J Austral Math Soc Ser A 49 pp241--249, 1990.
(Received 1 July 1989; revised 30 August 1989)
We discuss some general properties and limitations of the comcept of outer Fitting pairs introduced earlier by the author. We describe an outer Fitting pair as a co-cone in the category of what we call outer groups (roughly speaking the category of groups modulo inner automorphisms). It is shown that generally no universal outer Fitting pair exists, whence this category is not co-complete. Additionally it is shown that if the target group of an outer Fitting pair is finite, then the much amenable concept of normal Fitting pairs (that is, co-cones in the category of groups) applies.
1980 AMS Subject Classification (1985 Revision): primary 20D10; secondary 18B99
Last Modified: Wed Feb 19 10:27:52 2003