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Argues that effective board leadership requires directors to achieve a balance between entrepreneurship (i.e. paying attention to strategy, corporate renewal and innovation on the one hand) and corporate governance. Posits that medium sized firms have a dilemma in knowing how to expand their businesses in a rapid fashion. Highlights how companies manage this type of move from a corporate type of governance to a more corporate entrepreneurship.

To investigate the relationship between learning, organizational change, organizational culture and narratives. The issues are explored on the basis of a case study of an automotive supplier based in North‐East England where learning is deeply integrated in the daily routines of the company.

The project reported upon in this paper was of qualitative and interpretive nature, using narrative cross‐national comparative research. The main data collection method was in‐depth interviewing with organizational members from all hierarchical levels. The interviews were tape‐recorded, transcribed and fed back to the interviewees. The data was analysed using grounded theory.

The research concludes that organizational change, learning and culture are deeply interwoven. More specifically, the success of the case study company is based to a large extent on its people focus and unique learning culture, which are reflected in, separable from and sustained by the prevailing organizational narratives.

The generalizability of case studies is limited, but opens up new questions to be explored by further research into the relationship of organizational change, learning, culture and narratives.

Organizational narratives are a powerful tool for managers to examine cultural aspects within the firm, which should be used more widely.

The paper raises interesting issues for management researchers, challenging some previously taken for granted assumptions.

There is common agreement today in government and in industry about the need to educate and develop British management as a means of achieving faster economic growth and more rapid technological change. As a result, huge investments are being made in new facilities for management training—in the business schools and universities, in the newly‐created polytechnics, in independent colleges such as Ashridge and Henley, and in industrial colleges, under the impetus of the Industrial Training Act. There is probably about a hundred million pounds of capital already invested in staff and facilities', and with the present drive for management education we could see this figure increased substantially over the next five years. When we consider the capital investment involved it is surprising how few statistics are available on which future plans can be based. Few private businessmen would launch a venture costing say a quarter of a million pounds without doing some market research—yet it is not unusual for a local authority, a university or an independent body to establish a management college costing several hundred thousand pounds without prior research. The market for short courses in particular is very volatile and as a result most colleges have passed through periods when their premises were only partially filled, and some colleges have been forced to close through lack of support. As Mr. Marples of Cambridge said in a recent article, “the small academic groups which exist in a number of our institutions of higher learning have discovered to their cost, the difficulties of securing support for their post‐experience ventures.” In Eire, and in Belgium, and in parts of the USA, comprehensive studies have been made into the needs and facilities for management education and training as a basis for policy making. In Britain one or two limited studies have been made but we still lack a sound statistical basis for the predictions which must be made about this vital market. Apart from the investigation we have carried out for Yorkshire, Northern Ireland is the only region which has commissioned a survey of needs and facilities before the re‐development of its management education service.

Industry is overwhelmed by a glut of management courses and seminars. David Saunders investigates this expensive form of training.

A framework is presented for thinking about the various avenues through which banks can pursue growth. This includes discussion of market penetration, market development, product development and diversification together with evaluation of such growth strategies.

A full day workshop on Strategic and Operational Planning in Commercial Banks and Other Financial Institutions will be held on January 11, 1977. Topics include identification of long‐range opportunities and threats, effects of changing economic and industry trends, and planning for new technology. The moderator is Dr. Giles Morton, Chairman of the Finance Department at Rutgers Graduate School of Business. Speakers from Chase, Irving Trust, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and others. Attendance is limited to 35. Fee $45. Contact Dan Hodes, GT&E (203) 357–2023.

Equitable Bancorporation, a multi bank holding company, has a fully computerized human resource information system (HRIS) which is barely a year old. The system is paying for itself, at a cost of about 20 dollars per employee per year. The HRIS makes it possible to rapidly gather, store, update, retrieve, and display an endless variety of data on people and their jobs. The system ingests information via machine readable documents such as employee profiles and position profiles. It produces standard and special purpose reports for use by the personnel department and line management in problem solving. The corporation can process the data in countless ways to learn what is happening to the work force, enabling it to run the organization more effectively on a day to day basis. The HRIS has substantial potential as a long range planning tool. This enables a company to respond quickly and effectively to changes in its strategic objectives with corresponding changes in human resource management.

In an earlier paper in this Journal the present writer outlined some of the interpersonal factors likely to affect staff specialists' credibility with their clients. These included the specialist's diagnostic ability, his skill in forming multiplex relationships with his clients, the ease with which he coped with the stresses in his role and his facility as a diagnostician and actor in the political arena surrounding any changes he may be recommending. This paper seeks to develop aspects of the political context of the specialist's (or internal consultant's) work by focusing on some of the strategic factors which affect the long term viability of specialist units. A framework is provided which described some of the evolutionary phases specialist groups might go through and practical implications are drawn from this phase model about strategic aspects of the management of specialist activity.

“… in the interests of productivity and efficiency senior managements need to pay more attention to the functioning of the existing payment system and to the negotiating of change when this appears to be appropriate.”

The purpose of this survey is to find a significant sample of reference resources for electrical engineering as they are presented in subject-specific LibGuides.

The survey is based on a detailed observation and collection of sources designated as Reference Resources in LibGuides, titles found were compiled and organized.

The results are substantial; they offered a body of specialized resources, which includes e-book collections, dictionaries, handbooks, encyclopedias and other resources that are important to electrical engineering students and researchers.

A considerable amount of resources were found; nevertheless, they represent the resources found in a randomly selected sample of LibGuides; therefore, the result is limited to the group of libraries selected.

The results of this survey are valuable to subject librarians interested in comparing resources with a pool of libraries and to discover titles that can be of interest to their collections.

The work is original, as this is the first paper publishing the results of a survey of electrical engineering guides.