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ONE CAN BE forgiven for worrying about the ‘Peter principle’ when taking up a post on the practising side of the profession after nine years teaching librarianship.

The model described is a practical tool designed to improve managerial decision making about employees.

This paper reviews a number of studies that has examined the use of workplace innovations in the Republic of Ireland. It is argued that despite having quite different sampling and technical properties, the surveys reach similar findings on many matters – the high degree of experimentation with innovative work practices, and the piecemeal nature of workplace reform in most companies for example. Yet disagreement has occurred about how these findings should be interpreted. One view is sceptical about whether the surveys point to meaningful innovations in enterprise level employment systems in Ireland. A less pessimistic perspective suggests that the high level of experimentation occurring on new employment practices should be seen as significant as most organisations adopt an evolutionary approach to workplace reform.

This paper focuses on the behaviour and character of enterprises in modern Ireland by examining the extent to which high performance employment practices are being adopted by organisations. This paper draws on the results of an establishment‐level survey of work organisation and human resource management practice in three sectors of the Irish economy. This paper has three specific objectives: measuring the extent to which high performance work practices have been adopted by enterprises in Ireland; examining whether these innovations in the practical organisation of work are being supported by new ways of managing the broader employment relationship; and analysing precisely how establishments are combining innovative work practices and supporting HRM practices to achieve coherent overall employment models. Also finds that Irish firms are experimenting widely with workplace innovation and the changes in work organisation are matched by supporting adjustments to firms' HR policies and indicates that there is no single Irish “model” of industrial relations.

SINCE LEAVING NORWICH, where I had lived and worked for eight years, I have been interested to read Philip Hepworth's periodic bulletins in NLW, the latest being Defeat (NLW, January, pp 7–9). I have come to the conclusion that it must quickly have become a far wickeder and less hospitable place than I remember it. I don't recall the world of librarianship in that fine city being a battlefield, with winners and losers. Indeed, unless I am mistaken, PH was always quick to imply that county library services were very much second rate affairs, and am somewhat surprised that he subsequently became very keen to join one—not like him at all.

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver “equity pedagogy.” In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.

The paper seeks to investigate the effects of the 2004 Central and East European EU Enlargement on labour mobility.

The paper is based on an analysis of recently available empirical evidence from the UK Labour Registration Scheme and EU comparative data based on administrative data and labour force surveys.

Only Ireland, Austria and Germany had significant migration from CEE migration and none of these exceeded 2 per cent of the labour force. The imposition of a transitional arrangement had little effect on migration flows. CEE workers were predominantly young, had above average education and yet did not fill UK skills gaps, but filled labour shortages for low paid, unskilled work.

This paper assesses the empirical evidence on labour mobility from Central and Eastern Europe, which is used to assess the current highly contentious debate.

Work environments, which are widely acknowledged to exert strong influences on employee attitudes and behavior, have been studied since the initiation of formal work entities. Over this time, scholars have identified myriad impactful internal and external factors. Absent though are investigations examining economic downturns despite their acknowledged pervasiveness and destructive effects on worker performance and well-being. To address this theoretical gap, a multistage model acknowledging the impact of recessions on workplace responses, response effects, and environmental considerations is proposed. Inherent in this discussion is the role of economic decline on reactive change processes, the nature of work, and the structure and design of organizations. These significant changes affect employee attitudes and behaviors in ways that increase the political nature of these work environments. Organizational factors and employee responses to heightened recession-driven politics are discussed. Additionally, theoretically relevant intervening variables capable of influencing work outcomes are described. The chapter is concluded by discussing the implications of this theoretical framework as well as directions for future research.

The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the history and development of transaction log analysis (TLA) in library and information science research. Organizing a literature review of the first twenty‐five years of TLA poses some challenges and requires some decisions. The primary organizing principle could be a strict chronology of the published research, the research questions addressed, the automated information retrieval (IR) systems that generated the data, the results gained, or even the researchers themselves. The group of active transaction log analyzers remains fairly small in number, and researchers who use transaction logs tend to use this method more than once, so tracing the development and refinement of individuals' uses of the methodology could provide insight into the progress of the method as a whole. For example, if we examine how researchers like W. David Penniman, John Tolle, Christine Borgman, Ray Larson, and Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu have modified their own understandings and applications of the method over time, we may get an accurate sense of the development of all applications.