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Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Houses have an average life span of about a hundred years, whereas households and habitats can change radically and repeatedly during that time. Consequently house designers are faced with the task of giving form to a shelter for dwelling for a period during which the composition of the household and the associated spatial rituals will go through major changes.

Taking not the changeable but the permanent as a departure−point opens up new perspectives. The permanent, or durable component of the house, constitutes the frame within which change can take place. This frame defines the space for change. The frame itself is specific and has qualities that determine the architecture for a long period of time. The space inside the frame is general, its use unspecified; this space I have called generic space.

In this sense the frame frees other parts of a building. Take, for example, the loadbearing column. It relieves the wall from acting in a loadbearing capacity, it frees the wall. A notion essential to the frame ’s functioning is that of disconnection. The column can free the wall by virtue of the fact that wall and column are not inextricably linked.

A building can be separated up into a number of layers that together defines the building as a whole. Accordingly, the building can be regarded as a composition assembled from these layers. Each layer is distinguished from the others by the special role it fulfils. In the frame concept it is assumed that every layer may in principle serve as a frame. Basing my information on texts by Laugier, Semper, Loos, Duffy and Brand, I have made a distinction between the following five layers:

• Main loadbearing structure

• Skin

• Scenery

• Service elements

• Access

In principle I distinguish three categories of changeability: the alterable, the extendable and the polyvalent. These three forms of changeability can be linked with three types of generic space. Should the generic space contain a layer that can be changed then we may describe it as alterable. Should the generic space not be bordered on all sides then it is a question of extendibility. Should the generic space contain no other layers while the generic space invites different uses through its form and dimensions, then we have polyvalence.

To explore my concept, I present an overview of every imaginable combination of layers. This catalogue of frames is then divided among four distinct series of combinations. The basic combinations and the combination series, constitute the tools for designing houses that proceed from the frame concept. It was the intention of this study to develop the frame concept and the body of concepts attendant on it. Building upon its predecessors, I developed a stimulating resource for anyone involved in designing houses that are able to accommodate change. The potentials and limitations of the frame concept can be further explored as designing proceeds.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

This chapter compares interdisciplinary research that engages genomic science from economics, political science, and sociology. It describes, compares, and evaluates concepts and research findings from new and rapidly developing research fields, and develops a conceptual taxonomy of the social environment.

A selection of programmatic and empirical articles, published mostly since 2008 in leading economics, political science, and sociology journals, were analyzed according to (a) the relationship they pose between their discipline and genomic science, (b) the specific empirical contributions they make to disciplinary research questions, and (c) their conceptualization of the “social environment” as it informs the central problematique of current inquiry: gene-environment interaction.

While all three of the social science disciplines reviewed engage genomic science, economics and political science tend to engage genomics on its own terms, and develop genomic explanations of economic and political behavior. In contrast, sociologists develop arguments that for genomic science to advance, the “environment” in gene-environment interaction needs better theorization and measurement. We develop an approach to the environment that treats it as a set of measurable institutional (rule-like) arrangements, which take the forms of neighborhoods, families, schools, nations, states, and cultures.

Interdisciplinary research that combines insights from the social sciences and genomic science should develop and apply a richer array of concepts and measures if gene-environment research – including epigenetics – is to advance.

This chapter provides a critical review and redirection of three rapidly developing areas of interdisciplinary research on gene-environment interaction and epigenetics.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the question of what is an appropriate enterprise resource planning (ERP) reference model for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementation and through the model matching. There are other implicit goals to increasing the awareness of the reference models, as this highlights the principles embedded in ERP systems and explains the classification of reference models, which is useful in terms of the reuse of knowledge.

In this paper, a comparison between ERP reference models is conducted using a suitable decision-making technique and the final results are discussed. The comparison depends on nine criteria related to conceptual ERP reference models: scope, abstraction, granularity, views, purpose, simplicity, availability, ease of use for model matching, and target audience.

This study concludes that the business process reference model is best for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementations. The final ranking of the alternatives based on all criteria places the system organizational model second, followed by the function and data/object reference models, in that order.

This paper is one of very few studies on the selection of appropriate ERP reference models according to the ERP implementation approach and model matching factors. This research also provides an in-depth analysis of various ERP reference model types.