What did it mean to be a Covenanter? From its first subscription in 1638, the National Covenant was an aspect of life that communities across Scotland encountered on a daily basis. However, how contemporaries understood its significance remains unclear. This edited collection assesses how people interacted with the National Covenant's infamously ambiguous text, the political and religious changes that it provoked, and the legacy that it left behind. This volume contains eleven chapters divided between three themes that reveal the complex processes behind Covenanting: the act of swearing and subscribing the Covenants; the process of self fashioning and identity formation, and, finally, the various acts of remembering and memorialising the history of the National Covenant. The collection reveals different narratives of what it meant to be a Covenanter rather than one, uniform, and unchanging idea. The National Covenant forced contortions in Scottish identities, memories, and attitudes and remained susceptible to changes in the political context. Its impact was dependent upon individual circumstances. The volume's chapters contend that domestic understanding of the National Covenant was far more nuanced, and the conversations very different, from those occurring in a wider British or Irish context. Those who we now call 'Covenanters' were guided by very different expectations and understandings of what the Covenant represented. The rules that governed this interplay were based on local circumstances and long-standing pressures that could be fuelled by short-term expediency. Above all, the nature of Covenanting was volatile. Chapters in this volume are based on extensive archival research of local material that provide a view into the complex, and often highly personalised, ways people understood the act or memory of Covenanting. The chapters explore the religious, political, and social responses to the National Covenant through its creation in 1638, the Cromwellian invasion of 1650 and the Restoration of monarchy in 1660.

Business experts everywhere have been finding that corporations run not only on numbers, but on culture. In this revised and updated 2000 edition of "Corporate Cultures," organization consultants Terrence Deal and Allan Kennedy probe the conference rooms and corridors of corporate America to discover the key to business excellence. They find that the health of the bottom line is not ultimately guaranteed by attention to the rational aspects of managing-financial planning, personnel policies, cost controls, and the like. What's more important to long-term prosperity is the company's culture-the inner values, rites, rituals, and heroes-that strongly influence its success, from top management to the secretarial pool.For junior and senior managers alike, Deal and Kennedy offer explicit guidelines for diagnosing the state of one's own corporate culture and for using the power of culture to wield significant influence on how business gets done.

"Allan Kennedy provocatively proposes that running corporations to benefit shareholders damages companies and the societies they operate in. [He] has raised questions about managing for shareholder value that someone will have to answer."-Mark Henricks, American Way"Allan Kennedy has always seen the corporation in its full cultural context. Now he demonstrates that corporate managers have mistaken the shareholder value formula for the building of true wealth. His fascinating stories of companies make both great reading and a compelling case for the broadening of corporate objectives."-Stan Davis, co-author of Future Wealth and BlurIn The End of Shareholder Value, Allan Kennedy calls for a revolution in business-for customers, employees, political and social leaders, and governing boards to challenge the cozy relationship between executives and investors that has crippled companies in the name of maximizing shareholder value. From GE to the hottest new Web-based start-up, those companies that subscribe to the shareholder value ethic cannot be sustained and will, inevitably, be replaced by those who figure out how to create and share wealth among all stakeholders. Provocative and wide-ranging, The End of Shareholder Value challenges everyone to rethink the purpose of business in the new millennium.