Editorial

The American Academy of Optometry (AAO) had their annual meeting in San Diego in December 2005 and the BCLA and CLAE were well represented there. The BCLA does have a reasonable number of non-UK based members and hopefully in the future will attract more. This will certainly be beneficial to the society as a whole and may draw more delegates to the BCLA annual conference. To increase awareness of the BCLA at the AAO a special evening seminar was arranged where BCLA president Dr. James Wolffsohn gave his presidential address. Dr. Wolffsohn has given the presidential address in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong and Japan – making it the most travelled presidential address for the BCLA to date. Aside from the BCLA activity at the AAO there were numerous lectures of interest to all, truly a “something for everyone” meeting. All the sessions were multi-track (often up to 10 things occurring at the same time) and the biggest dilemma was often deciding what to attend and more importantly what you will miss! Nearly 200 new AAO Fellows were inducted at the Gala Dinner from many countries including 3 new fellows from the UK (this year they all just happened to be from Aston University!). It is certainly one of the highlights of the AAO to see fellows from different schools of training from around the world fulfilling the same criteria and being duly rewarded for their commitment to the profession. BCLA members will be aware that 2006 sees the introduction of the new fellowship scheme of the BCLA and by the time you read this the first set of fellowship examinations will have taken place. For more details of the FBCLA scheme see the BCLA web site http://www.bcla.org.uk. Since many of CLAE's editorial panel were at the AAO an informal meeting and dinner was arranged for them where ideas were exchanged about the future of the journal. It is envisaged that the panel will meet twice a year – the next meeting will be at the BCLA conference. The biggest excitement by far was the fact that CLAE is now Medline/PubMed indexed. You may ask why is this significant to CLAE? PubMed is the free web-based service from the US National Library of Medicine. It holds over 15 million biomedical citations and abstracts from the Medline database. Medline is the largest component of PubMed and covers over 4800 journals published in more than 70 countries. The impact of this is that CLAE is starting to attract more submissions as researchers and authors are not worried that their work will not be hidden from other colleagues in the field but rather the work is available to view on the World Wide Web. CLAE is one of a very small number of contact lens journals that is indexed this way. Amongst the other CL journals listed you will note that the International Contact Lens Clinic has now merged with CLAE and the journal CLAO has been renamed Eye and Contact Lenses – making the list of indexed CL journals even smaller than it appears. The on-line submission and reviewing system introduced in 2005 has also made it easier for authors to submit their work and easier for reviewers to check the content. This ease of use has lead to quicker times from submission to publication. Looking back at the articles published in CLAE in 2005 reveals some interesting facts. The majority of the material still tends to be from UK groups related to the field of Optometry, although we hope that in the future we will attract more work from non-UK groups and also from non-Optometric areas such as refractive surgery or anterior eye pathology. Interestingly in 2005 the most downloaded article from CLAE was “Wavefront technology: Past, present and future” by Professor W. Neil Charman, who was also the recipient of the Charles F. Prentice award at the AAO – one of the highest awards honours that the AAO can bestow. Professor Charman was also the keynote speaker at the BCLA's first Pioneer's Day meeting in 2004. In 2006, readers of CLAE will notice more changes, firstly we are moving to 5 issues per year. It is hoped that in the future, depending on increased submissions, a move to 6 issues may be feasible. Secondly, CLAE will aim to have one article per issue that carries CL CET points. You will see in this issue there is an article from Professor Mark Wilcox (who was a keynote speaker at the BCLA conference in 2005). In future articles that carry CET points will be either reviews from BCLA conference keynote speakers, members of the editorial panel or material from other invited persons that will be of interest to the readership of CLAE. Finally, in 2006, you will notice a change to the Editorial Panel, some of the distinguished panel felt that it was good time to step down and new members have been invited to join the remaining panel. The panel represent some of the most eminent names in the fields of contact lenses and/or anterior eye and have varying backgrounds and interests from many of the prominent institutions around the world. One of the tasks that the Editorial Panel undertake is to seek out possible submissions to the journal, either from conferences they attend (posters and papers that they will see and hear) and from their own research teams. However, on behalf of CLAE I would like to extend that invitation to seek original articles to all readers – if you hear a talk and think it could make a suitable publication to CLAE please ask the presenters to submit the work via the on-line submission system. If you found the work interesting then the chances are so will others. CLAE invites submissions that are original research, full length articles, short case reports, full review articles, technical reports and letters to the editor. The on-line submission web page is http://www.ees.elsevier.com/clae/.

An empirical investigation of host country national categorization of expatriates in the United Kingdom

In recent times, some authors have argued that Host Country National (HCN) categorization of expatriate co-workers plays a major role in expatriate adjustment. Previous studies have argued that HCN categorization of expatriates maybe be based on gender, or national origin. In this study, using data from 331 HCNs in the U.K., we find that HCN expectations of foreigners may play a big role in categorization. Further, we find that categorization leads to lower levels of support offered by HCNs, which can affect expatriate adjustment. We discuss implications and offer suggestions for future research.

Two-nation study of host country national categorization of female expatriates - United States and India

This study was designed to study the role of Host Country National categorizationof female expatriate co-workers, in two samples – U.S., and India. Using data from 54participants in the U.S. and 52 participants in India, we found that respondents from Indiacategorized potential expatriate co-workers from the U.S. into in-group or out-groupsignificantly more than respondents from the U.S. Further, we found that femaleexpatriates from the U.S. are preferred by Indian HCNs as co-workers significantly morethan male expatriates from the U.S. We discuss implications for organizations and offersuggestions for future research.

Inward investment and host country market structure:the case of the U.K.

Multinational enterprises are seen as vehicles for the international transfer of investment capital, protecting and increasing profits by transferring ownership advantages across national boundaries. As such, the argument often follows that foreign direct investment then exacerbates the monopoly problem in host countries, by increasing concentration and facilitating collusion. This paper however reveals the reverse, that inward investment into the U.K. acts to reduce concentration at the industry level, by increasing competitive pressures on domestic industry.

"Comparing the incomparable":hospital costing and the art of medicine in post-war Britain

This paper examines the relationship between medical and hospital accounting discourses during the two decades after the 1946 National Health Service (NHS) Act for England and Wales. It argues that the departmental costing system introduced into the NHS in 1957 was concerned with the administrative aspects of hospital costliness as contemporary hospital accountants suggested that the perceived incomparability, immeasurability and uncontrollability of medical practice precluded the application of cost accounting to the clinical functions of hospitals. The paper links these suggestions to medical discourses which portrayed the practice of medicine as an intuitive and experience-based art and argues that post-war conceptions of clinical medicine represented this domain in a manner that was neither susceptible to the calculations of cost accountants nor to calculating and normalising intervention more generally. The paper concludes by suggesting that a closer engagement with medical discourses may enhance our understanding of historical as well as present day attempts to make medicine calculable.