to buy a house Companies cannot afford to wait for overseas opportunities to present themselves they must seek them out and in some cases make them. An important factor in the Dexion overseas policy has been the separate ness of the overseas organization. It is not connected with the home sales force except for general liaison and the occasional pooling of photographs and other sales material. It has its own management structure, recruits its own staff, and even has its own offices and technical facilities. The effect of this has been to identify the Overseas Division of the Company with the overseas job exclusively the thinking of the overseas staff is wholly and exclusively in terms of overseas markets. A great deal of training is done both on the departmental level (letter writing, shipping instruction, sales techniques, etc.) and on the divisional level. During the winter voluntary lunchtime sessions are held at which generalinterest films about overseas countries are shown. These make for useful background knowledge. When a man returns from an overseas trip, in addition to his official report to marketing, he is often called upon to talk to the whole overseas staff on his experiences. Management training plays an important part, and the management group meets often discussing case histories, which the Company has found to be a useful tool in the development of scientific thinking. The drive and impetus for the Company's export effort must come from the individual Managers and no effort is spared in this form of training. Perhaps the one most important factor in the Company's success is good staff selection. A Company is only as good as its staff is a maxim taken seriously in Dexion. No expense is spared in the constant endeavour to attract the right kind of recruit into the Company. It is shortage of the right kind of people that has hampered the Company's expansion programme more than any other factor. Every year the Company's salesmen carry the Company's message to the furthest corners of the world. Some of these modern Marco Polos have accrued fantastic mileages from the jungles of Malaya to the earthquake torn sites of Greece and Morocco from the cold of Canada to the tropical heat of Queensland. This in itself is not enough but backed by a welltrained, uptodate, and aggressive marketing organization thinking in terms of overseas-startling results have been and are being achieved. Family Firms THE vast proportion of business enterprises, old and new, has its origin in the family: the skilled tradesman or the inspired innovator flowering into a sizable family firm and ending up as a public company is a familiar pattern. This progression may take centuries or it may be achieved in a short span of years. Whatever the pace the family firm today presents a unique set of management situations. A definition must be sought. Perhaps the most satisfactory would be, simply, to describe a family firm as one which is predominantly owned and managed by a family. to buy a house