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When I am asked what my job is and I reply that I am a Research Librarian, I can tell by the blank look on the inquirer's face that he or she is none the wiser!

ONLY one or two topics of the Scarborough Conference will remain firmly in the minds of most of us. Most firmly, and more clearly than before, will be that of the National Lending Library and Dr. Urquhart's exposition of it or what it is intended to be. It may give no comfort, so far as librarianship is concerned, to existing librarians, but there is little that the public librarian has to fear from it. The second impression that remains is the acute awareness now prevalent of the need for science and technical training in school and college for many more men and women and our relation to that fact. The third was the so often expressed nervousness about the status of the librarian. Fourthly, was the local collection in the light of the ever‐changing character and habits of the people. The President's address was a dignified and grave statement of ideals, in the definition of libraries and librarianship, in book acquirement, reader‐service and in appreciation of the personalities who have made librarianship. It did not produce the press so fine an utterance demanded. What are we to say of the heading a great London paper gave to its two‐inch paragraph devoted to the first day of our Conference: “Librarians are told to be courteous”? To our regret we were unable to hear Mr. O'Leary's paper; judging from the summary in the Programme it was a fine exercise in robust commonsense. We content ourselves in this Editorial with further remarks on one or two of the matters we have mentioned above.

For over a hundred years the development of “public libraries” (that is libraries administered by local authorities, not the equally “public” libraries such as the British Museum) has been hesitating, blind, clumsy and uneven; but it is refreshing to remember that all along there have been people who have made a legend of the first librarian of Manchester. Dr. Munford has now done librarianship and history a great service by his latest book recently published by the Library Association. Edwards was not a good librarian, but had a vision of the desirable and possible future of libraries which only now is shown to be valid. The vision and the failures justified the publication of the new life of him, which completely supersedes Thomas Greenwood's book of 1902. Probably no other librarian has left behind him such a mass of letters and diaries as Edwards provided and no previous biographer of a librarian has so methodically and meticulously struggled with a mass of manuscripts such as those which confronted Dr Munford. It is hard to imagine that any other book of similar size has given so many footnotes (all assembled at the end of the book, to the amazing number of 1,564) as references to the material on which Dr. Munford has based his statements. This “portrait”, complete—“warts and all”—would not have been possible if the British Museum and the Manchester Public Libraries had not religiously preserved the great collection of Edwards's diaries and correspondence.

Technology transfer (TT) in industry to university collaboration (UIC) literature focuses primarily on a macro view within an SME environment. While these discussions are important to establish the significance of encouraging UIC's as the value is important to both parties, there is a need for further research at a micro level to help understand key approaches to ensuring the success of the TT. By looking at how value created from TT for a multi-national corporation (MNC) with a project based within a single subsidiary, this research effectively looks at the issue from both a SME level (the subsidiary independently) and a MNC level.

The research uses a longitudinal knowledge transfer partnership and action research to form a case study of Parker Hannifin's Gas Separation and Filtration Europe, Middle East and Africa (GSFE) division.

The research highlights the key areas to focus on in ensuring a successful TT within an UIC such as: once identifying the gap that a UIC is filling in the company, identifying internal barriers before the project starts; education of why change is necessary and then using knowledge experts to educate on the new processes being introduced and finally; incorporation of a full range of personnel, not just those directly involved in the day-to-day of the UIC.

As a case study, further research is required to make the results more generalisable. One way to do this would be to evaluate previous successful and unsuccessful UIC's and determine if the success criteria identified were present in these programmes.

There are three critical points that can be taken away from this research and applied to any company looking to use UIC for TT and value co-creation. Education, external knowledge experts and business wide inclusion were highlighted in the findings as being potentially critical turning points and need to be addressed for successful TT.

Successful UIC's further encourage investment in such programmes which has greater societal benefits. Not only can we see greater leaps in industry through better, more specific knowledge being transferred from the university, the industry knowledge fed into universities helps to guide research and teachings.

The micro level view created by action research based from the industry partner perspective adds another level of importance as the “how” for overcoming barriers is clearly addressed. Furthermore, the research looks at how a multi-national corporation can have value added through UIC's within subsidiaries which often is not addressed in the literature.

This paper aims to review some of the academic literature on the circular economy, natural capital and resilience by tourism and hospitality scholars and to examine how a number of companies and industry bodies within the tourism and hospitality industry have used these concepts in their business operations and development plans.

