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The research project is centred on examining how new technology comes to be used in certain ways and for certain purposes, by focusing on the pre‐installation stages.

Given the inherent flexibility of new technology, there is a range of possibilities for its utilisation in organisations. This implies, for example, that alternatives for organisation (re)structuring and job (re)design should be considered. Decisions and actions taken before the new technology actually gets introduced into the organisation also become critical. Unfortunately, this is a neglected research area. This pre‐introduction phase is termed the adoption phase of new technology. The article examines each of these two major phases, and argues that time and effort put into adoption can pay off in terms of a less‐problematic, and, hence time‐consuming and costly, introduction.

Following extensive research at a company in the printing industry, management is concluded to have operated in an unimaginative way towards the introduction of new technology. Conversely, recent publications on the subject have emphasised its flexibility, and the extent to which there is some degree of choice inherent in the redesign of work in such circumstances. Moreover, workers may also resist managerial changes — especially those which attempt to deskill their jobs — at the point of production.

Two recent empirical studies of new technology adoption, one focusing on employee resourcing aspects and the other on employee relations, have concluded as follows: in many instances, it may well be “that on balance it is employment policies that are more likely to determine the way in which technological change is implemented” (rather than the other way around); and “it is more sensible to talk of the impact of industrial relations on technological change than the reverse…”. These findings are supportive of the work of Buchanan and Boddy, who have argued that “the changes to structure that accompany technological change reflect strongly and directly the expectations and objectives of management, and weakly and indirectly the characteristics of the technology”. We broadly concur with these views, and, given that there is potentially a good deal of space within which managers and others can decide and act when new technology is adopted, we focus on the part that personnel specialists have played here, on the basis of case studies both authors have conducted of new technology adoption and implementation. But first, we need to review what the relevant social science literature can tell us about this matter.

Quality measurements and techniques ‐ for example SPC ‐ can play an important role in achieving high levels of quality. However, in practice, the methods sometimes fail to deliver the expected benefits, for a variety of human and organizational reasons. Draws on three case studies to explore some of these practical problems. Concludes by making a number of suggestions for improving the effectiveness of quality measurements in organizations.

This paper examines some approaches to the professionalisation process and relates these to considerations which seem to have led the Institute of Personnel Management, particularly in recent years, to be concerned to establish and develop the knowledge‐base of the occupation of personnel management, importantly through certification procedures. On the basis of a comparative national questionnaire survey of student attrition rates on IPM and Diploma in Management Studies courses over the years 1973–76, it is hypothesised that this emphasis has been a major contributory factor in the high attrition rates on IPM examination courses throughout the United Kingdom. The paper concludes with some observations on the new examination scheme (introduced in 1980) in the context of a discussion of personnel managers' (and their spokesmen's) search for more acceptance and power in organisations.

The chapter will review significant changes in information technology (IT) affecting research over the 30-year history of Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology. It compares broad overviews of computers and the social sciences published shortly after the beginning of the section (1989 and 1990) with a contemporary overview of online research methods from 2017. It also draws on my own experiences from 1981 to the present as both an academic and a software entrepreneur. The author will discuss how changes in the section parallel developments in social science computing over this period, identifying some of the significant ways IT has transformed both the methods of research and the substantive foci of research. Finally, the author extrapolates into the future to consider how continuing changes in the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and natural language understanding may change how sociological research is conducted in the foreseeable future.

The paper examines a recent example of work and employment restructuring in the Royal Navy. This involved the creation of a new employment branch (the Warfare Branch) out of two former branches: the Operations Branch and the Weapon Engineering Branch. The case study is used as a vehicle for exploring whether, and if so in what senses, technical change can be argued to have contributed to this organizational restructuring, within the wider contexts and dynamics of change.

Due to the globalization of trade, hundreds of millions containers pass every year through world ports. Such a situation is extremely challenging in terms of securing freight transport operations. However, costs and lead-times are still very important components of supply chains' performance models. Therefore, the drive for enhanced safety and security cannot be made at the expense of these other two factors of competitiveness, and the processes implemented by the global supply chain links, including the maritime port one, should tend to a joint optimization of trade facilitation and operational safety / security.

The research on which this paper feeds back falls within the frame of this mixed performance requirement. More specifically, the paper presents a decision-support system dedicated to managing the risks associated with land and maritime container transportation; this system is based on the modeling of the knowledge of a group of experts, and covers the three phases of risk identification, assessment and avoidance / mitigation.

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.