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A case study was conducted to identify and to dispel the current stereotypes in the workplace regarding Generation X and Baby Boomers. For the purpose of the study Generation X consisted of those born between 1961 and 1981, while Baby Boomers consisted of those born between 1943 and 1960. The purpose of this article was to use a custom designed survey based on the literature as the foundation to test congruence or lack of it, to address six commonly held myths presented by Paul and Townsend (1993). Furthermore it was intended to test empirical research gathered by a literature review of the stereotypes in the workplace, to better understand the profiles and factors that motivate the Baby Boomers and Generation X, in conjunction with the following independent variables: age, productivity, motivation, training, mentoring and job satisfaction. The hypothesis tested suggested that Generation Xers are more productive, more motivated, and easily trainable and exhibit higher job satisfaction levels as compared to Baby Boomers. It is important for or ganizations to recognize the limitations that stereotypes create in the workplace. As was demonstrated by the survey, Baby Boomers and Generation Xers are not dissimilar as employees; they possess more similarities than differences. Organizations need to foster an environment of respect/equity for both groups to create synergies between them to build and maintain a productive workforce.

Conjoint analysis is a class of techniques for analyzing consumers’ preferences and trade‐offs regarding their selection of products and services. Typically, conjoint analysis has been applied to established markets such as frequently purchased packaged goods, consumer durables, communication services, and business‐to‐business products. Recently, marketing researchers have extended conjoint methodology to cope with the measurement of buyer trade‐offs associated with “really new” products and services, for which there is little or no prior buyer knowledge or experience. The researcher’s task is twofold: to educate the potential buyer regarding the pros and cons of the new product/service while, at the same time, obtaining the respondent’s evaluation of the new product/service itself. This article describes the application of conjoint techniques to a new service, TrafficPulse, that enables subscribers to obtain continuous 24/7 updates on traffic conditions, travel times, and alternative routes, should congestion occur. In particular, describes how traditional conjoint analysis can be embellished to obtain relevant information about consumer evaluations of new goods and services prior to their actual use by prospective consumers. In short, the prospective consumer can be “educated” about the new product/service before obtaining evaluation of its potential worth. The paper also shows how conjoint analysis can be modified to accommodate restrictions on various attribute levels, how the use of BASES‐like norms can be incorporated, and how optimization algorithms can be used at either the single product or multiple product (i.e. product line) level.

If you are 30 or older, you are middle‐aged by someone's criteria. When the college students of the 1970s declared “Don't trust anyone over 30,” did you think they would be someday talking about you? And what about those who say “Life begins at 40”? Did you ever believe them?

Blues music is in the midst of its second revival in popularity in roughly thirty years. The year 1960 can be identified, with some qualification, as a reference point for the first rise in international awareness and appreciation of the blues. This first period of wide‐spread white interest in the blues continued until the early seventies, while the current revival began in the middle 1980s. During both periods a sizeable literature on the blues has appeared. This article provides a thumbnail sketch of the popularity of the blues, followed by a description of scholarly and critical literature devoted to the music. Documentary and instructional materials in audio and video formats are also discussed. Recommendations are made for library collections and a list of selected sources is included at the end of the article.

