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The purpose of this study is to empirically quantify the factors that are perceived to drive or inhibit performance of information technology (IT) outsourced employees from a range of information technology outsourcing (ITO) stakeholders in South Africa.

The first phase was a qualitative study on 19 stakeholders focussed on the development of the constructs. The second phase was quantitative, with a sample of 116 ITO stakeholders of the largest IT company in South Africa.

The study revealed that the ITO stakeholders had misaligned perceptions on inhibitors and somewhat congruent perceptions with regards to drivers of performance. Managers and poor performers’ perceptions of inhibiting factors of performance were significantly different. The empirical evidence showed that the key drivers of performance were intrinsic factors and leadership, whilst the inhibiting factors were mainly related to poor leadership.

The major limitation was that the population was represented by one large organisation in the South African IT industry and its clients, thereby excluding the rest of the IT industry participants, specifically the medium and small IT companies. The quota sample resulted in a non-probability study, and thus, the results of this study may not necessarily be generalised to other populations. This study’s findings on differences between good and poor performers must be investigated in other industries.

For outsourced employees to perform optimally, some key intrinsic factors must be fulfilled. Passion and pride, aligned to a meaningful job role, will unleash outstanding performance. Organisations need to ensure that there is regular feedback to managers on their performance and subsequent leadership development. Alignment of managers and poor performers’ perceptions on drivers and inhibitors could improve performance.

These findings demonstrate the large gap in perceptions about the key drivers and inhibiters of performance.

The study reveals that top performers tend to have higher order and intrinsic motivators, compared to poor performers, who have a mixture of extrinsic and intrinsic needs, and managers have a misaligned expectation of extrinsic motivators.

Impact investment is an emergent field worldwide and it can play an especially important role in Africa. The aim of this study was to examine how impact investors in South Africa manage the tensions between financial returns and social impact.

The research was based on 15 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the impact investment community in South Africa to understand the related challenges, trade-offs and tensions.

There are two opposing views expressed as to whether the tensions between financial return and social impact result in trade-offs. It is proposed that impact investors embrace this duality and seek to approach it through a contingency and a paradox view. The tensions can be approached by focussing on values alignment, contracting processes, engaged leadership and sector identification. The authors integrate the findings into a proposed framework for effective tension management in an impact investment portfolio.

This study was limited to selected South African interviewees. It would be valuable to extend the study to other African countries.

The issue of values alignment between investors, fund managers and investee firms is an important finding for practice. As is the four-part iterative framework for sensing the operating environment, defining impact, organising internally and defining the investment approach.

This study contributes empirical evidence to scholarship around organisational tensions, especially work in hybrid organisations. It affirms the value of a nuanced application of paradox theory. It examines these tensions through the lived experience of impact investing professionals in an emerging market context.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

In the most recent edition of Children and Books, Susan Steinfirst points to a dilemma in children's literature, a conflict implied in the very name of the discipline. On one hand children's literature is the field of the child specialist, educator and psychologist; on the other, children's literature is the province of the English scholar and literary historian. As a dual discipline shared by both the social scientist and humanist, children's literature has always been subject to two divergent sets of research methods and goals. The purpose of this bibliography is to provide the librarian with selected tools for meeting the needs of both approaches.

In the novel, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers probes the American malaise through the longings of a young adolescent girl. Twelve‐year‐old Frankie no longer sees the world as round and inviting as a school globe. No, the world is huge and cracked and turning a thousand miles an hour. Indeed, the world seems separate from herself. In the midst of chaos, Frankie sees her brother's upcoming wedding as a chance to feel connected, to feel that she matters. The story focuses on Frankie's efforts to be a “member of the wedding,” as she recognizes, “they are the we of me.”

EVEN TO THOSE who profess to have made a study of Scottish literature, Sharpe's name is comparatively unknown. He is often thought of as an obscure antiquarian friend of Scott's, the original of Malachi Malagrowther, an eccentric in a city always famed for its eccentrics. Yet one cannot go very far in the study of ballads and of Scottish popular poetry without coming across his name: it was he who contributed one of the finest and most tersely expressed of all the ballads to Scott's Minstrelsy—‘The Twa Corbies’—as well as giving Scott his version of ‘The Douglas Tragedy’ and ‘Bessie Bell and Mary Gray’. A great deal of the material in Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland—that pioneering work which, like most of Robert Chambers's, has not received the attention it deserves—was provided by Sharpe. In the field of demonology and the study of witchcraft, too, he was an authority: his edition of Law's Memorialls was enriched by copious and erudite footnotes and in his introduction, amounting to 254 quarto pages, he wrote a lively and informative historical survey of witchcraft in Scotland from the earliest times until the end of the eighteenth century.

WE publish this issue on the eve of the Brighton Conference and our hope is that this number of The Library World will assist the objects of that meeting. Everything connected with the Conference appears to have been well thought out. It is an excellent thing that an attempt has been made to get readers of papers to write them early in order that they might be printed beforehand. Their authors will speak to the subject of these papers and not read them. Only a highly‐trained speaker can “get over” a written paper—witness some of the fiascos we hear from the microphone, for which all papers that are broadcast have to be written. But an indifferent reader, when he is really master of his subject, can make likeable and intelligible remarks extemporarily about it. As we write somewhat before the Conference papers are out we do not know if the plan to preprint the papers has succeeded. We are sure that it ought to have done so. It is the only way in which adequate time for discussion can be secured.

Within the past few years, responsible educators, librarians, parents, counselors, social workers, therapists, and religious groups of all sexual persuasions and lifestyles have recognized the need for readily available reading material for lesbian and gay youth. Unfortunately, this material is often buried, because it is embedded in larger works. To meet this need, I have compiled and annotated 100 of the best works for young homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals. I have also included a few of the best works currently available on heterosexuality as a much needed source of knowledge for all young adults whether they are gay or straight, whether they remain childless or eventually become parents.