Ultimately, however, they decided that their different financial sources and market niches dictated individual strategies.

Messier, the team captain, said he did not have the power to dictate strategies to Neilson.

Team in a Slump While praising Mr. Ballard as a man of enormous skill in business dealings, some business associates, family members and Bay Street analysts said that he had allowed personal predilections to dictate strategies for his company and for the hockey team.

The grant stipulates the funds be used for improving student achievement using one of four federally dictated strategies.

Today Michel Camdessus, the director general of the I.M.F., shot back at Congressional critics who have denounced his institution as a huge bureaucracy of overpaid economists who dictate economic strategies to countries around the world.

The admission by Tesco's chief executive, Philip Clarke, that the potency of out-of-town hypermarkets was waning, and the internet is now dictating strategies, is no surprise to those with an eye on the behaviour of British consumers.

As rules evolved and regulations added, different branches of mixed martial arts have emerged, with differences between the different rulesets dictating different strategies.

Yet where Mrs Thatcher's advisers were right is that throwing money at the problem, or dictating strategies from the centre, will be of little help.