Public service cutbacks have increased reliance on consultants.

But new legislation and rules governing the procurement of services from consultants are scattered over different legislative instruments.

The first edition of this book attracted a record number of online hits. Busy public sector managers now have available to them an updated version that integrates an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide that incorporates the many practical tips needed for successful procurement activity.

China’s change to a new model of growth, now called the ‘new normal’, was always going to be hard. Events over the past year show how hard it is. The attempts to moderate the extremes of high investment and low consumption, the correction of overcapacity in the heavy industries that were the mainstays of the old model of growth, the hauling in of the immense debt hangover from the fiscal and monetary expansion that pulled China out of the Great Crash of 2008 would all have been hard at any time.

Are intellectual property rights like other property rights? More and more of the world’s knowledge and information is under the control of intellectual property owners. What are the justifications for this? What are the implications for power and for justice of allowing this property form to range across social life? Can we look to traditional property theory to supply the answers or do we need a new approach? Intellectual property rights relate to abstract objects – objects like algorithms and DNA sequences. The consequences of creating property rights in such objects are far-reaching.