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This article explores the issues of trust, control, professional autonomy and accountability in higher education quality assurance in the UK. The main part of this article is conceptual, but it includes results from semi-structured interviews with academic staff that were conducted at two ''new university'' business schools. Both institutions are broadly similar in their key characteristics and have experienced a transformation to university status in the early 1990s. The article argues that there has been a change from informal ''light-touch'' quality control systems based on local practices and a significant amount of trust and professional autonomy in the early 1990s to a highly prescribed process of audit-based quality control today. The article argues that accountability and transparency are important principles that academics should wholeheartedly embrace, but that the audit format adopted in the UK introduces a one-way accountability and provides ''rituals of verification'' (Power 1997) instead of fostering trust, has high opportunity costs and may well be detrimental to innovative teaching and learning.

Purpose -To draw attention to a particular outsourcing risk that has not yet been adequately addressed in the literature, namely information leakage arising from acts of accidental disclosure or even purposeful betrayal by consultants that work for several client firms at the same time. Design/methodology/approach -A review of the literature. Findings -It illustrates how specialist IT service providers are playing pivotal roles in determining the extent to which unique firm specific skills and core competencies are being transferred to the wider industry context (via leakage) and becoming standard practices. It is shown that consultants face a dilemma as they are expected to spread cutting edge level expertise to their respective client firms, yet at the same time honour confidentiality commitments. Research limitations/implications -Conceptual rather than empirical. Practical implications -A management tool is developed for managers to aid decision making. Originality/value -A critique of the outsourcing literature and a warning to managers to be aware of the risk of information leakage.

PurposeTo examine the literature on counterfeit products and explore whether imitation and counterfeit product activities can actually facilitate the development of new products.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the dominant school of thought on counterfeit products that characterises it as a significant economic and social problem throughout the world, and develops an alternative school of thought, which focuses on the overlooked benefits of imitation and counterfeit activities. The paper suggests that the concepts of counterfeit and imitation are often misrepresented as powerful lobby groups present their cases.FindingsThis paper argues that while some counterfeit firms adopt short‐term profit motives other counterfeit firms demonstrate a longer‐term motive which manifests itself in an ability to reverse engineer, imitate and learn. Such firms may be suitable long‐term partners, in particular for multinational firms with operations in transition economies. Thus, firms face a difficult strategic choice when faced with product counterfeiters that of whether to fight or co‐operate.Practical implicationsCompanies need to improve their risk management, in particular in their foreign market entry and collaborative strategies. Companies should seek to take a long‐term view and to protect their technology‐based competitive advantage. Furthermore, copyright and trademark holders need to positively identify collaborators and to offer sufficiently attractive prospects for these business partners to keep them “on the straight and narrow” and to benefit from the contribution they can make.Originality/valueThis paper brings together in a clear and coherent way an alternative perspective on counterfeiting products, which challenges the dominant perspective. This is based on recognising that reverse engineering (RE) and imitation form an essential part of the product innovation process.

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