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The ESPRIT SUNDIAL project ran for five years, concluding in August 1993. The objective of the project was to design and build telephone‐access spoken language interfaces to computer databases. After introducing the aims and objectives of the project, the problems of specifying an interactive system are outlined and the Wizard‐of‐Oz simulation method described. The architecture of the resulting system is introduced, and system transaction success results of up to 96.6% are reported. In the final section, some implications for machine translation — particularly interpretive telephony — are identified.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of legitimation of international new ventures (INVs) from an emerging economy and the effect such ventures have on the process of creation and legitimation of a new industry in that economy.

It is a longitudinal ethnographic case study. Following an inductive theory building approach, data were collected over an 11-year period via in-depth interviews, participant observations and unobtrusive data.

Data reveal three different contexts in which legitimation takes place: legitimation of the new industry and of the new venture domestically and internationally. A new venture drives the process of industry legitimation by achieving legitimacy threshold first nationally at meso and micro levels as well as internationally. The challenge therefore for such a venture is to establish legitimacy in the absence of any precedents at the organization, industry or international levels. Unless at least one new venture achieves legitimacy threshold in a new industry there is no possibility for that industry to become institutionalized.

The authors advocate for further research at the intersection between legitimation, international entrepreneurship and emerging markets in order to further advance the emergent theory.

The data suggest that in order for an INV to achieve cognitive legitimacy and socio-political legitimacy in an emerging industry located in an emerging economy, and successfully internationalize, it shall design a robust business model targeting both internal and external stakeholders; engage in persuasive argumentation invoking familiar cues and scripts; engage in political negotiations promoting and defending incentive and operating mechanisms; and overcome the country-of-origin effect by pursuing technology legitimation strategy.

Governments and NGOs may wish to see new industries emerge but they lack the means and mandate to establish and lead them themselves, instead rely on enabling actions, such as investment in capacity building. However, building capacity for an as-yet non-existent industry in an emerging economy may prove to be counter-productive, driving a brain drain of qualified workers who are forced to migrate to find suitable work. The work leads the authors to speculate about whether there may be a role for investment in programs of industry legitimacy building in pursuit of public policy objectives.

The study puts forward a process model of new industry legitimation. The model theorizes the process of change from an initial condition in which an industry does not exist to a final condition in which it is institutionalized. The model addresses the case where the initial catalyst is the formation of an INV that is the seed for the birth of the industry. Since both the new venture and the new industry lack cognitive and socio-political legitimacies, the model theorizes temporal emergence of these at organizational and industry levels, leading ultimately to institutionalization.

Sport organizations hold substantial ideological power to showcase and reinforce dominant cultural ideas about gender. The organization and portrayal of sporting events and spaces continue to promote and reinforce a hierarchical gender binary where heroic forms of masculinity are both desired and privileged. Such publicly visible gender hierarchies contribute to the doing of gender beyond sport itself, extending to influence gender power relations within sport and non-sport organizations. Yet, there has been a relative absence of scholarship on sport organizations within the organizational sociology field. In this paper, we review findings of studies that look at how formal and informal organizational dimensions influence the doing and undoing of gender in sport organizations. Subsequently, we call for scholars to pay more attention to sport itself as a source of gendered organizational practices within both sport and non-sport organizations. We end with suggestions for research that empirically explores this linkage by focusing on innovative theoretical perspectives that could provide new insights on gender inclusion in organizations.

There is an abundance of empirical evidence on the positive effects of employment – and the detrimental effects of unemployment – on individuals’ psychological and physical health and well-being. In this chapter, the authors explore whether and how self-employment or entrepreneurship could be a solution for individuals’ (re)entry to the job market and which (psychological) variables enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. Specifically, the authors first focus on unemployment and its detrimental effects for health and wellbeing, and outline the existing interventions aimed at assisting reemployment and combating the negative consequences of unemployment for individuals’ well-being. Then, the authors will explore entrepreneurship as a potential solution to unemployment and explore the psychological variables that enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. One of the variables the authors highlight as particularly relevant for self-employment is the second-order construct of Psychological Capital (PsyCap; Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007), as well as its individual components – hope, optimism, efficacy, and resilience. PsyCap is a malleable construct that can be successfully trained, and PsyCap interventions are inherently strength-based and have positive effects on employees’ and entrepreneurs’ performance and wellbeing. Therefore, the authors end the chapter by suggesting that a PsyCap component in existing education and training programs for entrepreneurship is likely to not only increase entrepreneurial intentions and success, but also increases participants’ well-being, self-esteem, and the general confidence they can pick up the reigns and take back control over their (professional) lives.

Social factors are an under‐researched but important aspect in the success of manufacturing cells. This paper sets out to investigate the impact and importance of various human factors within a socio‐technical system such as team‐based cellular manufacturing (TBCM).

A questionnaire survey was designed to provide information about human factors in TBCM. The survey was conducted at four medium‐to‐large size organisations in Australia and Switzerland where participants were required to be working within a TBCM environment and included managers, team leaders, and operators. A set of research questions and hypotheses was developed and tested.

It was found that human issues account for a significant proportion of problems within team‐based manufacturing cells. Of the eight human factors tested in this survey, communication, teamwork and training were ranked the most important, while reward/compensation was ranked the least important. Testing showed significant relationships between factors such as companies, positions, experience and team size; therefore most hypotheses were supported.

Traditionally, the research focus has been on the technical aspect of socio‐technical systems such as TBCM. This study offers practitioners and academics a better understanding of the human issues associated with this important form of manufacturing, therefore improving the likelihood of its success.

This paper demonstrates the need for research into the social side of TBCM, while providing an understanding of the important human factors associated with this system.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

Five hundred financial executives from North American companies were surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire to gain a view from outside the operations functions of the basis on which aggregate inventory decisions are taken. The response indicated that more functions than might have been expected were involved in the process of determining inventory levels and, partly because of this, policy tended to be of a shorter rather than longer term nature.

The place of G. H. Mead’s works in symbolic interactionism is both central and paradoxical. It stands at the very foundation of Hebert Blumer’s initial invention of symbolic interactionism with respect to Mead’s social behaviorism and has been discussed and debated ever since because of the problems caused by such a presumed direct filiation. Returning to Mead in order to broaden the perspective offered by Blumer is a must and has to face some fundamental issues raised in this context. This article starts by examining the ontogenetic and phylogenetic processes involved in Mead’s concept of society, in order to show the multiple dimensions involved in significant symbols. An illustration of Mead’s wider perspective is given in reference to the feminist movement as analyzed first by Mead’s student, Jessie Taft, and goes back to the origin of the movement with Mary Wollstonecraft. This leads to the analysis of the debate about the place of power in symbolic interactionism, initiated by Peter M. Hall, and addresses the alternative between domination and emancipation. This alternative has been worked out by Lonnie Athen’s radical symbolic interactionism analysis of domination on the one side, and by Kathy Charmaz and Norman K. Denzin on the other side of emancipatory symbolic interactionist practices. Another solution is proposed to this alternative, with the analysis of power being intrinsically constituted by domination and emancipation, in their respective contribution to the understanding of the symbolic dispositions of autonomy – a concept that remains relatively undeveloped in Mead’s works.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.