The paper outlines the importance of sustainability to the tourism and hospitality industry and provides definitions of the concepts of the circular economy, natural capital and resilience. The paper reviews some of the academic literature on these concepts, explores how a number of companies and industry bodies within the tourism and hospitality industry have used them in their business and planning operations and identifies a number of future directions for academic research and managerial contributions.

The concepts illuminate a range of sustainability challenges and opportunities, and some companies use these concepts in their sustainability strategies and development planning. The current depth of theoretical understanding does not lend itself to management strategies, but one fruitful avenue is to explore how information systems can be better deployed to support these concepts and sustainability management in general.

The paper provides an accessible exploratory review of how academics and companies are focussing on the concepts of the circular economy, natural capital and resilience in the tourism and hospitality industry. As such, it will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners interested in the hospitality industry.

Understanding how organisations can institutionalise the outcomes of process improvement initiatives is limited. This paper explores how process changes resulting from improvement initiatives are adhered to, so that the changed processes become the new “norm” and people do not revert to old practices. This study proposes an institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives.

Firstly, a literature review identified Tolbert and Zucker’s (1996) institutionalisation framework as a suitable conceptual framework on which to base the enquiry. The second phase (the focus of this paper) applied the findings from two case studies to adapt this framework (its stages and related factors) to fit process improvement contexts.

The paper presents an empirically and theoretically supported novel institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives. The three stages of the institutionalisation process presented by Tolbert and Zucker (1996) have been respecified into four stages, explaining how process changes are institutionalised through “Planning”, “Implementation”, “Objectification” and “Sedimentation” (the original first stage, i.e. “Habitualisation” being divided into Planning and Implementation). Some newly identified Business Process Management (BPM) specific factors influencing the institutionalisation processes are also discussed and triangulated with the BPM literature.

The study contributes to the BPM literature by conceptualising and theorising the stages of institutionalisation of process improvement initiatives. In doing so, the study explicitly identifies and considers several key contextual factors that drive the stages of institutionalisation. Practitioners can use this to better manage process change and future researchers can use this framework to operationalise institutionalisation of process change.

This is the first research study that provides an empirically supported and clearly conceptualised understanding of the stages of institutionalising process improvement outcomes.

Technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI) impact the decision-making process related to the creation of tourist offers. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the exigency of application technologies in the tourism industry from the aspect of business, in order to demonstrate the readiness of certain organisations to apply alternative reality technologies. This chapter analyses the attitudes of top, middle, and operational managers in 3-star, 4-star, and 5-star hotels at the regional level of Dubrovnik-Neretva county in order to assess the necessity for businesses in the hotel industry to adopt alternative reality technologies as well as the key benefits and opportunities that come with it. Empirical research was conducted using a convenience purposive sample of managers in order to determine the relationship between the application of specific technologies and tourism organisations. Statistical methods were used to evaluate the data in order to test the importance of the respondent’s examination attitudes. The results reflect the state of hotel organisations in terms of the usefulness that technologies as alternative forms of reality can provide them in business and point to the increasing adaptation of the tourist sector for the application of such technologies.

Long-standing traditions of long-distance collaboration and networking make scholars a good test case for differentiating hype and reality in distributed, networked organizations. Our study of Canadian scholars in the GRAND research networks finds that they function more as connected individuals and less as members of a single bounded work group, often meeting their needs by tapping into diversified, loosely knit networks. Their internet use interpenetrates with in-person contact: the more they use one, the more they use the other. Despite digital networking, local proximity is important for collaboration and seniority for inter-team and interdisciplinary boundary spanning.

This paper uses a stakeholder framework to review the empirical literature on corporate social performance (CSP), focusing particularly on studies attempting to correlate social with financial performance. Results show first that most studies correlate measures of business performance that as yet have no theoretical relationship (for example, the level of corporate charitable giving with return on investment). To make sense of this body of research, CSP studies must be integrated with stakeholder theory. Multiple stakeholders (a) set expectations for corporate performance, (b) experience the effects of corporate behavior, and (c) evaluate the outcomes of corporate behavior. However, we find that the empirical CSP literature mismatches variables in terms of which stakeholders are relevant to which kind of measure. Second, only the studies using market‐based variables and theory show a consistent relationship between social and financial performance, particularly those showing a negative abnormal return to the stock price of companies experiencing product recalls. Although this paper shows that the CSP construct is not yet well‐specified enough to produce stronger results, recent research suggests that much progress is being made both empirically and theoretically in developing valid and reliable measures of corporate social performance.