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In recent years, Canadian women have been flooding into the labour market, into employment and unemployment. While the steadily rising participation rate of women has been carefully documented and discussed, the more dramatic increase in the female unemployment rate has been largely ignored or dismissed as unimportant. To the extent that these patterns have been analysed, the growing number of women searching for paid work has been explained primarily in terms of changing female aspirations and preferences and has been viewed by some as dangerous, as a threat to male employment. Too many women choosing to work (and, as a corollory, choosing not to have babies) is often seen to be the main cause of the increase in both male and female unemployment. More effort has been directed toward dismissing women's unemployment as insignificant — because they do not need to work, because they are secondary workers, and because they claim unemployment primarily to gain eligibility for benefits, toward explaining away women's unemployment, than toward investigating the economic conditions which give rise to these massive changes in women's labour force behaviour.

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.

Joseph L. Mallardi has been elected executive vice‐president and chief operating officer of Howmet Turbine Components Corporation, effective July 1, 1984.

28 December 1981–1 January 1982: Haifa, Israel WOMEN'S WORLDS: THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP An international interdisciplinary congress for academics from all over the world to allow for a dialogue between the various disciplines of the social sciences and humanities and to promote co‐operation and interaction. Further information from The Secretariat, International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, 122 Hayarkon Street PO Box 3054, Tel Aviv, Israel. Telephone (03) 222217/8 Telex 341132.

Profiles broadband communications, wondering whether AOL Time Warner will keep its side of the bargain that promises to provide a universal telephone service, in exchange for accepting regulations regarding monopoly. Recommends that only by quality of service monitoring can AOL Time Warner be seen to be keeping its side of the bargain. Concludes that quality of service monitoring is a timely approach in the USA with regard to broadband communications systems.

This article reports on a recent study of personnel management in the life insurance industry. Until recently the industry has enjoyed a comparatively untroubled expansion largely because of the investment‐seeking surplus incomes of an increasingly affluent population and the market protection which large asset bases provided for the established companies. Recent developments are eroding the stability, though not the overall potential, of the market and it is against this background that our analysis takes place.

The paper aims to explore the role of union strategic influence on the adoption of High Performance Work Systems (HPWS) in organisations and examines how the effects of job security and then in turn the industrial relations climate, mediate this relationship in a serial manner.

The research analyses an original quantitative survey of union negotiators and representatives in 382 workplaces in England. The analysis employs structural equation modelling techniques to examine the relationships between union influence, job security, industrial relations climate and HPWS.

Union strategic influence has a positive effect on the take up of HPWS in unionised workplaces. Job security and the industrial relations climate demonstrate a serial mediation effect between union strategic influence and the take up of HPWS: union strategic influence has a positive effect on job security, which in turn positively impacts the industrial relations climate, thereby increasing the likelihood of the adoption of HPWS. The findings for the industrial relations climate are particularly strong.

Findings suggest that organisations will benefit from focussing on the development of positive industrial relations, where unions have genuine strategic influence, because this maximises the likelihood that HPWS can be adopted and sustained.

The paper provides a novel focus on the take up of HPWS within unionised workplaces. It focusses on the role of union strategic influence and the mediating effects of job security and the industrial relations climate, which are contextual factors that have been underexplored in the HPWS literature to date.

Several years ago the Department of Defence in the United States engaged United Airlines to develop detailed documentation to describe and justify airline practices for developing preventative maintenance programmes, such as those exemplified by the Air Transportation Association publication: MSG‐2 Airline/Manufacturer Maintenance Programme Planning Document. The result of that effort was a book entitled Reliability‐Centred Maintenance, that described a logical discipline for developing preventative maintenance programmes which are matched to specific, identified, inherent reliability characteristics of the equipment that they support.

The establishment of a library by Robert Baikie in late 18th‐century Kirkwall is examined and the library′s subsequent history and current preservation outlined. The contents of the library are assessed in their contemporary cultural and social background.