John Beeson, expert in leadership development and leadership coaching at Beeson Consulting, based in New York.

As nations struggle to pull themselves out of the economic malaise created by the global financial crisis, innovation appears to be an enduring theme.

Manufacturing grew at the fastest pace in eight months in January but employment in the sector is shrinking.

Rakon's share price dropped by nearly 24pc to an all-time low today after the high-tech components maker cut its earnings guidance for the second time since December.

David Shearer and his cohort of prospective coalition partners, the Greens, Mana and NZ First, are holding a show-trial into who killed the manufacturing industry.

The New Zealand dollar fell by more than half a US cent today after labour data showed that the employment rate fell to its lowest point in 10 years.

New Zealand's unemployment rate fell from a 13-year high in the last three months of 2012 as people stopped looking for work and the participation rate shrank.

I pity manufacturers in New Zealand. They are the collateral damage of our narrow approach to controlling inflation.

That dwindling band who continue to deny our economy is being hurt by an overvalued currency will usually - in the face of the indisputable evidence - take refuge as a last resort.

New Zealand labour costs rose in the final three months of 2012 as the gathering pace of Canterbury's reconstruction effort saw the building and construction sector underpin gains.

Times are very tough in manufacturing. The global recession has merely contributed an additional woe to a sector whose share of economic activity has been declining for more than two decades.

More leading export companies are on the verge of moving overseas due to the high dollar, Opposition MPs were told yesterday by manufacturers.

A lot of exporters of manufactured products had been waiting for an opportunity to vent anguish over the high exchange rate, writes John Armstrong. The targets of the anger - John Key, the Reserve Bank, Steven Joyce and the Treasury - were absent.

The manufacturing sector ended 2012 much as it had spent the whole year, just barely on the right side of the line between expansion and contraction, the BNZ-Business New Zealand performance of manufacturing index (PMI) indicates.

An uncompetitive economy like ours becomes more and more dependent on those fewer and fewer sectors that can compete in international terms, writes Bryan Gould.

Misleading nutrition and health claims about food will be stopped under new regulations on labelling.