition system from the ground up, something which many have tried but few have managed. In the process, Vibtech has raised well in excess of $20 million in venture capital, built the workforce to more than 30 personnel, including an in-house R&D team of engineers, opened offices in London and Houston, and has representation in all of the major exploration regions of the world. Vibtech systems have now recorded more than 100 3D surveys in North America, Australia, and China.

A message from the Editor: Addiction in 2005, 2006 and beyond

A message from the Editor: <i>Addiction</i> in 2005, 2006 and beyond

Modelling Regime Shifts in the City of London Office Rental Cycle

Real estate rental adjustment models have taken on numerous forms and specifications, but have typically been estimated in both a linear and univariate fashion. However, it is clear that real estate actors, both developers and occupiers, can behave differently at various points of the business cycle, in ways that linear‐models may not be able to account for adequately. This article extends previous work on market analysis and forecasting by using regime switching modelling techniques, which have been popularised in contemporary empirical macroeconomic research. Evidence of non‐linearity in the rental adjustment process is found in the City of London office market and it is then modelled using the smooth‐transition regression technique. The non‐linear model describes the in‐sample movements of rents better than the equivalent linear model, particularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

THE ‘NATIVE’ UNDEFINED: COLONIAL CATEGORIES, ANGLO-AFRICAN STATUS AND THE POLITICS OF KINSHIP IN BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA, 1929–38

This article examines the categorical problem that persons of ‘mixed-race’ background presented to British administrations in eastern, central and southern Africa during the late 1920s and 1930s. Tracing a discussion regarding the terms ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ from an obscure court case in Nyasaland (contemporary Malawi) in 1929, to the Colonial Office in London, to colonial governments in eastern, central and southern Africa, this article demonstrates a lack of consensus on how the term ‘native’ was to be defined, despite its ubiquitous use. This complication arrived at a particularly crucial period when indirect rule was being implemented throughout the continent. Debate centered largely around the issue of racial descent versus culture as the determining factor. The ultimate failure of British officials to arrive at a clear definition of the term ‘native’, one of the most fundamental terms in the colonial lexicon, is consequently suggestive of both the potential weaknesses of colonial state formation and the abstraction of colonial policy vis-à-vis local empirical conditions. Furthermore, this case study compels a rethinking of contemporary categories of analysis and their historical origins.

The Ideological Debate in the DRV and the Significance of the Anti-Party Affair, 1967–68

This essay examines the links between the ideological debates in the communist world and the events surrounding the decision to stage the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It is based on memoirs, documents from the Public Record Office in London, and some documents from edited Vietnamese collections, as well as Vietnamese journals from the period in question. For analysts of DRV politics in the 1960s, there is still comparatively little in the way of documentary evidence to shed light on the nature of the communist leadership and its decision-making processes. This is true of the year leading up to the Tet Offensive of 1968: as David Elliott has shown in his recent study of the war in My Tho province (2003), Vietnamese accounts of this period present a contradictory and confused record. At the same time, the political events in Hanoi during the latter half of 1967, when what came to be called the `Anti-Party Affair' was revealed, have only been elucidated in unofficial memoirs and open letters from party veterans to the leadership. We know that this period was one of high tension in the communist world, when the Cultural Revolution in China was reaching its peak and relations between the USSR and China had sharply deteriorated. Yet we still know very little about how this tension may have affected policy decisions within North Vietnam. The author concludes that ideological conflicts within the North Vietnamese leadership had a strong bearing on events in 1967–68, and that they influenced not only military decisions but alsoVietnam's post-war development.

Letter from carol clark in south africa …

it was in an e-mail from christine miskin discussing what i could write about in this article that i learnt of the death of gillian sands. i was saddened by this news as although i never met her in person, we did “meet” via e-mail. only a couple of weeks before her death she responded to a request we had sent out on the listserve for an obscure english case. her friendliness and willingness to assist a colleague were immediately apparent. her name was also familiar to me from articles she had written for legal information management and i know that the librarian in our london office had contact with her when she worked at the institute of advanced legal studies. to gillian's family, friends and colleagues we extend our deepest sympathy.

