Search results

During the years following the end of World War II, there was a considerable expansion of library services in industry, and some of the scientists engaged in this activity sought to establish strong links with professional librarians, particularly in universities and city libraries with collections of scientific literature. Among them were Denis Arnold, Wilfred Ashworth and Brian Vickery, and it was at a conference of the London and Home Counties Branch of the Library Association that I first met both Arnold and Vickery. It was my good fortune to discover very quickly a community of interest with Brian, based on our industrial experience, and a similar outlook on a wide range of matters social and political.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the aftermath of business failure (BF) by addressing: how the individual progressed and developed new ventures, how individuals changed business behaviors and practices in light of a failure, and what was the effect of previous failure on the individual’s decisions to embark on subsequent ventures.

The authors resort to qualitative methods to understand the aftermath of BF from a retrospective point of a successful entrepreneur. Specifically, the authors undertook semi-structured interviews to six entrepreneurs, three from the north of Europe and three from the south and use interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The authors found that previous failure impacted individuals strongly, being shaped by the individual’s experience and age, and their perception of blame for the failure. An array of moderator costs was identified, ranging from antecedents to institutions that were present in the individual’s lives. The outcomes are directly relatable to the failed experience by the individual. The authors also found that the failure had a significant effect on the individual’s career path.

While predicting the failure of healthy firms or the discovery of the main determinants that lead to such an event have received increasingly more attention in the last two decades, the focus on the consequences of BF is still lagging behind. The present study fills this gap by analyzing the aftermath of BF.

If companies are to be successful they must have a competitive strategy. A composite, formed of successful manufacturing company strategies, is outlined in order to resolve manufacturing industry′s perceived conflict of financial product and manufacturing objectives. The proposed solution, cash sensitive restructuring, is described as a method of enabling companies to raise their performance by using resources hidden within the business in four major areas: fixed assets, inventory, overheads and manufacturing policy. Cash sensitive restructuring is shown to provide a bridge between the theory and practice of manufacturing strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study that examined how pre-service teachers (PSTs) used mobile technology and experiential learning to critically examine the processes that shape places over time. During Summer course work that occurred prior to beginning their field experience and student teaching, participants explored neighborhoods and public spaces, and researched the history as well as contemporary issues relevant to the places in which their future students live, play, work, shop, and go to school. The use of social media as a forum for sharing and reflecting upon their experiences provided opportunity to critique neoliberal and race-based public policies, as well as support reflection on the relationships between geography and teaching about social (in)justice in the social studies. Findings inform the work of teacher educators who seek to help teacher candidates think more deeply about how spatial contexts inform culturally sustaining and critically minded pedagogy in the social studies.

This qualitative study included pre- and post-surveys and two one-on-one interviews between research participants and the researcher. Data were also gathered through the use of posts made by participants to a shared social media account. Interested in the interactive process of subjects and their surroundings, symbolic interactionism provided the methodological framework for this study.

Involvement in the study provided PSTs with new ways of thinking about how places are shaped over time and the importance of incorporating local intersections of geography and injustice in the classroom. Through experiential learning, PSTs developed a critical understanding of how place relates to who they teach, moved away from deficit thinking about people and places, and, as evidenced in the examples shared, approached lesson planning as place-relevant and culturally sustaining social studies educators.

The majority of students enrolled in teacher education courses in the USA remains white and it is well documented that most possess few cultural and geographic ties to the schools and students they work with as PSTs. Interested in the intersection of race, place, and teacher education, this paper discusses research conducted with 12 pre-service secondary social studies teachers (PSTs) who were enrolled in an eight-week Summer seminar course that preceded their Fall field experience and Spring student teaching placements to learn how they interpret their movement through spaces and their understanding of how geography, race, and agency intersect and impact students.

The prospect of buying a small business computer system poses various traps for the unsuspecting retailer. The main considerations that a firm should bear in mind when buying or leasing a system are: hardware, servicing, software, and training. The writer discusses each of these.

In many food marketing contexts products are sampled while music is played in the background. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether changing the pleasantness of background music while tasting two identical products in succession may influence the experience of taste and preference.

Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, 60 participants were asked to taste two identical cookies, one with pleasant and one with unpleasant background music, in differing orders. In Study 2, 60 participants tasted two cookies with two unpleasant musical pieces and 60 participants tasted two cookies with pleasant background music. Participants were asked to evaluate each cookie and indicate which cookie they preferred.

In Study 1, a main effect of music was found, with cookies tasted with pleasant background music evaluated as better than those tasted with unpleasant background music. In addition, an interaction between presentation order and music was found, with a stronger difference in evaluation between the cookies when the first is tasted with pleasant background music. In Study 2, no main effect of music was found. A primacy effect was found, with higher evaluations for the first tasted cookie.

The studies considered only one type of product, which in itself is pleasant-tasting. Further studies, using other products, are thus needed to allow generalization.

A discerning use of background music in consumer settings involving sampling of a sequence of products may aid marketers in maximizing music’s effect on product evaluation and choice.

Although the effect of music on taste has been previously studied, this is the first research to examine presentation order effects of music pleasantness on the experience of taste. The pleasantness of background music is integrated into the experience of taste, and food marketing strategies should take into account how the order in which different musical pieces are heard may influence consumers’ evaluation and preference for sampled products.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how older workers and people who have already retired speak about ageing and change and their experience of retirement.

A qualitative study is described in which focus groups with older workers and semi-structured interviews with retired people were carried out. The recorded data were analysed using a linguistic approach (Discourse Analysis), which investigates in detail how people express their views and opinions and how their discourse might relate to societal attitudes towards ageing and retirement.

Many older people who were still at work were concerned that they would decline and become senile once they retired unless they could remain active in some way. This was confirmed by people who had already retired and who spoke about how keeping busy and active had resulted in successful retirement and ageing.

Participants from four focus groups and five interview respondents represent only a small sample of older people who are still working or who are retired. This means that the results of this study cannot be extended to include all older workers and retired people.

This study will help to raise awareness of the concerns of older workers who may be nearing retirement, and how keeping busy and active after leaving work is considered by retirees to be part of successful retirement and helping to combat decline.

A study of this nature which examines how older workers express their views about retirement using Discourse Analysis is original and may be used as a method for future research into other aspects of being older at work.

THE several hundred members who heard the thought‐provoking addresses delivered at the Harrogate conference of the British Institute of Management recently must have returned stimulated by much that was said. At the outset the American Ambassador reminded them that the big business tended to suffer from a certain complacency because it thought that operating efficiency could allow it to ignore the whips and spurs of competition, although he did not advocate cutting up the leviathans to nourish a lot of little fish for the sake of seeing them fight. Indeed, he thought the growth of mass markets meant that the creation of business organisations commensurate with catering for them was inevitable.

THIS being the beginning of a New Year, we are apt to reminisce. We search our memory for past happenings that might just possibly be a pointer for the future.