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THE BOUNDARIES have been set now and re‐organisation has come upon the public library world at its set date, approaching, occurring and passing on, like a lunar eclipse.

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.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

Employee participation is conceived as a four‐stage process (interaction, communication to and from management, influence by and on management, employee effect on decisions). Eighty‐two lower supervisory managers perceived the four stages as highly related except for influence by management. Further, the four processes of participation were found in approximately equal amounts (except for managerial influence). An examination by decision type showed that employee and managerial influence were inversely related on corporate and departmental decisions, but were unrelated on departmental employee and operational decisions. Employees engaged most in participation on departmental employee decisions and least on departmental staffing decisions. This difference in participation was greater for organisations of small size.

There is no subject so controversial and problematic as participation. It strikes at the very heart of a manager's style and at the very nature of an employee's job. Participation forces a manager to uncomfortable introspection about desires for control and alternatively openness to the influence of others. There is simultaneously the desire to help others and the desire to retain authority over them.

The management of children′s literature is a search for value and suitability. Effective policies in library and educational work are based firmly on knowledge of materials, and on the bibliographical and critical frame within which the materials appear and might best be selected. Boundaries, like those between quality and popular books, and between children′s and adult materials, present important challenges for selection, and implicit in this process are professional acumen and judgement. Yet also there are attitudes and systems of values, which can powerfully influence selection on grounds of morality and good taste. To guard against undue subjectivity, the knowledge frame should acknowledge the relevance of social and experiential context for all reading materials, how readers think as well as how they read, and what explicit and implicit agendas the authors have. The good professional takes all these factors on board.

Quality circles have become one of the most commonly used remedies to reverse the decline in productivity in business organisations. In this article, the authors draw upon the experiences of quality circles in four US organisations in order to make some general observations.

Clarification of the term participation is sought through asking key organisational members, (a) why participation is being introduced in their organisation; (b) what are the conditions seen as necessary for its success; (c) what is the likely process in participative meetings; and (d) what are the likely outcomes of participation. Managers in large companies were found to give reasons for introducing participation in terms of increasing opportunities to communicate to employees and to gain acceptance of decisions. Managers in small companies see the benefits of participation primarily in terms of increased employee morale. Endorsement of participation occurs more often in modern organisations (light engineering, trained younger managers and less entrenched unions), where managers see it as a forum for two‐way communication. In traditional organisations (heavy engineering, traditional managers, entrenched unions) participation is seen as a response to political and union pressure and is endorsed only grudgingly.

The degree of direction expected from a consultant is a concern for client and consultant. Indeed, clients often put consultants into an expert role and subsequently determine whether to take the preferred advice. Consultants, on the other hand, tend to downplay their expertise and the desire for direction, preferring rather to provide a client with a number of choices. Neither position is completely accurate. This author contends that consultants attempt to move clients in a preferred direction through the use of various attributions, which focus client attention, provide a basis for evaluation and permit the client to find meaning in a situation. Finally, these attributions allow the client to redefine his or her needs, values and preferences.

With the publication in January 1977 of the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy has come a recognition that the rights of employees are almost equal to the rights of shareholders and management. Industrial democracy is seen to represent an extension of modern political democracy to industrial companies. In society, political enfranchisement no longer takes account of the ownership of capital or land; nor requires an education or qualifying period. Democracy has come to mean ‘one adult, one vote’. While the Bullock Report is not recommending that degree of industrial democracy in companies, it is theoretically allowing employees an important influence on decision‐making at the policy level, with a subsequent loss of influence to the shareholders and relevant property owners. The majority of the Bullock Committee believe that the native capacities of the working population can be drawn out by putting the relationship between capital and labour on a new basis which will involve not just management but the whole work force in sharing responsibility for the success and profitability of the enterprise. This they believe can only be done if the representatives of the employees are given a real, not a sham or token share, in making strategic decisions which in the past have been reserved to management and the representatives of the shareholders. The debate about industrial democracy is much less about the desirability of moving in the direction of greater participation than about the pace of change and the need to extend such participation to the Board.