RESULTS

As Japan rebuilds her cities after the horrors of World War II, the celebrated painter Masuji Ono should be enjoying a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to a life and career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism, a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

Management Teaching use: This is a text about change and also about reputation management. It is explicit throughout this novel that issues which were important in a previous regime and are viewed in a different light. This is a matter of serious concern to organisations, which are trying to change their image or disassociate themselves from earlier administrative styles or structures. The class should use this text as a springboard for discussions about the difficulties of launching new ideas and the ways in which more enlightened management styles can be explained and introduced. Internal communications issues could also be tackled.

In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

In Ishiguro's novel, an elderly butler is on a five-day motoring trip through the West Country in the 1950s, bound for a reunion with his former housekeeper, and looking back on the time when they worked together. In James Ivory's film, we learn chronologically of the events that unfold when the rule-bound butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains are tested by the housekeeper's arrival, and her falling in love with him. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge all his carefully maintained values.

Management Teaching use: In this text the theme of personal adjustment and the psychological aspects of imposing change upon employees provide a basis for discussion. The central character can be seen to represent middle management learning to cope with a new regime set in place over their head. The new senior management, who are portrayed sympathetically, nevertheless require their subordinates to respond to new challenges in new ways and are seen as modern and up to date. The employees meanwhile have to find a way of coming to terms with their loyalty to the previous regime which is demonstrated to have been misguided.

In 1930s England, Christopher Banks has become one of the country's most celebrated detectives. His cases are the talk of London society. Yet one mystery has always haunted him, the mysterious disappearance of his parents in Old Shanghai, when he was a small boy.