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Many libraries now provide real‐time online reference service via internet relay chat (IRC). This paper proposes a humorous training technique.

An opinion piece based on current and recent trends in online reference services.

Many libraries now provide real‐time online reference service via IRC. But chat reference service can be challenging, even for experienced reference librarians. This is because the affordances of the chat reference environment are severely limited: there are no non‐verbal cues, and the verbal exchange is limited to what can be typed. Behaviors that are successful at the reference desk may be counterproductive in this changed environment.

This paper proposes a humorous training technique, one designed to make librarians aware of these limitations and to instill behaviors that are more appropriate for chat reference service.

Most of the literature on the World Bank struggles to understand precisely how effective are the Bank’s projects and policies, emphasizing at the same time as reaffirming certain universal parameters with which to measure the good and the bad. This article, by contrast, argues for a different way of seeing the World Bank, that is, for scholarship that interrogates the political rationalities which underlie these distinctions and categories and which make these parameters and measures viable, necessary, and enduring. Indeed, most writings – including the innumerable self‐evaluations carried out by the Bank – simultaneously note the enormity of the Bank’s past misdeeds as well as its unique position as the only global institution up to the monumental task of translating global truths into global plans of action. Because of its unique role as the global development expert, the Bank is always two steps ahead of the pack, always re‐assessing and re‐tooling for improvement in ways that most national and international institutions cannot. Who else can respond so quickly to catastrophes around the globe – appearing one month in Thailand, the next in Argentina, and, in a bomb’s flash, in Afghanistan and Iraq? In a world in which global crises routinely erupt and “require” global experts of development to resolve them, the Bank and its affiliates in the World Bank Group have no rivals. But, rather than ask why the Bank’s responses are ultimately insufficient or flawed, we must first ask how problems get defined in terms of global crises and their solutions in terms of global development institutions in the first place? How did these ideas and institutions become so influential? What power dynamics do they embody?

This study explores how top management teams make strategic decisions. The findings indicate that the top management team performs a variety of monitoring and control functions within most firms, but that a single team with stable composition does not make strategic choices in most organizations. Instead, different groups, with members from multiple organizational levels, form to make various strategic decisions. A stable subset of the top team forms the core of each of these multiple decision‐making bodies. The findings offer a possible explanation for inconsistent findings in the top management team literature, and suggest several new directions for future senior team research.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

A cross‐cultural model of international accounting compatibility is offered by blending Perera's (1989) cultural schema with other dynamic theories. Rahman's (1990) explanatory variables of the accounting regulator and the profession are included along with costly contracting theories (Watts and Zimmerman, 1990) regarding management's behaviour. These latter perspectives help explain the dynamic changes in the external environment. An application of the resulting cross‐cultural model follows through an examination of the potential accounting impact of the emerging free trade zone between New Zealand and Australia. The ability of the tuo national systems to harmonise is suggested by similarities in the environmental factors identified by the extended model. Differences in the regulatory approach between New Zealand and Australia are shown to be supported by underlying cultural factors and may be a persistent barrier. Recent initiatives are les sening this gap. The implications for the New Zealand Society of Accountants' ability to retain control over the standard setting process in New Zealand are also considered.

In this chapter we examine the process by which new firms become central actors within their industry networks. We focus, in particular, on how relatively new venture capital (VC) firms become more central within investment syndication networks. We present a model that captures the relationships among (1) the social capital and status of the new VC firm's founders, (2) the VC firm's resource endowments, (3) the VC firm's ability to forge relationships with other prestigious and central venture capital firms, (4) the visibility-enhancing performance of portfolio firms, and (5) the urgency and effort exhibited by the new VC as it pursues these opportunities. These factors combine to shape a new VC's journey from the periphery to the center of its industry network. To illustrate these processes, we develop in-depth case studies of Benchmark Capital and August Capital, two VC firms founded in 1995. We then elaborate upon the enacted nature of resource and opportunity constraints and conclude with a discussion of how new firms create their own self-fulfilling prophecies.

The glass ceiling is a metaphor used to characterize the gender inequality of women at the top in most large western organizations. This situation has prompted many business organizations, NGOs and governments to encourage large organizations to promote more women into the executive suite and onto boards of directors. While there is little controversy about this initiative, this paper argues that there should be because it directly challenges the principle that merit should outweigh diversity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper reviews research that purports to show that women are unfairly under-represented in the most senior positions in large western organizations. It also reviews the arguments that more senior women would improve the performance of these organizations. This research is then used to develop a model of why there are markedly fewer women than men at the top of large organizations.

This study finds that most of the research studies purporting to show that there is a bias against promoting women to the top of large western organizations are unsound because they are poorly designed and/or fail to accommodate alternative explanations for this effect. Thus, the current number of women who run these organizations may be a good reflection of their contribution to the management of these organizations. These findings suggest that many of the policies that are promoted to help women break through the glass ceiling are misguided.

Large organizations should think carefully about following the advice of special interest groups who vigorously promote this social cause.

Social policy advocates need better research from which to advance their cause that there are currently too few women in senior management positions of large organizations.

This is one of only a handful of papers that challenges the current orthodoxy that artificial glass ceilings are restricting the potential contribution of women to the better management of large organizations.

Todd Wilson, manager of partner development at Educational Technology Corp., needed to determine the targeting, positioning, and selling strategy for its innovative Interactive Mathematics software for the college market. This required determining what types of colleges to target and which stakeholders to focus on within institutions. His task was complicated by the unclear objectives of nonprofit institutions and the differing motivations of teachers, students, and college administrators in adopting software-based learning technology. Highlights the difficulties in innovation adoption within large nonprofit institutions and the challenges in marketing to institutions with complex decision-making processes, multiple influencers, and conflicting motivations.