The British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) Covid-19 Working Group developed a control banding matrix to provide guidance for employers and others to help assess the risks of Covid-19 infection during the pandemic. The matrix was based on occupational hygiene principles and the judgement of the occupational health practitioners involved; since objective data on workers’ exposure were unavailable. Users of the matrix identify one of five exposure categories based on generic job descriptions and example occupations, and these categories are linked to generic guidance on interventions at source, on the exposure pathway and for individual workers. The risk matrix was published on the BOHS website and the guidance has been downloaded more than 2000 times. The matrix has had limited evaluation for reliability, but the data suggest that the highest exposure ranked jobs were associated with higher age-standardized mortality in Britain during the pandemic. However, there was considerable variability in exposure assignments between assessors, which underlines the need for the control guidance to be precautionary. The BOHS calls on academic researchers to undertake further work to validate the reliability of the tool.

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During the two decades that have passed since the introduction of strategic planning as a major managerial tool in American industry, most of the theory development and empirical research on this topic has emphasized the processes by which strategies are developed. Recently, however, a number of research projects have focused on the content of the strategies selected. For a variety of reasons, these studies have not built on each other to a very large degree. Nonetheless, findings have been sufficiently consistent that it is now feasible to develop a series of conditional propositions about the most appropriate types of strategic behavior for a given set of environmental conditions. This paper summarizes the propositions suggested by these studies and presents several others generated by a research project in which the author is currently engaged. It then describes a conceptual framework for interrelating all of these propositions. It is hoped that this framework will be a beginning step in development of a contingency theory of strategic behavior which is still far from complete.The strategy and structure of the 100 largest manufacturing firms in Italy over the 1950-1970 period are analyzed. Strategy is classified as to the degree of diversification: single, dominant, related, or unrelated business. Formal management structure (as distinct from legal form) is classified as flinctional, holding-company, or multi-divisional. Diversification and structure are classified as of 1950, 1960, and 1970. It was found that there has been widespread adoption of the strategy of product-market diversification, with considerable decline in the number of single business companies and a large increase in the number of diversified companies. As the prevalence of a strategy of diversification has grown, there has been increased adoption of the multi-divisional structure. The form, virtually absent in 1950 from the population studied, had been adopted by 48 per cent of the population by 1970.Companies in the drink, oil, paper, and power machinery industries exhibited little tendency to diversify beyond the dominant business category. Firms in the ceramics, chemical-pharmaceutical-toiletry, rubber, textile, electric-electronic, engineering, and printing-publishing industries tended to evolve into the related business category. No clear tendency was observed for firms in the food, and metal and mineral industries.Variable financial rewards related to performance measures were absent in Italian multi-divisional companies.A foundation for planning has been achieved, some advocate, when a firm can state its strategic plan in terms of products and markets (referred to as the "business form" in this paper). If this statement is true, what factors will aid a firm in achieving the business form in its strategic plans?This paper relates several factors from an empirical research sample to a firm's strategic plans in order to illustrate the significance of these factors to the form of the plan. Experience and a focus of strategic planning g...