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Effective planning and scheduling systems improve performance in every area of a company. Interfunctional communication and understanding must improve planning that involves joint plans, and schedules must be instituted. Sales and marketing are crucial to this process since they are the starting point with their forecasts and customer order demands. Sales and marketing's active participation in planning and scheduling creates a raised performance and a consensus‐based, trusting working relationship with all other functions.

Tioxide International Ltd have announced that the prices of all grades of Tioxide titanium pigment will be increased by £18 per metric tonne. This amount conforms to the criteria laid down by the Counter‐Inflation Act 1973, and the Prices Commission has been informed of the intention.

It is reasonable to assume the existence of a new “dynamic” that influences how to measure reference services in libraries and how we evaluate the reference librarians who provide those services. Traditional, face-to-face delivery of reference services is reported to be declining, and there is myriad evidence, albeit largely uncollated and little evaluated, which suggests reference librarians are delivering significant and increasing amounts of the services they render in network environments. These trends raise questions, in turn, about how well we understand the current state of affairs in reference services, particularly where the management and evaluation of reference services in network environments are concerned.

The purpose of this study is to investigate relevant circumstances and conditions bearing – directly and indirectly – on changes in the nature, form, substance, and effects of reference services – through the reference librarian experience. Specifically, this attitudinal study will account for and assess changes in reference services (in the context of a medium-sized private university with a national reputation for successfully integrating information technologies into the educational process), with the further aim of developing an understanding of how to capture statistics and evaluate reference services and personnel in this dynamic environment. Reference librarians at a second mid-sized public university library were also interviewed for comparative data analysis in this study. Select portions of this paper have appeared in other publications in shorter, focused, introductory articles.

This article discusses how the concepts of exploration and exploitation are fruitful for understanding individual fantasies of escape from the demands of contemporary workplaces. We examine one influential articulation of such fantasies, namely the best-selling self-help book “The 4-Hour Workweek.” This book advocates that individuals outsource the bulk of the routine (“exploitation”) tasks of their lives, leaving themselves free for creativity, play, and leisure (“exploration”). In this way, a radical separation of exploitation and exploration at the individual level is proposed. We examine the meanings and contradictions of such ideas by discussing how they may function as powerful escape fantasies for those facing corporate overwork. However, we argue that the solution proposed is unsatisfactory because of its individualism, which fails to see the inherently social nature of work and life.

The 1986 Financial Services Act (FSA), operational since the end of April 1988, was an Act designed to protect investors from “cowboys” such as life insurance salesmen whose interests do not extend beyond their commission cheques, and offshore investment companies who fail to keep proper accounts. This image lies in sharp contrast to the large established institutions who, under the avowedly self‐regulatory regime, have important responsibilities for ensuring high standards among their staff and representatives. In this brief polemic we explore the validity of this contrast since we do not believe it is simply stereo‐typical cowboys who threaten the investor, and question whether, even within the limited terms of this stereotype, the Act can be seen as effective in the sphere of collective investment products. In providing this account we draw upon our academic research into the financial services industry.

Drawing upon an eight-year-long study of two of the global accounting firms, this chapter suggests that a key aspect of professionalism is networking. Networking within these firms is crucial to achieving and demonstrating professional competence and to career advancement. It involves sophisticated forms of social practice and permeates a range of organizational processes. It is argued that networking also implies and potentially creates and regulates a particular kind of identity, namely that of the networked self or, more specifically, the networked professional.

A reliable forecast of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin has the potential to help mitigate the economic losses caused by hurricanes. One of the difficult problems is to make reasonable annual forecast of catastrophe losses based on the short record of historical observations. Atmospheric conditions tend to influence tropical cyclone development. Considering the complex interactions among climatological factors, prediction of future hurricane activity is challenging. In this study, the authors are attempting to predict the number of Atlantic hurricanes for a given year based on two different approaches.

In part I, an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is used to model a long‐run behavior of Atlantic hurricane frequency. The authors present a comparison of CSU's forecast with ARIMA model. Part II focuses on the relationship between the climate signals and hurricane activity and introduces a new approach in including climate indices into the prediction model. In this part, principal components analysis (PCA) is used to identify possible patterns in historical data based on six climate indices measured prior to hurricane season. The objective is to reduce the data set to a smaller set while most of the variability observed in the real data is captured. The variances observed in an orthogonal system indicate the order of contribution of each mode shape.

Results from part I suggest that CSU's forecast model, in general, is superior to results obtained by ARIMA. In part II, the correlation between mode (shapes) and the number of Atlantic hurricanes per year is examined. The resulting relationships show that, for the time interval of 1990 through 2011, PCA‐based approach provides better estimates compared to CSU's forecast.

The paper presents a unique prediction approach which is simple, relatively accurate and easy to apply. The results of this study show that complex statistical analyses/models do not necessarily provide better forecasts.

This paper argues for an increased volume of references to Gabriel Tarde and Georg Simmel in the field of organization sociology. The text emphasizes the importance of these two sociologists in understanding the role of imperfection in organizing and the phenomena of fashion and imitation in contemporary organizations. Tarde’s theory challenged the antinomy between continuity and discontinuity, considering finite entities as cases of infinite processes and stable situations as transitory. Simmel’s theory of fashion explores the democratic and democratizing nature of fashion, which satisfies the demand for social adaptation and differentiation. They both saw fashion as a selection mechanism for organizational forms and managerial practices. Furthermore, referring to Tarde and Simmel can help counter the overemphasis on identity construction and the neglect of alterity in social sciences. The construction of identity often overlooks the inevitability of difference and alterity, which are essential aspects of collective projects. Lastly, this paper discusses Simmel’s concept of the stranger and its relevance in analyzing the experiences of foreigners and their potential advantages as “double strangers” in academia and society. The conclusion is that Tarde and Simmel’s contributions offer valuable insights for understanding the dynamics of management, organizing, and social interactions in contemporary organizations.

Addresses the latest vogue in managerial theory – business process re‐engineering (BPR). Locates BPR within other recent challenges to traditional modes of organizing work, and subjects it to some critical scrutiny in order to provide some markers for further work. Examines BPR in terms of the assumptions which it claims not to have, and in terms of the contradictions entailed by its use of concepts of commitment, empowerment and technology. Overall, aims to provide HRM professionals and academics with some of the arguments that may be deployed to challenge the excessive enthusiasm of some BPR advocates.

Quality control circles, a Japanese management technique for improving quality, productivity, and worker morale, have been widely adopted in western industry. The apparent hope is that the circles are a key to competing with the Japanese. In this article QC circles are shown to resemble, and potentially overlap with, six other western work improvement programmes, most of which have had successful histories. Case observations offer limited evidence that plant configuration considerations should be foremost among the factors emphasised in an industrial work improvement programme and that western industry should not expect too much from quality control circles.