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Values are the outcome of choice, as well as the underlying forces which influence those choices. How important are they in terms of the theory and practice of OD? Their importance over the past 30 years is demonstrated, and it is concluded that the identity of OD is dependent on the existence and application of the core values it advocates.

Participation is not a new idea but recently it has received renewed attention. This article examines how participation is viewed from two perspectives: industrial democracy and organisational development. Despite the use of some common participative techniques such as quality circles, the underlying differences in ideology of industrial democracy and organisational development have significant impacts on the implementation of participation. This article examines the differences and explores the practical and research implications.

Several problems present themselves when discussing the concept of obsolescence in relation to human behaviour within organisations. Most definitions of ‘obsolescence’ in fact refer to evaluations of inanimate physical phenomena within a dynamic context, not to human behaviour as such. Thus ‘obsolescent’ is often defined as ‘going out of date’, ‘falling into disuse’, or in accountants' terminology, as part of the process of calculating depreciation, involving the assessment of the ‘inadequacy of an asset relative to newer models’. Yet these ‘definitions’ beg the question. When is a machine (or an operative or manager) ‘out of date’, when is any asset, human or otherwise, ‘inadequate’ as compared to something ‘newer’ and where is the dividing line between ‘new’ and ‘old’ to be placed? These questions suggest that to define what we mean by ‘obsolescent’ in relation to any phenomenon, involves essentially a process of evaluation in the light of selected criteria in some particular context.

This chapter aims to redefine corporate identity as a public relations (PR) tool, part of a new communication syntax of hypermodernity. In line with relevant theories of narrative engagement coming from the post-structuralist semiotics and the ‘aesthetics of interaction’, corporate identity is discussed as a conversational instrument, retrieved and reconstructed by ‘echo chambers’ and ‘curiosity gaps’. The territory of visual identity becomes part of a collective transaction, a sort of ‘open work’/‘opera aperta’, where consumers are asked to build their own ‘intentio lectoris’. In McLuhan’s terms, this can be translated as a ‘cooling down’ of the system of corporate identity. ‘Conversational branding’, rooted in the dialogic model of PR, provides an interactive usage of visual identity, and a new consumer-centric perspective in strategic communication.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development and validation of a methodology which allows modeling and solving the inverse and direct dynamic problem in real time in robot manipulators.

The robot dynamic equation is based on the Gibbs‐Appell equation of motion, yielding a well‐structured set of equations that can be computed in real time. This paper deals with the implementation and calculation of the inverse and direct dynamic problem in robots, with an application to the real‐time control of a PUMA 560 industrial robot provided with an open control architecture based on an industrial personal computer.

The experimental results show the validity of the dynamic model and that the proposed resolution method for the dynamic problem in real time is suitable for control purposes.

The accuracy of the applied friction model determines the accuracy of the identified overall model and consequently of the control. This is especially obvious in the case of the PUMA 560 robot, in which the presence of friction is remarkable in some of their joints. Hence, future work should focus on identifying a more precise friction model. The robot model could also be extended by incorporating rotor dynamics and could be applied for different robot configurations as parallel robots.

Gibbs‐Appell equations are used in order to develop the robotic manipulator dynamic model, instead of more usual dynamics formulations, due to several advantages that these exhibit. The obtained non‐physical identified parameters are adapted in order to enable their use in a control algorithm.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.