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The purpose of this paper is to understand how microfinance initiatives (MFIs) are organized and orchestrated to serve internal and external stakeholders.

A qualitative case study of three international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)–CARE, Oxfam and Grameen Foundation–provided insights into how they each organize and orchestrate MFIs. We used Pettigrew's (1987, 1990) contextual inquiry framework to guide our data collection and analysis of 20 interviews to understand how capacity building, technology adaptation and outcome measurement interact with content, context and process.

We found that CARE's classical model exemplifies decades of successful MFI service delivery, serving as a benchmark for other NGOs. Oxfam's adaptive model builds on CARE's model to leverage MFIs as platforms for achieving multisectoral outcomes. Finally, Grameen Foundation's innovative model builds on both CARE's classical and Oxfam's adaptive models, using human-centered design and scalable business practices. We also found overlaps between the three models, demonstrating the continuous adaptation of MFI models based on changing contexts, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Our research focused on three NGOs headquartered in the USA, involving interviews with staff members having microfinance expertise. We offer analytical generalizability while emphasizing that any change in cultural context, institutional setting or operational conditions may produce different outcomes.

We provide exemplary and comparative insights into key issues related to organizing and orchestrating MFIs for NGO practitioners, scholars and policymakers who wish to understand prevailing service delivery models. Finally, we demonstrate the contextual inquiry framework as a viable approach to learn how NGOs organize and orchestrate MFIs through content, context and process.

This special theme issue of Library Hi Tech includes eight articles on technology and its impact on persons with disabilities. These articles represent a cross‐section of current research and practice in the field of adaptive technology and librarianship. Susan Beck begins by identifying the architectural barriers facing the disabled library user. Next, Marilyn Graubart tackles a less obvious but equally insidious access challenge: the attitudinal barriers facing the patron or staff member with a disability. Staff sensitivity issues are addressed and concrete solutions to staff training are presented. Other articles deal with various aspects of adaptive technologies. Case studies point out potential pitfalls facing librarians who must decide what to buy and how to best use it. Many in the disabled community have feared that the graphical user interface would reverse progress made with the earlier, primarily text‐based (DOS) systems. Alistair D.N. Edwards' history of the GUI provides the necessary background information for the articles that deal with pragmatic solutions to the graphics problems, including the trend toward graphics‐based OPACs and World Wide Web sites. What role will Braille, large print, and audio books and magazines play in the future of libraries and disabilities? Most libraries still collect books, and the nation's two largest suppliers of alternative format texts, the National Library Service and Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D), are sure to maintain a central role. This special issue winds up with Steve Noble's overview of the new RFB&D Internet‐based online catalog, which enables patrons to gain direct access to this agency's many recorded and electronic text offerings.

The Gaines Dog Food plant in Topeka KS is built around self‐managing work teams. It opened in 1971 and has been 20% more productive than similar, traditional plants for two decades. The Procter & Gamble Co.'s Paper Products Division implemented self‐managing teams at the same time; by 1975, it knew that the division was significantly more productive than traditionally organized plants. In the mid‐1980s, AT&T's American Transtech subsidiary cut its prices to customers by 50%, then avoided layoffs, then became even more profitable by moving to more fully self‐managing teams. And tiny Litel Communications (now LCI) used teams to cut time to process a service order from two weeks to one day.

Graduate development programmes are a well-established strategy for recruiting graduates into the sector at the start of a lifetime public service career. There are indications, however, that public sector careers are becoming less secure and less long term in keeping with overall career trends across all sectors, a trend that has seen the emergence of employment contracts based on employability rather than job security. The purpose of this paper is to explore a graduate development programme offered by a state-based Australian public sector organisation to identify the extent to which it reflects and supports the shift to an employability-based contract from the perspective of programme participants.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 participants from three intakes of a public sector graduate development programme. Data were analysed through identification of first- and second-order themes as well as cross-case comparison.

Findings indicate that the one-year development programme partially supports an employability-based contract. The organisation could not promise ongoing employment and job security but did assist participants to develop skills and competencies for the future through its formal training and development programme. Work unit support for employability was, however, much more variable and depended to a large extent on line managers.

The study was conducted in a single organisation and only included current and past programme participants who were still employed in the public sector.

The success of the programme was largely dependent on job placement and level of line manager support. Addressing these areas through better programme design and management can support the development of future leaders through opportunities for enhanced employability.

The study extends current research on employability by exploring how a public sector organisation provides support for graduates in a developmental programme from a participant perspective.

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.

Time is the top priority. We now live in real time. It's no longer life in the fast lane because every lane is fast. The computer has changed the way we view time. We expect everything to occur at Pentium speed! A time lag causes stress since it is viewed as an unnecessary waste. This is not a matter of immediate gratification; rather delays—such as standing in line—are viewed as something being wrong with the system, and the company that allows it to happen is perceived as not being up to speed! (Graham, 1996, p. 4).

“While we were once perceived as simply providing services, selling products, and employing people, business now shares in much of the responsibility for our global quality of life. Successful companies will handle this heightened sense of responsibility quite naturally, if not always immediately. I see a future in which the institutions with the most influence by and large will be businesses.” These are the words of the late Robert Goizueta, chairman of the Coca‐Cola Company. They were quoted in an article by Theo Lippman Jr in The Baltimore Sun on July 5, 1998. This quote and the remaining article triggered my thinking about the need to bring this strategic concern to the fore in Strategy & Leadership.