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To provide empirical evidence on the level of savings that can be attained by joint route planning and how these savings depend on specific market characteristics.

Joint route planning is a measure that companies can take to decrease the costs of their distribution activities. Essentially, this can either be achieved through horizontal cooperation or through outsourcing distribution to a logistics service provider. The synergy value is defined as the difference between distribution costs in the original situation where all entities perform their orders individually, and the costs of a system where all orders are collected and route schemes are set up simultaneously to exploit economies of scale. This paper provides estimates of synergy values, both in a constructed benchmark case and in a number of real‐world cases.

It turns out that synergy values of 30 per cent are achievable. Furthermore, intuition is developed on how the synergy values depend on characteristics of the distribution problem under consideration.

The developed intuition on the nature of synergy values can help practitioners to find suitable combinations of distribution systems, since synergy values can quickly be assessed based on the characteristics of the distribution problem, without solving large and difficult vehicle routing problems.

This paper addresses a major impediment to horizontal cooperation: estimating operational savings upfront.

The environment continues to command serious attention as a key consideration in the corporate strategy process, both within the specialised environmental management literature and increasingly from the general management literature (Avila and Whitehead 1993, Porter and van der Linde 1993, Shrivastava 1992). One important area of academic examination is that of corporate environmental behaviour.

An efficient corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework in many economies has been linked with human capital development, social and financial inclusion, environmental protection and better stakeholder management. This article examines the level of efficiency of the CSR framework in Nigeria; it underscores the developmental potentials of CSR practices within the Nigerian business community. However, a prevailing trend of haphazard and sometimes dodgy CSR practices by free riding rogue companies mars such potentials. Underpinning these dodgy practices has been a CSR ‘business case’ argument coupled with dysfunctional business (corporate) law assumptions among other causative factors. The article appraises the implications of these causative factors and towards minimising the haphazard practices, proposes corporate law reforms through which the Nigerian CSR framework may become more effective.

The article analyses 23 78 CD‐ROM bibliographic database searches (by databases used, user status, departments, and user needs) conducted at the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) Library in Saudi Arabia during the period July 1991 (when service started) to 31 December 1992. Various purposes for compiling CD‐ROM statistics have also been discussed.

The purpose of the study was to explore in literature what different leadership styles and behaviors of head nurses have a positive influence on the outcomes of patient safety or quality of care.

We reviewed the literature from January 2000 until September 2011. We searched Pubmed, Embase, Cinahl, Psychlit, and Econlit.

We found 10 studies addressing the relationship between head nurse leadership and safety and quality. A wide array of styles and practices were associated with different patient outcomes. Transformational leadership was the most used concept in the studies. A trend can be observed over these studies suggesting that a trustful relationship between the head nurse and subordinates is an important driving force for the achievement of positive patient outcomes. Furthermore, the effects of these trustful relationships seem to be amplified by supporting mechanisms, often objective conditions like clinical pathways and, especially, staffing level.

This study offers an up-to-date review of the limited number of studies on the relationship between nurse leadership and patient outcomes. Although mostly transformational leadership was found to be responsible for positive associations with outcomes, also contingent reward had positive influence on outcomes. We formulated some comments on the predominance of the transformational leadership concept and suggested the application of complexity theory and political leadership for the current context of care. We formulated some implications for practice and further research, mainly the need for more systematic empirical and cross cultural studies and the urgent need for the development of a validated set of nurse-sensitive patient outcome indicators.

The current world is characterized by VUCAT (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, and Technology). These elements provoke in workers a need for leadership that must be addressed continuously (Deepika & Chitranshi, 2021). Companies must dedicate efforts to leading their employees in a homogeneous way for team integration (Contreras et al., 2020; Sandeep & Latasri, 2021). It should be noted that remote work is a permanent feature for more organizations. Despite the difficulties that workers at all levels have had to adapt to remote work, an adaptation has been achieved in general terms based on communication technology. However, in many cases, it has altered the traditional performance of resources in companies, which makes the leading global and local institutions design new rules in favor of the health of workers and, at the same time, contribute to their better performance. For that, managers in the areas of Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology (IT) must be able to propose strategies to take care of the human capital of companies in all their departments. For the process to work efficiently, leadership is necessary. The transition of workers from the Asia Pacific region to teleworking, the influence of leadership, and the impact on job satisfaction, which is a measure that shows the optimal management of this new way of working in companies, are described. The organizational models related to business management, the barriers in the first steps of teleworking, the strategies used, the legislation created, and the results achieved by the company are described.

The purpose of this literature review is to reorient empirical research on the causal links between corporate ecological sustainability (CES) and corporate financial performance (CFP). Toward this end, we summarize the findings of four meta-analyses (conducted between 2012 and 2016), which indicate that there is, on average, a small positive association between CES and CFP. In addition, these empirical associations seem to be contingent on the firm’s strategic approach with regard to ecological sustainability (e.g., proactive vs reactive approach) and on the operationalization of both constructs. We conclude that future research may benefit from an even more explicit, analytic shift to the circumstances under which it pays for firms to go green. The main research limitations we point out are model misspecifications, endogeneity, and problems in the measurement of both CES and CFP.

Telecoms Ministers get ready for 1992. An important step towards the Common Market of 1992 was taken last summer by the Council of Telecommunications Ministers, the first formal council devoted to the telecommunications sector since the creation of the European Community. Meeting in Luxembourg, the Ministers gave strong support to the major policy objectives set out in the EC's Green Paper on the telecommunications industry and then added further objectives of their own that could have an immediate impact on European citizens and telecommunications organisations.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.