Currently ‘Authentic Leadership’ is attracting increasing attention.. Authenticity is an important concept within existentialist thinking and a Sartrean critique of authentic leadership is offered here. We examine interpretations of authenticity and its conflation with concepts such as morality and ethical behaviour. Current literature implies authenticity as relating to an ‘inner’ or ‘true’ self. Existentialist thinking rejects this notion and focuses on being in the world. This approach regards authenticity as both a difficult concept and as describing a process of choosing, becoming and personal responsibility rather than reflecting an arbitrary aspect of character. We conclude with reflections on existentialism as a foundation for a business ethic, and argue the need, both in leadership research and development, to look to context and subjective experience and away from universal frameworks or codes of ethics which in their efforts to define and prescribe, work against existential authenticity.

The aim of this paper is to examine the alleged association between urbanisation and violence and to take some preliminary steps towards an exploration of the role of trust in improving urban governance and thus reduce violence. In this paper, violence is interpreted broadly to include both active or direct violence but also passive and social violence in terms of lack of voice, and as a symptom of governance failure. The paper includes a cross section analysis based on data for some 123 countries and an in-depth case study of India. I will also examine what may be termed as the Kerala-Bihar paradox. Kerala is well-known for its achievements in human development and according to India human development report of 2001, Kerala is ranked 1 on human development indicators while Bihar is among the states lagging behind in terms of human development. However, state level analysis of crime suggests that Kerala is more criminalised than Bihar. In examining this paradox, some inferences are drawn on the role of trust in improving accountable governance and how this may result in reducing violent crime. Some issues for further research are identified.

Key words: Violence, governance, trust, Kerala, Bihar

The study analyses approaches to the management of two projects within the regeneration portfolio of a large UK metropolitan council. Developing a theoretical framework drawing both from mainstream project methodologies and international development, the study highlights a number of key issues which need to be addressed, including entrepreneurship, participation, stakeholder buy-in, project lifecycles and benefit management. Key lessons emerging from the study include the need to foster entrepreneurship within the controlled environment of the project and the importance of setting programme targets which are appropriately orientated to harness the interdependent nature of benefits of regeneration projects in the public sector.

Based on the insight that the type of product an economy exports can have important implications for its economic performance and that goods exported predominantly by rich countries will have different characteristics from those exported by poor countries, Lall et al (2006) put forward a novel means of classifying commodities based on the income levels of a product’s main exporters. At around the same time Hausmann et al (2006) following a similar approach put forward a slightly different form of product classification and Rodrik (2006) applied this specifically to an analysis of China. This paper highlights the difference between the approaches and its implications for the analysis of China, which appears less ‘special’ using the approach of Lall et al.

This paper gives an economic analysis of the judicial decisions in the disputes over authorship of Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. The first legal contest took place in 2006, 39 years after the song was written and was found in favour of the plaintiff (Fisher), in the first case he has brought against Brooker-Reid, in terms of his right to authorship. He was deemed to merit 40% of the musical composition rights but only from the date of his application onwards. However the case went to appeal with the result that in April 2008, it was found that although Fisher was still entitled to the authorship status he had been granted that he was not now entitled to any share whatsoever of the composing royalties.
This case is partly unusual in that the judge, in the initial case, had formal musical training and saw fit to interpolate this human capital into the proceedings. The defendants made a number of remarks about the nature of the precedent set and its implications which can be usefully discussed in terms of economic models of production. In the appeal hearing one of the reasons given for the decision reached was the argument that the previous cases set an unfortunate precedent detrimental to composers of pop/rock music. The ‘rock and pop’ music production mode is discussed here with reference to this and other pertinent cases.