The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era (review)

Reviewed by: The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era Maura Ives (bio) David Finkelstein, The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002. viii + 199 pp. $55.00 (cloth). The subtitle of David Finkelstein's The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era is somewhat misleading. Although Finkelstein does discuss a number of Blackwood's authors, including such prominent figures as Margaret Oliphant and Joseph Conrad, the book hopes to move beyond the limiting practice of viewing publishing history through the lens of authorship. It attempts this by alternating chapters on the firm's management and history with "case studies" of authorship intended to situate individual events and negotiations within larger cultural, political, and economic frameworks. Finkelstein's treatment of Blackwood differs from previous studies in focusing on the firm's later history, and especially in introducing materials heretofore unavailable or (if unflattering to the firm) suppressed. The result is an informative glimpse into the reasons for the firm's decline. Finkelstein notes the aesthetic and sociopolicitical conservatism that led Blackwood to reject writers such as Thomas Hardy, who "did not fit in with the firm's prevailing ideological and literary stance" (13). Blackwood's "stance" is further illuminated through its response to the printers' strike of 1872-73, an event unmentioned in other accounts. Rather than comply with demands for a shorter work week, Blackwood hired replacements, pressured its remaining workers not to support the strikers, and ultimately became a nonunion shop. While John Blackwood framed the firm's actions in "paternalist" terms, Finkelstein points to the obvious link between low labor costs and the firm's overall profitability (47). Finkelstein adeptly uses financial records and the details of business negotiations to situate authors and literary genres within the firm's overall production. He finds that the firm's overdependence upon sales of George Eliot's books backfired when demand for Eliot's work slackened at the end of the century. He also demonstrates that literary texts were not the only or even the main category of profitable texts for Blackwood, which also relied heavily upon religious, educational, reference, and military titles. Most telling, however, is the firm's continued refusal to abandon antiquated attitudes and business practices. Despite a steady drop in sales starting in the 1860s, Blackwood's management insisted that Blackwood's Magazine was a mainstay of the firm, while the refusal to adjust to the advent of literary agents literally cost the firm several important authors who turned to publishers who were willing to pay more. Finkelstein acknowledges that the Blackwood archives are "so vast it would take a lifetime to excavate fully" (vii); given that, one wishes Finkelstein had produced a more detailed study of the material he has unearthed thus far. Yet the trouble with this book is not so much its brevity, but its tendency to promise more than it delivers. For example, in his initial mention of the directorship [End Page 139] of David Meldrum, Finkelstein hints at scandal—"sums were calculated and worth assigned in order to establish how much to pay off the silent member of a secret partnership that had run the firm between 1903 and 1910"—and promises to tell the story of "how Meldrum became such a privileged insider" later in the book (4). But we learn only that Meldrum, a Blackwood author whose comments on literary contemporaries caught the attention of William Blackwood, was hired as the London office manager in 1896, and was valued for bringing new writers, including Conrad, to the firm. No details of the "secret partnership" emerge. Similarly, Finkelstein nods to book historians and theorists such as Robert Darnton and Pierre Bourdieu, but readers who expect a substantial engagement with theory will be disappointed. Still, there are many things that Finkelstein does well. The "case study" approach, and especially the chapter on John Speke's 1863 Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, can be deft and provocative. A rich set of archival sources allows Finkelstein to document Blackwood's transformation of Speke's text, ostensibly a scientific treatise, into a saleable...

A Building Cycle Model for an Imperfect World

A model of the building cycle is presented, expressed in terms of endogenous fluctuations in development activity, vacancy and rents around an equilibrium growth path. The dynamic behaviour of the model is determined by lags in three adjustment processes: the occupier response to changes in rents, the development response to demand changes mediated through a rent adjustment process, and the construction delay between starts and completions. The frequency and severity of the cycle depend upon the values of five key parameters including the construction lag and the transmission coefficient linking vacancy to development starts. The model has been fitted to data for the City of London office market, yielding estimates for key parameters that are consistent with its observed cyclical behaviour.

GEARING UP FOR MORE

IN THE NEXT IO YEARS, CAPACITY FOR ethylene in the Middle East is set to more than double, to nearly 30 million metric tons per year. Capacity for propylene will nearly triple in that time, to almost 7 million metric tons per year. Those are big numbers—but then, global demand for ethylene and propylene are big numbers, too, and capacity is expanding in other regions as well. What is striking about the Middle Eastern projects is the percentage of world supply that they will be making up. Andrea V. Borruso, senior consultant with the world petrochemicals program in SRI Consulting's Zurich office, says early indications are that, over the next 10 years, roughly 30 million metric tons of ethylene capacity will be added to current production. Of that additional capacity, 40% will be in the Middle East. As Graham Harris, director for Europe and Middle East polyolefins studies in the London offices of consultants Chemical ...

