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Harley‐Davidson was keen to maintain its continual expansion, but was aware it needed to invest in its people in order to keep momentum high. The Accenture Human Capital Development Framework enabled the company to take stock of its HR activities and create a comprehensive human capital strategy for the future. Here, representatives from both organizations explain how the Framework was used.

This paper aims to report work on achieving semantic interoperability in electronic auctions. In particular, it considers the advantages and drawbacks of using hard‐coding and using semantic messages in the communication between the auction system and the participants of the auction.

It is demonstrated that although XML‐documents are commonly used for information exchange they do not provide any means of talking about the semantics (i.e. meaning) data. It is also shown that by expressing exchanged documents by resource description framework (RDF) the semantics of the messages can be captured in the message.

It is recognized that hard‐coding is proven to be a valuable and powerful way for an exchange of structured and persistent business documents (messages). However, if we use hard‐coding in the case of non‐persistent documents and non‐static markets we will encounter problems in deploying new auction policies and extending the system by new participants.

The introduction of the RDF‐technology in message exchange is challenging as it incorporates Semantic web technologies into many parts of the auction system, e.g. on data stores and query languages. The introduction of this technology is also an investment. The investment on new Semantic web technology includes a variety of costs including software, hardware and training costs.

By automating electronic auctions both buyers and sellers can benefit as they can achieve cost reductions and shorten the duration of the auction processes. Also new auction formats can be easily deployed.

Researcher Highlight: Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950)

The aim of this paper is to explore the marketing strategies and tools used by W&R Jacob & Co. in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

This paper is based on close analysis of W&R Jacob & Co. labels and other primary material supported by secondary sources.

The paper explores the company's initial focus on the development of an export market and their competition with similar firms in England for that business. It reveals the ways in which the firm contributed to the development of product naming and labelling conventions within the biscuit industry in this period. Labelling and product presentation strategies are examined to show methods of origination that coped with a prolific rate of introduction of new lines. Political change in Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s imposed limits on Jacob's markets and precipitated a reorientation of labelling strategies.

The paper is based on extensive original research and makes a solid contribution to the understanding of new product development and marketing strategies within the biscuit industry in the first four decades of the twentieth century. It also furthers understanding of the effects of Irish Free State policies on export industry.

‘One would hate to see the US carried away to extremes. All that President Nixon wants, as he has said on several occasions, is “fair trade”—and that the United States should come out ahead, which is a natural definition of fairness.’

This, the ninth annual survey of American history reference sources, comprises reviews of twenty 1985 imprints. The largest categories are bibliographies and encyclopedias (in which there are, respectively, five and four entries), followed by atlases, collective biographies, and dictionaries (two each), and one each of the following: a chronology, a directory, a document collection, a reference guide, and a statistical compendium.

AFTER the most severe winter in living memory we can look at the position of libraries with some satisfaction. The almost impossible weather energized some libraries as never before and many report a circulation surpassing that of any previous winter. Many circumstances go to such a result. The failure of other types of circulating library, owing to the continuing scarcity of books, to meet demands formerly made upon them is one. The earlier closing than was the case of most places of amusement should also be borne in mind. The disappointing thing about the situation is that we are unable ourselves to supply the best fiction, for example, in editions of which we can be satisfied. We have not been able to take advantage of our opportunities.

Reviews the unique career of arguably the foremost higher dimensional geometer of the century, H.S.M. Coxeter. Discusses a book which encompasses this span of creativity – Kaleidoscopes, subtitled “Selected Writings of H.S.M. Coxeter”.

Charged with a daunting task of organizational analysis, the good Stanford graduate of my era dutifully turns for inspiration to Dick Scott's Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems. It is not quite the Bible, but it has a far more useful index and bibliography. And, as a beginning, I often encourage my own students to consider the basic “elements of organizations” that Scott presents in the form of a simple “diamond” typology, originally attributed to Harold Leavitt (1965) and in the most recent edition (Scott & Davis, 2007) updated to reflect the work of Nadler, Tushman, and Nadler (1997). This typology directs attention to five key components of any organizational phenomenon: (1) the participants; (2) the formal structure; (3) the informal structure; (4) the technology; and (5) the environment. Considering each of these elements may shed some light on the Stanford experience.