Search results

Managers today are faced with an ever‐expanding range of options when it comes to managing information within their organizations. Although we build bigger, better and faster machines, the sheer volume of information is expanding more rapidly than our capacity to process it. The problem lies with the software. Most of it is obsolete by the time it is delivered and the design is such that it is nearly impossible to make changes without totally redesigning it. Today's corporation must be flexible and the company's information system must be capable of evolving along with the organization.

The article surveys the general academic library response within the UK to disability legislation and the growing numbers of students declaring disabilities entering higher education.

Following a brief review of the provisions of legislation, particularly the Spe,"Integrated Manufacturing Systems" }Integrated_Manufacturing_Systemscial Educational Needs And Disability Act of 2001, and the response of funding and other bodies, the article addresses specific regional – that is, collaborative – and individual institutional initiatives.

Responses from libraries are found to be very positive and offer a service‐level benchmark to libraries in other sectors or elsewhere.

This is a geographically focussed paper, looking at the UK and in particular the Scottish position, and other countries may present different findings.

An account of the implementation of a variety of initiatives aimed at disabled users, with much relevance to practitioner concerns.

The paper gives a valuable overview of the progress made in academic libraries to date on disability issues in Scotland, and in the UK, and shows that both the legislation combined with the inherent customer‐service values of the library profession have helped raise the standard of library performance in this regard.

Flexibility in the design of offices can be designed in from the beginning and conditions can be provided which do not produce discomfort and hazardous working conditions. Trade unions are increasingly becoming concerned with the rapid introduction of information technology. A recent research project indicated the lack of awareness of potential environmental problems among architects, designers and managers.

This paper aims to investigate the role of servitization intent in the servitization process, and specifically the role dissonance (at an organizational level) in servitization intent can play in creating barriers to the servitization effort. Servitization intent is defined as the desire to achieve a future state of increased servitization.

The research uses elite interviews and secondary data to explore servitization intent and its role during the servitization process. It examines the resistance to change resulting from a misalignment of the executive intent to servitize, and the organizational intent to retain the existing manufacturing business model. By encompassing data from companies representing a significant portion of the total industry (as measured by revenue), the study provides an industry level perspective of servitization intent and alignment.

Servitization intent and three key managerial challenges related to servitization intent that act as barriers to servitization were identified: lack of servitization intent, overcoming the manufacturing mindset associated with the organizational intent and the constraints resulting from managerial experience. Servitization intent and its associated managerial challenges were present at an industry level with consistent findings being shown across the major firms in the industry studied. A number of managerial strategies for overcoming these barriers were identified.

The research focuses on a single industry; the findings, potentially, have application across a broad range of industries.

A key management implication from these findings is the need for a clear understanding of the organizational intent in relation to servitization in addition to the need to bring this organizational intent in alignment with the executives’ servitization intent.

This research makes a contribution by identifying the misalignment between servitization intent in different levels of the organization during the servitization process and the mechanisms that can improve alignment and help effect servitization.

In the last ten years, an abundance of writing has appeared on the need for cooperation, resource sharing, and networking. The terms themselves are not always well defined, although networking usually implies the use of computers and other telecommunication links. The consensus is that cooperation (resource sharing, networking) is an economic necessity. Resource sharing and cooperation are based on the assumption that academic libraries can no longer afford to be self‐sufficient—they cannot purchase all materials required to meet the needs of their curricula and related faculty research.

THERE IS NO LACK of pundits who are ready to tell the government how their plan will reduce the massive figure of people who cannot find work. Our own contributor, Angus Downie, elsewhere in this issue provides his own plan — to force job sharing and make up the sum then earned by each of the ‘partners’ by a contribution from oil revenues.

IN THESE recessionary times it is encouraging to be able to record some library expansion. After several years of anticipation (by turns eager and nervous, according to the state of rumour at both the national and local levels in the higher education world), the City University Business School moved into imposing new premises on the uppermost floors of the emerging Barbican Arts Centre.

With its traditional good timing and aplomb the Library Association will ensure that next year's subscription demands arrive with this year's Christmas cards. As I gently spar with my conscience over whether to maintain my record of unbroken membership I feel that it is quite in order to question whether the LA is a cost‐effective, efficiently‐run, value for money organisation.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked , which may be consulted in the Library.