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The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into what selection criteria consumers find critical when making the supplier selection decision. Much research exists on the business-to-business (B2B) perspective, so this research seeks to investigate the business-to-consumer (B2C) viewpoint.

A survey is used to identify the areas that consumers find to be important when seeking suppliers. Factor analysis is used to identify selection criteria that are important to consumers.

The results suggest that consumers value several factors quite highly, including delivery, price and quality. Service, flexibility and relationship are also rated relatively high, while consumer concern with technology and the environment seemed to be lower.

This study is limited to a group of consumers represented by university students. Additional research methods may provide additional detail to supplement these results.

The consistency the authors found between firm and consumer preferences should make it a relatively simple process for firms to consider the desires of customers when dealing with their own B2B relationships.

The B2C perspective on the supplier selection decision has seen limited research coverage. The B2C collaboration perspective considers the contributions consumers can make in supply chain decisions, which may lead to new supply chain management strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to convey a sample of current collaboration perspectives in purchasing. The purchasing function has a critical role to play in collaborative relationships since it is a key facet of any given supply chain. These relationships may be beneficial when coordinated actions benefit buyers, suppliers, and the entire supply chain more than the uncoordinated efforts of individual firms. Despite the commonly reported benefits that can be gained in close relationships, recent research has indicated that collaboration attempts between firms in supply chains have not been as widespread as anticipated.

This research investigates the progress the purchasing function has made in achieving collaborative supply chain relationships. Input is gained from purchasing professionals via semi-structured interviews of procurement professionals. Grounded theory is used to deduct key themes from the interviews.

Results from a small sample size of nine interviews indicate that collaboration in purchasing has not yet reached the theoretical ideal, and it is suggested that key issues such as trust still do not exist at levels that would be appropriate to support collaborative relationships.

This paper can be used as a basis to support further analysis that may broaden the scope of input from purchasing professionals. It is also difficult to draw generalizations from an interview method, and the sampling technique utilized limited the pool of potential interviewees to a sample size of nine semi-structured interviews.

This paper provides insights that purchasing professionals and those that deal with them can consider when engaging in supply chain relationships. It provides potential insights into where the purchasing function stands in its use of a collaborative strategy.

This paper focuses specifically on how the purchasing function is utilizing collaboration by gathering input from purchasing professionals. This practical viewpoint provides a realistic perspective that complements previous research on collaboration.

Using content analysis, the authors examine the purposes of teacher evaluation in relation to the content items on which teachers are assessed and engage in a comparative analysis of teacher evaluation practices in the U.S.A. from three points in time. The overall findings suggest a disparity between the philosophy of teacher evaluation as a mechanism for improving teaching and the practice of teacher evaluation as a tool for administrative decision making, a disparity heavily weighted in favour of the latter. The authors provide evidence that this disparity is historically rooted and likely to endure.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage and advance interdisciplinary accounting research on economic inequality.

The authors review prior research into economic inequality, including two new papers in this issue, to identify topics where economic inequality and accounting research intersect. The authors then draw on prior accounting research to identify frameworks accounting scholars already use apposite to analysing these topics.

Economic inequality cuts across major accounting topics, including measurement, reporting and tax. Inequality also bears on an influential agenda in interdisciplinary accounting research to hold corporations and states accountable for their impacts. Four prior research frameworks accounting scholars might apply to this agenda are: critical Marxian or post-Marxian; accounting ethics; advocacy; and disclosure studies.

A growing body of social scientific research, as well as influential global institutions, social movements and political debates, raise concerns over inequitable global distributions of wealth and income. The authors explore ways accounting scholars can help redress these inequities.

While economic inequality affects billions of people, accounting scholarship is yet to give these inequities the attention their scale and social impact merits. The authors suggest ways accounting researchers can make substantive contributions to addressing this issue.

We wonder if, in the history of the world, any conference devoted to the intellectual interests of mankind has ever been held in such circumstances as made memorable the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Library Association. For the whole week before those in and near London had been submitted to an ordeal well calculated to try the strongest nerves; an ordeal borne, it is true, with remarkable stoicism, but, nevertheless, one not likely to induce that calm, judicial frame of mind in which library topics should be discussed. Fortunately, however, the night before the opening meeting was the last of that particular series of air attacks, and the whole meeting passed in peace, so far as London was concerned. Raids and rumours of them may have reduced the attendance somewhat; it is fair to suppose that they did; yet the attendance, when all things are considered, was creditable to the Association.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

A survey of current work on database systems is presented. The area is divided into three main sectors: data models, data languages and support for database operations. Data models are presented as the link between the database and the real world. Languages range from formal algebraic languages to attempts to use a dialogue in English to formulate queries. The support includes hardware for content addressing, database machines and software techniques for optimizing and evaluating group expressions. Mathematical models are used to organize this support. Throughout there is a tutorial component and evaluation, which in both cases is related to the application of database ideas to documentation.

Research suggests that service-dominant logic (SDL) is well suited to support supply chain management (SCM) research and practice. Qualitative research has shown that SDL is particularly consistent with an outcome-based supply chain strategy known as performance-based logistics (PBL). The purpose of this paper is to extend theory and practice by exploring the degree to which SDL is utilized in practice. Specifically, PBL is examined for consistency with the underlying fundamental premises (FPs) of SDL. In doing so, this paper answers the positive question, “what exists”, at the intersection of SDL and SCM.

This study employs a mixed methodological approach. First, the FPs of SDL are operationalized using the language of PBL. The PBL FPs are tested quantitatively through an online survey of 52 supply chain PBL experts. A qualitative analysis is conducted using comments associated with each premise.

The survey results suggest that PBL is consistent with SDL. These results indicate that PBL is a supply chain context of SDL.

This is one of the first works to examine the degree to which SDL concepts are being utilized in practice.

Today an estimated 500,000 personal computers have been purchased by Americans who use them at home and in a variety of small business applications. (Note: We define a personal computer as a small, relatively inexpensive, microprocessor‐based device which can be taken out of its box, plugged in and begin working immediately, as opposed to large computers which must be permanently installed, and/or require professional programming. We exclude microprocessor‐based devices whose only function is limited to the playback of packaged games.) Many market research services believe that personal computer sales will continue to grow rapidly, perhaps as fast as a 50 percent annual growth rate for the next several years. The impact of this new interactive information technology coming into the possession of perhaps millions of people can only be guessed at at this early juncture. To us, as librarians, one of the more perceivable results of the growing wave of interest in personal computers has been the proliferation of literature addressed to the personal computer user.