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In recent years, interest in logistics has been growing rapidly, mainly because it is believed to be one of the few areas remaining in business where substantial economies may be made. Despite this interest, comparatively little attention has been directed towards establishing the overall importance of logistics in the UK—an omission this paper seeks to rectify. Logistics is defined by Bowersox as: “… a term which denotes a total approach to the management of the distribution process including all of those activities involved in physically moving raw materials, in process inventory and finished goods inventory from point of origin to point of use or consumption”. In other words, logistics combines the traditionally defined areas of materials management and physical distribution, as shown in Figure 1.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The Register of Current Research in the field of Physical Distribution Management has been compiled from the response to a request for such information made to Universities in 23 countries throughout the world. The last register was published in 1972 in this journal.