Websites of the week: www.managementfirst.com

In the dotcom boom years, internet users became positively indignant if a
site asked them to pay for its editorial. These days, it’s actually reassuring:
not only does it give the material on the site a value, but it also means the
website stands a chance of commercial success and therefore longevity.
ManagementFirst has been set up by Emerald, which is the new trading name of
MCB University Press, a management publisher of some 30 years. Its mission, it
says, is to make you a better manager and it aims to do so by providing a range
of free but also paid-for in-depth articles, distillations of key management
information, business news and management theory. Users can click one of 13
channels, which includes HR, CRM, and knowledge management, and are taken to a
selection of news stories in that area. These stories then lead on to a précis
of an article from the 35,000-strong Emerald database where you can read more
on the subject and are given the chance to buy the full text. There’s plenty of
free-to-access info, polls and discussion forums, and when we dropped by the HR
section there were handy guides on carrying out background checks and
establishing a policy for whistleblowing.