The Integration of Acupuncture within Medicine in the UK – the British Medical Acupuncture Society—s 25Th Anniversary

Acupuncture was first used in China, probable about 2000 years ago. When acupuncture first arrived in the West in the 17th century, the principles which the Chinese had used to explain its actions were at variance with current scientific knowledge of the body's structure and function. This led to the rejection of acupuncture by the medical profession in the UK, although individual practitioners adopted it with enthusiasm, usually needling the point of maximal tenderness to treat musculoskeletal pain. Acupuncture was more generally accepted in France and Germany, where the pioneering British physician Felix Mann encountered it in the 1950s. He then taught acupuncture to other medical practitioners and organised regular meetings in London, from which the British Medical Acupuncture Society, BMAS, emerged in 1980. The tradition of biannual scientific meetings has continued since then. The Society has many connections with prominent acupuncturists internationally and is a founder member of the International Council of Medical Acupuncture and Related Techniques (ICMART), and has hosted two world congresses. The Society was involved in standardisation of the meridian nomenclature published in 1990. The Society's scientific journal, Acupuncture in Medicine, was founded in 1981 and has gained international recognition, being indexed on several databases. The Society has established regular teaching courses at different levels, which lead to professional qualifications of Certificate and Diploma. The membership is now open to different health professionals, has grown steadily and now stands at nearly 2500. The Society is administered from offices in Cheshire and London. Many individual members have contributed to the Society's characteristic Western 'medical' approach to acupuncture in which needling is seen as a form of neuromuscular stimulation that owes little to traditional meridians or points. The Society has shown a particular interest in acupuncture for myofascial trigger point pain. Members of the Society have contributed to the evidence base of acupuncture with several books, clinical trials and reviews. The Society is optimistic that it will have an increasingly important role in promoting the use and scientific evaluation of acupuncture for the public benefit.

Changing Places

Rochelle Rawlinson outlines her experiences as the Lovells' London office's library manager when its library research team, the main library, and group libraries, moved to a new building in July 2002. She looks at the lead up to the move and its aftermath including a merger of the information teams. An underlying theme is managing and dealing with change.

Multi-site Management at Eversheds

We are a law firm with over 4,000 staff, including over 2,000 legal and business advisers, providing services to the private and public sector business and finance community. With a network of over 24 offices throughout Europe and in Asia, including offices in London, Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Doha, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore, Sofia, Valladolid and Vienna, Eversheds' lawyers combine an in-depth knowledge of local markets with the resources and international capability of one of the world's largest law firms.

Multi-site Management at Maclay Murray Spens

It is quite the norm these days for the larger Scottish law firms to have more than one office, and for each of those offices to have its own library. For the most part there is a main office with satellite offices in other cities. We have four offices, in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and London. Edinburgh, Glasgow and London all have established libraries, and until recently both the Edinburgh and Glasgow libraries were staffed full time. This changed in November 2003 and I now have to co-ordinate all three libraries and keep an eye on our new office in Aberdeen. I am based in the Edinburgh office, which is currently spread over three sites all on the same street. The Glasgow office is split between two sites, slightly further apart, and our London office is all in one building.

The Institute of Business Ethics/European Business Ethics Network-UK Student Competition in Business Ethics

In the following pages you can read the winning student entry in the postgraduate category of the first joint student competition in Business Ethics, sponsored by the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) and the UK Association of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN-UK). As the leading corporate-facing business ethics organisation in the UK it is part of the mission of IBE to engage with the academic community in the encouragement of the teaching of business ethics to those who will form the business community of the future. EBEN-UK is the leading academic body in the UK, affiliated to the European Business Ethics Network and with a wide membership from across the Universities in the UK. Its members teach business ethics within Business Schools and publish textbooks and scholarly articles on the subject. The idea of a joint student competition was borne out of the desire of both institutions to promote business ethics teaching and the visibility of business ethics in business schools throughout the UK. The competition had undergraduate as well as postgraduate categories and required the submission of an assignment or an original essay or case study on any aspect of business ethics. Business schools were asked to submit the best piece of work in each category from their school. A joint panel was established and judged the entries against criteria of topicality, clarity of expression, use of theory and application to practice. The d500 prizes were awarded at a ceremony at IBE’s offices in London in July 2003. The undergraduate prize was awarded to Martyn Thompson of Manchester Metropolitan University for his essay on whistleblowing. The postgraduate prize was awarded to Chris Beer of Nottingham University Business School for his essay on stakeholders. That essay is reproduced here. The competition received some very high calibre pieces of work, as you can judge from the article that follows. The competition is being repeated in 2004 and we look forward to equally high quality entries.

