Editorial

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the characteristics of papers published in the Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction (JFMPC) for the period 2010-2015 (Volumes 15.1-20.1 inclusive), to consider characteristics and recent trends among said publications and to discuss possible future directions in the subject field. Design/methodology/approach – Descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis via word count frequencies. Findings – Eighty papers were published by a combined group of 216 authors. Lead authors were from a total of 50 academic and five private organisations. Sixty-seven papers were multi-authored, 10 of which were multi-national. Eighty-six papers were classified as research papers, 5 per cent were conceptual, 4 per cent general review, 2.5 per cent technical, 1.3 per cent case study and 1.3 per cent viewpoint. There were 46,251 downloads of these papers, which when time-adjusted, represented an average of 64 downloads per paper, per issue of availability on the Web. Most popular keywords were “construction”, “industry”, “project” and “private”. Among all keywords, the most popular themes were countries, organisations, miscellaneous and business. Research limitations/implications – Analysis highlights previous trends and possible future research themes. Originality/value – The findings are unique to JFMPC and therefore novel/new.

Optimizing training opportunities for otolaryngology senior house officers: an audit

Implementation of the European Working Time Directive and the Modernising Medical Careers initiative will mean junior surgeons must be trained in fewer hours over a shorter period. For this reason, junior surgeon training opportunities must be optimized. We undertook a departmental audit to identify where opportunities to train senior house officers (SHOs) in theatre were being lost, so that appropriate timetable changes could be made in order to optimize exposure to suitable surgical cases. During the first audit cycle, the SHOs followed their existing timetable and theatre attendance was monitored prospectively over a two-week period. Only 30 per cent of theatre sessions were attended and case participation was only 27 per cent. Simple timetable changes were made to maximize SHO theatre attendance, and a second prospective two-week audit was undertaken. The new rota yielded 46 per cent theatre attendance and 48 per cent case participation.

Chapter V. Incomes Policy

The economic forecasts in Chapter I, and the examination of the problems of the medium term in Chapter IV, provide the background for the discussion about the successor policy to the £6 limit. The negotiations with the trade union leaders (and surely at some stage also with the CBI) should cover not simply questions of earnings and prices, but questions of output and employment as well. A useful starting point for discussion would be a set of forecasts with different earnings assumptions, similar to the forecasts for the 6 per cent and 20 per cent case which have been presented in Chapter I. The important point which these alternative simulations make is that a bigger increase in money earnings leads to a short-term gain in real wages net of tax, followed by a longer-term loss which exceeds the short-term gain. It is very hard to persuade people that, collectively, they will be better off with lower than with higher increases in money earnings; but over a longer period it is clearly true.