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Systems in the natural resource industry vary in their tolerance of human errors. Such operations are open to fallible decisions resulting from the way in which the organization deals with information. Organizations must therefore improve on their ability to learn from incidents in order to reduce the frequency and severity of errors. Presents information on fallible decisions from the management and cognitive sciences, as well as major disasters (for example Challenger; Herald of Free Enterprise). Describes a framework for increasing organizational learning through incident analysis and presents a five‐step method for systematically analysing incidents.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

The treatment of marketing expenditures will influence how the firm makes decisions. This paper discusses the relationship between the firm's marketing effort and the firm's marketing investment. Current practice in most companies dictates that marketing costs are treated as expenses and this leads to marketing executives lacking the required information for effective decision making. Often the wrong pressures are placed on the marketing function resulting in poor marketing decisions and consequently affecting the financial performance of the firm.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a simple heuristic model that provides diagnostic capabilities and prevention insights.

The paper brings together findings from previous research including injury statistics from several industries to illustrate that the model's predicted results can be found in practice. This is a conceptual paper that applies a simple heuristic model to existing data. The model leads to an equation with four parameters: a rate of improvement reflecting prevention, a rate of deterioration reflecting obsolescence and lapsing of procedures and practices, an intrinsic limit reflecting technological capability, and a “viscosity” that adds the impact of management system malfunction to the technological limits and normal delays.

The model says that, on the average, injury rates decrease with time if the rate of rejection is greater than the rate of mortality. If “r”<“m” injury rates increase exponentially with time, and drastic results can follow. When “r”=”m” the model produces a constant rate of failure that will continue until something is done to increase “r” or decrease “m”. A constant rate of failure means that an apparent safety limit has been reached. Unless this corresponds to the technological limit, a constant rate means that some preventable failures are recurring with regularity: they risk being accepted as “hazards of the job”. Stable periods may be normal, but they can lead to complacency.

The heuristic power of the model is evident in that parameters and insights from applying it can help define prevention activities to reduce the rate of injury and, by implication, to lengthen operational periods between consecutive injuries.

The drum model can help managers understand the separate but related effects of technology and management on injury rates. The model can be used to seek prevention possibilities hidden in the aggregate data, and it can help the manager to use period data to identify areas or groups in need of help.

This paper seeks to propose a simple four‐element model for how organisations should manage their public relations when they are faced with a critical incident.

The article brings together findings from previous research to construct a four‐element model. Five short case studies are then used to illustrate how the four elements contribute to the management of a critical incident.

Organisations need to follow four elements for their public relations when they are facing a critical incident. These four elements are: think of the public and the media; act fast; be straight; and, show concern and compassion.

Those organisations that used the four elements of the public relations process appear to have gained not only from the short‐term benefits of managing the incidents but also from a long‐term effect on their corporate reputations.

This paper is of value to senior managers and public relations professionals in that it provides a simple four‐element model for positively managing public relations in a critical incident.

Describes an integrated model of error management which includes: the external environment; the corporate environment; the manager and the managed; incident management; inquiries; and, learning from errors. Includes classification of error types with examples. By understanding this model organizations can improve their ability to manage error.

The enormous changes of recent years in the food and drink processed and marketed for our consumption has made certain that the law of the sale of food and drugs, despite its history of a hundred years, will not remain static. One would think that everything that could be interpreted and defined had been so long ago, but the law is dynamic; it is growing all the time. The statutes, at the time of their coming into operation, seem to provide for almost every contingency, yet in a few years, the Courts have modified their effect, giving to clauses new meaning, and even making new law of them. It has always been so. The High Court of Justice not only interprets the law, but from time immemorial, Her Majesty's judges have been making law. Long before Parliament became a statute‐making body, with the legal capacity to “change a man into a woman,” and the supreme court of the land, judges were making the law—the Common Law of England, which settlers during the centuries have taken to the four quarters of the world, where it has invariably grown lustily. Decisions of the Supreme Courts of these newer countries, are accepted as case law here and legal principles evolved from them have returned to enrich the law of the old country.

IT IS disturbing to see, tucked away in the March issue of OST1 newsletter, the first intimation of a reduction in the osti grant to Aslib for the three‐year period 1972–74.

Messrs. W. and G. Clark have invented a milling machine which, it is claimed, for the first time enables a meal containing the whole of the wheat berry in assimilable form to be produced. The cells of the berry, containing the protein, starch grains and wheat germ, are exploded by intense air pressure. The process is wholly dry, whereas wheat which is roller milled is first soaked in water for many hours; and meal produced by the new method contains 8·2 per cent. natural moisture, compared with 17 per cent. in ordinary flour. Already much bread made from the new meal is being sold. It can be obtained from a well‐known London store. Three depôts of the Royal Navy and a London hospital are among regular consumers of bread and biscuits made from the new meal, which is to be subjected to a biological feeding test at the Lister Institute to test its vitamins B1 and B2 complex content.