The Politics of Empire and the Architecture of Identity: Public Architecture in New Zealand 1900-1918

During the period from 1900 to 1918 new governmental buildings were constructed throughout New Zealand as part of a campaign to provide accommodation for government departments. Post offices, court houses and departmental buildings appeared in provincial towns as well as in major cities, almost all products of the government's architectural office, led by John Campbell. The exuberant Imperial Baroque style adopted for these buildings reflects a new national confidence but also follows closely the precedent of British public building of the period. Auckland's former Chief Post Office (1908-11) for example, is closely modelled on Sir Henry Tanner's Central Post Office in London (1907).&#x0D; The extent and consistency of the Government's building programme was intended to promote a sense of national unity although its dependence on British models seems to confirm Hurst Seager's argument that New Zealand had yet to develop a distinctive architectural style. The use of the Imperial Baroque style, culminating in Campbell's design for Parliament Buildings of 1911, reflected New Zealand's strong sense of identification with the British Empire, also expressed through the contributions of its politicians at Imperial Conferences from 1897 to 1911. Unlike their counterparts from Canada and Australia, New Zealand politicians argued for stronger imperial bonds as a way of ensuring greater influence over imperial policies. This paper will argue that in fact, New Zealand public architecture of the period 1900-18 reflects a clear sense of national identity but one that is defined in terms of Britishness and conceived within the larger framework of the security provided by imperial solidarity.

British Health System Shifts Authority to Local Agencies

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article International NewsFull AccessBritish Health System Shifts Authority to Local AgenciesChristine LehmannChristine LehmannSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:17 Sep 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.18.0390020aThe idea for a robust public health system in England was born in 1942, when mass casualties were expected during World War II. When the war ended, the idea of a welfare state with cradle-to-grave social services for all became popular in the country.The National Health Service (NHS) was envisioned to be tax supported, free to all, and based on community care, with general practitioners and community health centers at its core.The NHS, which was fully established in England by 1948, has continued to grow, becoming the largest governmental organization in Europe with more than 1 million employees, according to the NHS Web site.The government has run the NHS since 1948 without national standards, patient choice of health care providers or treatment, and adequate staffing or funding, according to a Department of Health (DoH) statement. The DoH is responsible for improving the health and well-being of England's population.In his re-election campaign, Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to reform the NHS and increase its funding. His government made good on that promise and is implementing a detailed plan for reform combined with modest funding increases.In 2002 a cabinet minister was appointed secretary for health and head of the DoH.The health secretary works with five health ministers. Each minister is responsible for several, often diverse, areas. For example, the minister responsible for adult mental health services also oversees dentistry, emergency care, diabetes, and patient and public involvement, said Richard Beinecke, D.P.A., at last month's Mental Health Policy Roundtable meeting at APA headquarters (Original article: see article above). He spent three months in the United Kingdom last spring to learn about the organization and delivery of general health, mental health, and social services.A major reform within the NHS is the transfer of service planning authority and funding from the central offices in London to locally based primary care trusts (organizations). “The goal is to design services around patients and put them first,” according to a report from the NHS.Strategic planning for NHS was delegated to 28 new health authorities renamed Strategic Health Authorities (SHA). Each SHA covers about 1.5 million people and develops plans for improving local health services and ensuring that the quality of services is high and national priorities are integrated into local health service plans, according to Beinecke.The government has promised that 75 percent of the NHS budget will be transferred to local health authorities, according to the NHS.The primary care trusts also decide which secondary services to contract for. Secondary care is specialized and covers mental health, integrated care, NHS hospitals, and ambulance services, Beinecke explained.People with severe mental illnesses including severe anxiety problems or psychotic illness usually are referred by their primary care physicians to specialists for mental health treatment, according to the NHS. For milder problems including marital and bereavement concerns, patients are generally advised to seek help from primary care professionals.Mental health teams work in community settings. Specialized care is provided by crisis resolution teams, assertive outreach teams, early intervention teams, and prison-in-reach teams, which support the health staff in prisons, said Beinecke.There has been a renewed emphasis on integrating general health, mental health, and social services funded by the NHS, Beinecke said. The 1999 Health Act allowed local authorities and the NHS to set up local integrated care organizations called “care trusts” and pool budgets, according to Beinecke.A small number of these trusts have been established, but more are expected in the future.A detailed description of the reorganized NHS is posted online at<www.nhs.uk/england/aboutTheNHS/default.cmsx>. The summary of the NHS plan is posted online at<www.publications.doh.gov.uk/deliveringthenhsplan.index.htm>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived