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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.

Insurers are competing by adopting product innovations that provide the insured with integrated coverage for actuarial and financial risks. This article compares the contract structures of blended life policies between the insurance markets in Italy and the United Kingdom within the context of asset‐liability management and welfare analysis.

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

The cost of building factories and plants is still plagued by massive over‐runs. David Saunders looks at what is being done to improve the whole area of projects management. Pictures by John Benton‐Harris.

Up till recently out of town retail warehouses have not been noted for their good looks, but this may change if the lead taken by a new electrical retailing venture is followed. ‘Ultimate’, the result of a tie up between Harris Queensway and Debenhams, is one of the first ‘sheds’ to be awarded the distinction of being designed, in the hope that its improved appearance and attention to merchandising will do for this store what they have undoubtedly achieved for the high street shops. Sue Sharpies looks at this new operation and examines the reasons behind its formation.

In this report, published by PEP and Sussex University's Centre for Contemporary European Studies, the authors hope that union leaderships will again be able to exercise enough authority to create a unified strategy, despite current contrary strong pressures from sections of their membership. This strategy would consist not just in overall pay restraint nor in trying to restore ‘traditional’ differentials, but in moving towards a sensible policy and machinery for distribution of pay between competing groups.

This paper aims to present an innovative example of a master for teleoperation capable of moving in six degrees of freedom and of providing a force and torque feedback on the operator's hand.

After a brief overview of what the state of the art in teleoperation has to offer, the paper outlines the choice of an innovative structure in terms of both geometry and components, pointing out its main characteristics compared with traditional interfaces.

The master for teleoperation WiRo‐6.3 has been designed and constructed and is fully operative, thanks to the following theoretical analyses: positional and orientation workspace(s), forward and inverse kinematics, statics, overall control strategies. The mechanical details are also presented.

The WiRo‐6.3 is suitable to those applications in which human command is necessary but potentially harmful, and where a force‐feedback interface is preferred to obtain better control over the task to be accomplished. A possible field of interest could be the control of robot arms in dangerous environments, nuclear applications, uncomfortable climates, remote operations.

The master WiRo‐6.3 is a novel device both for its geometric structure and for the wire actuation choice; those characteristics provide very interesting results in terms of dexterity, force feedback performance and overall user‐friendliness.

To propose a new haptic modeling and contact analysis algorithm (modified long element method (MLEM)) to efficiently model deformation, to estimate elasticity, and to provide the characterization of contact with deformable objects, which is important in teleoperation and haptic system.

Widely used finite element method for haptic rendering and visualization of deformable objects has limitations in real‐time applications because of its massive calculations and the absence of physical modeling. Using long elements method (LEM), the authors propose the MLEM which is capable of real‐time deformation rendering and elasticity estimation with reliable physical modeling. The authors applied MLEM to a simple haptic system composed of the three‐link SNU DD‐robot and a force‐feedback joystick.

An efficient, real‐time haptic modeling for deformable objects has been developed. MLEM provides physically accurate deformation modeling in real time, and estimates the elasticity of objects at contact, providing contact characterization based on material properties.

MLEM has been applied to SNU DD‐robot, and displayed real‐time haptic visualization in 2D space. It can be applied easily to any haptic system with force sensors, and may have impacts on the applications of teleoperation, robot‐aided surgery and human‐robot interaction.

This paper offers a practical tool to the engineers in the haptics field for visualization of deformation. The efficient algorithm of MLEM can be placed on any haptic system with force sensors, and will improve the efficiency and accuracy of teleoperated haptic systems with real‐time analysis of haptic contact.

This paper aims to make an industrial robot intelligently and remotely cooperate with humans to work in unknown unstructured environments.

Presents a bilateral adaptive teleoperation control approach involving a contact force driven compensation with an auto‐switching function, which utilizes a biologically motivated compliance function. Based on sensed contact force, the switching function can adjust its slave control input to decide how much robotic intelligences should intervene in the system by switching modes. Other schemes for robotic intelligence, robotic impedances and compensators, are investigated to guarantee good transparency without warranting human error and maintain a stable contact, based on the force feedback, in constrained motion while a communication delay exists.

The simulation and experimental results demonstrate transparency and contact stability in the presence of constant and time‐varying communication delays, respectively. The proposed bilateral adaptive teleoperation control method outperforms three other techniques.

This paper introduces an adaptive teleoperation control method with local robotic intelligence assistance. The developed method does not modify the existing designs of industrial robots. The contact force and position and force errors are well controlled to obtain a stable contact and transparency, through adaptation of robotic impedances.