The Battle of the Forms—There Is a Purpose

This article provides an alternative approach to the daunting task of teaching business undergraduates a fundamental appreciation of the flexibility of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the ability of the UCC to adapt to the needs of commerce by facilitating fair, efficient transactions. Paradoxically, we suggest using one of the most difficult sections of the UCC, Section 2-207, the often discussed "Battle of the Forms," to make UCC concepts and the relationships of those concepts to modern business transactions easier to understand. This alternative approach is also designed to help students appreciate the challenges of establishing rules to assure fair and efficient transactions and how changes in the way transactions occur impact the laws and how the laws impact the changes. This article also presents exercises, questions, and illustrative flowcharts used successfully over several years in undergraduate business law classes. These tools produce an integrated method for presenting UCC Section 2-207. While no sane individual has ever professed a love for UCC study, students and faculty have expressed tolerance and a palpable appreciation for these methods.     

The New Public Management And A New Accountability

There has long been a disparity between the practice and the neo-Diceyan doctrine of accountability in British central government. This article shows that the New Public Management (NPM), while not itself the root cause of such disparity, has nevertheless both exacerbated and further exposed existing fault-lines. This much is evident from an examination of NPM's theoretical bearings and from brief case studies of the Child Protection Agency and the Prison Service. Reflecting broad and deep-seated forces, the NPM is unlikely to disappear. Thus although there are certain attractions in retaining neo-Diceyan assumptions, it may be more appropriate to reconstruct the formal doctrine. Drawing upon Spiro's notion of 'multicentric' accountability and within the context of calls for wider constitutional reform, the article sketches the basis for a new doctrine, having regard to relevant moralities and practicalities.     

Culture and Negotiation Strategy

In this article the authors investigate the relationship between culture and joint gains by examining the role of information sharing and power strategies in intracultural negotiations. Previously, the authors found that the relationship between cultural values or norms and joint gains was uncertain in six cultures: France, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, and the United States. Of the five values and norms measured, only norms for information sharing in negotiation were directly related to joint gains. This article explores and extends prior findings by investigating the strategies used by negotiators in the same six cultures. Cultures that maximized joint gains used direct information-sharing strategies or a combination of indirect and direct strategies. Power strategies may help or hurt joint gains, depending on a culture's values and norms for power and whether or not power-based influence is used in conjunction with sufficient information exchange. The findings suggest that understanding the other party's cultural characteristics and strategies can help negotiators plan how to focus on information exchange and deal with unusual power strategies that they may encounter.     

The Re-integration Process from the Perspective of Prisoners: Opinions, Percieved Value and Participation

In this article the presence of the rehabilitation goal in the policy of the prison system in the Netherlands will be discussed first. Particular attention will be paid to the question as to why the rehabilitation goal, in spite of the doubtfull status of its impact, still plays a role in the increasing instrumentalist policy of the Dutch criminal justice system. In addition, some limitations of a one-sided 'nothing works' approach of rehabilitation will be discussed. Next, empirical research is examined for what it teaches about the functioning of correctional programmes within the prison system. Special attention will be paid to the attitudes of inmates toward rehabilitation. It will be shown that in spite of a considerable body of research on institutional adaptation, little is known about the dynamics between inmates' attitudes and personal, situational and organisational background variables. In addition, the results of a survey, conducted on the nature and sources of inmates' attitudes towards rehabilitation, will be presented. Finally, this article will offer reflections on the benefits of a process-evaluative approach of correctional interventions.     

The role of intestinal bacterial heat production in confounding postmortem temperature measurements

To assess the influence of anaerobic bacterial heat production in human stools as a confounding factor in postmortem rectal temperature measurements, in vitro experiments were carried out with human stools incubated at 37 degrees C for 6 h and at decreasing temperatures simulating a postmortem body cooling. Although a statistical significant heat production was observed, it was not relevant enough to explain a postmortem temperature plateau or a substantial rise in the postmortem body temperature. The experiments suggest that stools merely reflect the environmental thermal changes rather than producing bias and confounding by a bacterial heat production.     

PPOs: the employer perspective

This paper reports the results of a national survey on employer experiences with preferred provider organizations (PPOs). The survey, conducted in 1987, included information from almost 700 telephone interviews with employee benefit managers. We found that 11 percent of employees are in PPOs. PPOs now have a strong presence among employers of all sizes. However, whereas they are a major force in the West, where almost one-third of employees are members, they have garnered only a 1 percent market share in the East. We examine the impact of PPOs on health insurance premiums and on employer satisfaction. The results show that in 1987, the year of the survey, PPOs appeared to provide mild cost savings compared to conventional insurance, and that employers were very satisfied with almost all aspects of PPOs, whereas they were surprisingly critical of their HMOs.