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The article presents a selection of preliminary results from the 1987 Labour Force Survey for Great Britain vis‐à‐vis male and female economic activity rates together with comparisons with 1984.

On 1st September 1972 the International Institute of Social Economics was founded in Hull by Dr. Barrie O. Pettman. The Institute aims to assist in the development of Social Economics as a recognised discipline with a scientific foundation and accepted standards of qualification and ethics; to improve standards of Social Economics by encouraging communication and the interchange of ideas within a growing body of people educated to appreciate the broad field of Social Economics; to help and encourage Social Economists at all levels to understand and apply newly developing ideas and techniques and to assist in translating them into practical terms; to provide an organisation through which new knowledge can be added to the discipline of Social Economics, by research, by conferences, by publications and by all other means; to assist in the continuing advance of internationally recognised measures of social and economic progress; and to assist and encourage colleges and universities to develop and maintain sound and adequate Social Economics teaching.

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 body of literature in the field now commonly known as the “quality of working life” (QWL) has grown steadily over a period in which the industrialised nations have increasingly come to question the role and status of human beings in the modern technological environment. In recent years concern with the nature of work, its impact upon people, and their attitudes towards it, seem to have sharpened. Investigation of, and experimentation with, the qualitative aspects of working life—its ability to confer self‐fulfilment directly, for example, as opposed to being a means of acquiring goods—has gained momentum under the influence of a unique set of economic, social, political and technological factors. The outpouring of books, reports and articles from a wide variety of sources has, not surprisingly, grown apace.

This register of current research in social economics has been compiled by the International Institute of Social Economics. The register does not claim to be comprehensive but is merely an aid for research workers and institutions interested in social economics. The register will be updated and made more comprehensive in the future but this is largely dependent on the inflow of information from researchers in social economics. In order to facilitate this process a standardised form is to be found on the last page of this register. Completed forms, with attached sheets as necessary, should be returned to the compiler: Dr Barrie O. Pettman, Director, International Institute of Social Economics, Enholmes Hall, Patrington, Hull, N. Humberside, England, HU12 OPR. Any other comments on the register will also be welcome.

If the Quality of Working Life (QWL) is to become a distinct “school” then, it is argued, it should possess all the attributes of a school, in particular, vocabulary, concepts and methodology. The very importance of QWL problems in contemporary society would suggest that the realisation of these attributes is an urgent task. It is argued that what appears to be needed is an integrated theoretical framework, and to this end a socio‐economic systems approach serves as the main focus of this contribution.

If the Quality of Working Life (QWL) is to become a distinct “school” then, it is argued, it should possess all the attributes of a school, in particular, vocabulary, concepts and methodology. The very importance of problems in contemporary society would suggest that the realisation of these attributes is an urgent task. It is argued that what appears to be needed is an integrated theoretical framework, and to this end a socio‐economic systems approach serves as the main focus of this contribution.

It will be argued here that the need for anti‐discrimination policies in the labour market — while patently obvious to the present audience — can also be reinforced via an analytical approach, which we have elsewhere described as a “socio‐economic systems” approach. Briefly, such an approach leads to the conclusion that in most areas of social economics (including discrimination) we should be concerned with the study of the structure and processes of the dynamic field of societal relations within a complex and interdependent environment of many systems (social, economic, legal, political, historical, psychological, technological and natural). Consequently, we need to study these environmental systems, the elements of the structure, the process of adaptation of these structural elements to their environment, the accommodation and conflict generated by these processes, the societal relations stemming from these reactions and the feedback mechanisms whereby the open and dynamic system constantly adjusts (Figure 1).

In this contribution to the growing discussion of the meaning, method‐dology and rationale of the socio‐economic approach we shall not reiterate the historical development of Social Economics but will concentrate on trying to stimulate discussion of the following questions:

It is now ten years since the Industrial Training Act was placed on the statute book. Progress in this decade on the training front has been vast. However, continuous assessment and modifications have been made via the 1972 Green Paper the subsequent White Paper and Bill and, more recently, the Employment and Training Act, 1973.