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Higher education, government, international agencies, technology and science—these have been the content of papers so far. But the need for information extends downwards as well as upwards and I want now to step down the ladder as it were and look at what is taking place in schools, primary, secondary and middle. Or to be more specific to examine some changes in school librarianship and in particular what is happening in the resource‐providing agencies which have grown up to meet the ever widening demands for recorded information in teaching and learning. These demands are now as much visual as verbal and it is reasonable to expect that the present generation of students will begin to look for the multi media provision they have grown accustomed to at school to be reflected in their local public library or through the organization for which they work.

An odd‐sounding expression recently introduced into the language, derived from the passage of events, Privatization, introduced as a rescue operation for sections of public and nationalised industry to hand them over to private enterprise to avoid their destruction and smothering by the unholy wedlock of trade unionism and weak, inefficient management. It frequently met with the opposition of unions and sections of staff. Efforts have been made to sabotage the take‐over and operation of the services by private firms, occasionally making them impossible to operate. This elementary operation was expected to achieve even greater success in the sections taken over and reduced the room for destructive manoeuvring by ajitator, much of which was caused independent of the unions. In the public services some of the antics between rival factions bordered on the ludicrous.

Civil engineering encompasses such a wide array of subject areas that it would be very difficult to cover all of them in one survey. Basically, civil engineers are concerned with the planning, design and construction of buildings, transporation facilities and other structures required for human health, safety and welfare. A major part of their job relates to achieving a coherent relationship between the “built environment” and the “natural environment.” They are required to fulfil this function within the framework of constraints imposed by the present day building codes, union regulations and economic considerations. This survey concerns itself mostly with the general civil engineering reference books and some selected sources on specialized topics like construction engineering, foundation engineering, structural engineering, highway and dam engineering and codes and specifications. A forthcoming survey will deal with the major area of environmental and sanitary engineering.

This is the age of research. What was once a highly selective privilege in just a few professions that could be counted on one's fingers has since the last war become a feature of every conceivable branch of science and trade, to which millions in money are devoted. The connection often seems remote, if not a little spurious. Perhaps it may be due to the enormous emphasis on the teaching of science and technology in recent years, but we see what Sir William Dale calls “these turnspits of modern science” ready to undertake, and various official bodies to finance by grants, research into almost anything. The amount spent, for example, on cancer research through the years and all over the world, which incidentally has produced very little in the way of real advancement towards a cure, must be phenomenal, but it is now probably dwarfed by the colossal sums available for trade and market research. We even see research by opposing groups, one endeavouring to prove, the other to refute some particular hypothesis. Much of it appears to lack realism or to be of any great practical value and at too high a theoretical level, including masses of statistics, without which the younger generation of scientists appears to think research valueless, if not impossible.

THE funeral oration pronounced by Pericles for the Athenians who perished at the battle of Marathon contained the words: ‘It is not the acknowledgment of poverty that we think disgraceful, but the want of endeavour to avoid it.’ His people, demoralized by plague at home and external troubles abroad, refused to heed his words, just as the world has tended to ignore similar counsel for over 2,000 years.

ALTHOUGH the lowering cloud of increased charges for stamps and fewer collections and deliveries of mail faces the Post Office it will still, according to Mr. Jackson, general secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, suffer a deficit of £130 million by 1973. The context in which he made his remarks to the union delegates, assembled at a conference in Bournemouth, is of special interest to this journal's readers.

IN 1946 there was in the British Isles a clear image of librarianship in most librarians' minds. The image depended on a librarian's professional environment which was of the widest possible range, not less in variation than the organisations, institutes or types of community which required library services. Generalisations are like cocoanuts but they provide for the quickest precipitation of variant definitions, after the stones have been thrown at them. A generalisation might claim that, in 1946, public librarians had in mind an image of a librarian as organiser plus technical specialist or literary critic or book selector; that university and institute librarians projected themselves as scholars of any subject with a special environmental responsibility; that librarians in industry regarded themselves as something less than but as supplementing the capacity of a subject specialist (normally a scientist). Other minor separable categories existed with as many shades of meaning between the three generalised definitions, while librarians of national libraries were too few to be subject to easy generalisation.

The use of email by employees at the Danwood Group was studied and it was found that the interrupt effect from emails is more than generally believed. Employees allowed themselves to be interrupted almost as frequently as telephone calls and the common reaction to the arrival of an email is to react almost as quickly as they would respond to telephone calls. This means the interrupt effect is comparable with that of a telephone call. The recovery time from an email interruption was found to be significantly less than the published recovery time for telephone calls. It is to be concluded, therefore, that while Email is still less disruptive than the telephone, the way the majority of users handle their incoming email has been shown to give far more interruption than expected. By analysing the data captured the authors have been able to create recommendations for a set of guidelines for email usage within the workplace that will increase employee efficiency by reducing the prominence of interruptions, restricting the use of email‐to‐all messages, setting‐up the email application to display three lines of the email and to check for email less frequently. It is recommended that training should be given to staff on how to use email more effectively to increase employee productivity.

This paper aims to investigate the consumer responses associated with crises in the hotel industry. More precisely, the current research explores the factors that affect consumer attitudes (i.e. impressions, perceived social responsibility, and future purchases) during a hotel crisis.

An experiment was conducted relying on four factors: the hotel's reputation, the extent of the crisis, external effects from regulatory agencies, and press and organisational response. Respondents were randomly assigned to 36 treatment groups (three levels of crisis extent×two levels of hotel corporate reputation×two levels of external effects×three levels of hotel response). Scenarios were developed, each describing one of the 36 treatments.

The results revealed that reputation, external effects and organisational response significantly influenced consumers. Specifically, consumers were more likely to have a positive impression of a hotel in crisis, to perceive the hotel as being more socially responsible, and to revisit the hotel when it was highly reputed, accepted responsibility, and was viewed favourably by the media. The extent of the crisis was found to be an insignificant factor.

Hotel managers could incorporate the results of this study into their crisis management plans. As consumer attitudes are explored, the hotel might begin to achieve more effective crisis management strategies.

There is a lack of research investigating hotel crisis management from the customer's perspective. By adopting effective crisis management practices, hotel managers could reduce the negative outcomes of crises such as fires.

Entrepreneurship, Corporate sustainability, CSR, Supply chain.

Master's courses: Entrepreneurship, Strategic management.

In 2002, potential risks deriving from emerging normative demands in the CSR debate prompted Axel Springer (AS) to rethink their supply chain strategy for Russian wood. Being one of the first movers in CSR in the publishing business, AS realized that current practices could spark future public discussion that might put pressure on AS, a key player in these supply chains. In early 2002, AS and one of their main suppliers, Stora Enso, started a joint initiative to redesign the supply chain processes in two of the major Russian logging regions to improve their social and ecological performance. Sometime later, other major players in the publishing sector as well as critical reviewers from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were invited to participate in the design of the new voluntary sustainability initiative called “Tikhvin Chalna project”, the second phase of which was accomplished by the end of 2006.

Learn that organizations (specifically high-brand owners) are responsible for practices within their entire supply chains (social as well as environmental performance).

Explore proactive corporate sustainability, CSR strategies are market but also institutional driven; Strategizing involves forming and transforming the rules, norms and standard models of customers as well as institutions such as NGOs or governmental bodies. Whether the initiator of such strategy is successful in increasing or manipulating demands is dependent on its resources and capabilities as well as on its network position. The case supports students in understanding resources being used to successfully transform or create institutional arrangements.

Discover that the value of a business' relationships and its network position.

Teaching note, Video files