Despite the impressive performance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in representing the UK's interests across the globe with what is, in Governmental terms, a particularly small budget, the Foreign Affairs Committee believes that the FCO is under-funded. This situation has been exacerbated by the Spending Review 2010 and the lack of detail provided by the FCO and the BBC World Service as to exactly how the spending reductions target will be met is disappointing. There are concerns about the steps taken by the FCO to adjust to its reduced budget: reductions in the deployment of UK-based staff overseas and the optimistic planned programme of property sales will have a detrimental impact on the ability of the UK to protect its interests overseas. The establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS) will place a further strain on the FCO's resources. The Committee welcomes the appointment of Lord Williams of Baglan to the post of "International Trustee" with responsibility for the BBC World Service, but reiterates its belief that a formal concordat governing the World Service's budget and output should be drawn up setting out the World Service's independence from budgetary pressures elsewhere in the BBC. The budget cuts faced by the British Council will lead to the Council becoming a substantially different organisation by the end of the Spending Review period. The greater emphasis that the British Council will place on commercial activity risks a diminution of the UK's influence and soft power.

Focused on unique features of economic development, this edited volume examines the nature and structure of corporate governance of several key state-owned enterprises in China and public sector units in India in five strategic sectors: oil and natural gas, steel, coal, electricity generation, and banking industries.

’Inquisitorial processes’ refers to the inquiry powers of administrative governance and this book examines the use of these powers in administrative law across seven jurisdictions. The book brings together recent developments in mixed inquisitorial-adversarial administrative decision-making on a hitherto neglected area of comparative administrative process and institutional design. Reaching important conclusions about their own jurisdictions and raising questions which may be explored in others, the book's chapters are comparative. They explore the terminology and scope of the concept of inquisitorial process, justifications for the use of inquiry powers, the effectiveness of inquisitorial processes and the implications of the adoption of such powers. The book will set in motion continued dialogue about the inherent challenges of balancing policy goals, fairness, resources and institutional design within administrative law decision-making by offering theoretical, practical and empirical analyses. This will be a valuable book to government policy-makers, administrative law decision-makers, lawyers and academics.

The Protection of Employee Entitlements in Insolvency: An Australian Perspective is the first detailed analysis of the law and policy dealing with employee entitlements such as wages, leave and redundancy payments that are threatened when companies fail. Although Australia has a government-funded safety-net scheme, currently known as the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, it doesn’t cover all lost entitlements for all workers. Some argue that the scheme removes any incentive for companies to make adequate provision for their employees’ entitlements, increasing the burden on the taxpayer. As well as investigating ways to safeguard the entitlements of employees that are presently lost through the improper behaviour of directors, The Protection of Employee Entitlements in Insolvency covers the history of Australia’s present system and comprehensively sets out the avenues available to assist employees to recover their entitlements. It also canvases what might be done in the future to improve the protection of employee entitlements in Australia when companies become insolvent.

Who Owns the World's Media? moves beyond the rhetoric of free media and free markets to provide a dispassionate and data-driven analysis of global media ownership trends and their drivers. Based on an extensive data collection effort from scholars around the world, the book covers 13 media industries, including television, newspapers, book publishing, film, search engines, ISPs, wireless telecommunication and others, across a 10-25 year period in 30 countries.

The way organizations manage their value chain has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, organizations take account of economic issues, but they also adopt a broader perspective of their purpose including social and environmental issues. Yet despite its global spread, sustainable value chain management remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. The social and environmental issues that organizations should address easily can be interpreted as including virtually everything. Current literature on the topic seeks to understand the effects and management of initiatives dealing with diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy, community, and environment. However, the penetration of social and environmental considerations into value chain management is described as ’desire lacking reality’ thereby making the idea a patchy success. The objective of this research anthology is to investigate different angles of sustainable value chain management. The book’s 27 chapters fill holes and explore new fields; the chapters are organised in five sections: Sustainable value chains - context, drivers, and barriers; Sustainable value chains - managing activities; Sustainable value chains - managing networks and collaboration; Sustainable value chains - integrative perspectives; and Sustainable value chains - specific sectorial and industry perspectives.

Fourth in the annual series, this volume reviews the transformative changes which have emerged in the armed conflicts in South Asia in 2010, several of these with long and convoluted histories, including the conflicts in Jammu & Kashmir, northeast India and the Naxalite movement in central India; as also issues of autonomy in Balochistan, the FATA region in Pakistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, and the Terai foothills in Nepal. The book examines whether armed conflicts have transformed since their inception; or only metamorphosed into the sullen acceptance that could usher future violence. While conflicts in South Asia have been interspersed with peace efforts, the book looks at the complex trajectories that such attempts have taken. Specifically, it identifies three regions where most significant transformative trends were witnessed in South Asia in 2010: conflict-ridden Sri Lanka, Af-Pak and the Naxalite regions of India.