IN accordance with our promise, we have collected a few notes concerning the new boroughs to be formed next year out of the existing London parishes, which will perhaps be found useful by those who have written to us for information. The Commissioners under the Act will, we are informed, commence their local enquiries in October, and the particulars given in the accompanying table and map will enable provincial librarians to follow the course of the inquest with comparative ease. The map shows in a rough manner the position of the library movement in London at the present moment, the shaded portion representing boroughs or parts of boroughs which have provided libraries, the unshaded areas representing boroughs or old parishes which have not yet adopted the Acts. We do not propose to consider the working of the London Government Act, save as regards its effect upon public libraries. At present 39 parishes or districts (including Penge, South Hornsey, and St. Paul's, Covent Garden) have adopted the Acts, and of these thirty‐four have established libraries and appointed librarians. As the new Act establishes twenty‐eight boroughs (excluding Penge and the City), and some of these contain several of the old areas which already have libraries, it follows that the Library Authorities will have to be considerably reduced. Our tables show this at a glance. Instead of thirty‐nine Library Authorities, there will only be twenty required ; consequently some great changes may be expected. It appears from the Act (Sections 16 [d] and 29 [4] ) that the settlement of the provisions affecting libraries and the transference of officers will form part of the scheme to be prepared by the Commissioners. Thus it is possible that a scheme may determine whether or not the libraries are to be extended over the whole of a borough only partially provided, and how many responsible officers are to be appointed in each department. It does not follow that the Commissioners will appoint any officer, but it appears that they must fix the number of officers, leaving the Borough Councils to make appointments and settle compensation. Numerous guesses have been made as to what will happen to the libraries. Some are of opinion that the existing arrangements will not be disturbed, and that the libraries will be carried on by their present staff, directed by a district sub‐committee, responsible to the Library Committee of the Council. Others think that all officers will be treated alike, and that one responsible head will be appointed for each department, as in all municipal boroughs, the others to be compensated as provided by the Act. Should this latter plan be adopted, the number of public librarians in London will be reduced from thirty‐four to twenty, and thus at least fourteen librarians will have to face the somewhat serious position of loss of office. The compensation will, to some extent, no doubt, remedy the evil, but even a liberal provision of this kind will scarcely be a salve for the absolute loss of a congenial occupation. Of course, it has to be remembered that most of the Vestry Clerks, for certain, and, in all likelihood, many of the Medical Officers and Surveyors in affected boroughs, will be similarly dealt with, so that a vast amount of disturbance among London municipal officers will be one of the immediate consequences of the Act. It is not for us to forecast the decisions of the Commissioners : these will be for future consideration. But it is quite evident that they have a very difficult task before them. We shall report from time to time the progress of the enquiries, as very great interest is being manifested in the impending changes by librarians in London and all over the country.

The purpose of this research was to investigate a successful company, Atlas Container Corporation, that practices the values of egalitarianism, democracy, mutuality, and transparency. Moreover, this research sought to identify the human resource policies and practices (HRPP) used to reinforce these values and create a distinctive culture.

An ethnographic approach was used to produce a case study. Interviews, observations, archives, and documents were all part of the collected data.

The HRPP were distinctively different from the normal practices in the industry. Thus, these differences appeared to explain its success.

While this case study focused only on a single organization, it provides an illustration of the importance of reflecting the organization’s culture through its HRPP, and of how they could operate synergistically for optimal impact.

This case illustrated how a company following a set of HRPP contrary to industry norms could succeed. In addition, it pinpointed some areas where HRPP either reduced costs or made the company more responsive to customer needs.

This case illustrated that a company can be both humanistic and efficient. Moreover, it demonstrated a number of ways that the financial success of the company could be shared with its employees.

A review of the literature found that companies that practiced a progressive set of HRPP and made decisions based on democratic principles are rare. Thus, knowledge of such a company should be valuable.

A prominent field of research in Library Science during the past thirty years has been collection assessment of college and university libraries. No other subject has received the attention in library literature as has the question of how to evaluate a collection to determine whether it adequately supports the goals, curriculum, and needs of the sponsoring organization. Collection assessment has also attracted more interest from scholars outside the library profession than any other aspect of librarianship. Research in this area should be of value to collection development personnel in all college and university libraries.

There have been times in recent years when it has seemed that the US economy, in particular, has defied economic gravity. This was certainly the case in the late nineties of the twentieth century. Many heaved a sigh of relief when the Nasdaq and the Dow responded to the pull of economic gravity and fell to earth in the early part of the twenty first century. The Earth at the time, in 2002, appeared to be indices of around 8,000 for the Dow and 1,250 for the Nasdaq. These measures still indicated huge wealth in terms of saleable bits of paper as well, indicating the underlying huge capacity of the real economy for creating surpluses. Both indices climbed back, though the Nasdaq was a long way from its astronomic former heights before the next (2007) crisis hit. True to the cyclical record of modern capitalism, however, by 2006 the US and the world stock markets were booming again. The nominal value of shares traded worldwide in 2006 by some estimates was nearly $70 trillion (Bogle, 2005). In 2007, another crisis appeared, ushered in supposedly by the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the United States; subsequent events took their toll in economic and financial terms not only in the United States but worldwide in most of the major economies. The terms “credit crunch” and “sub-prime” had become so pervasive within a few weeks of the onset of the latest economic crisis that by July 2008, the Concise Oxford Dictionary provided definitions for them. While these terms are now embedded in the language of economics and everyday speech, inevitably the affected economies will recover from the crises and continue to grow. While there is no shortage of reasons posited for the latest crisis and those preceding it, far fewer explanations have been forwarded to tell us why economies survive economic shocks and, despite dire predictions and expressions of gloom, recent crises have not been as disastrous as was once the case, notably as in the Depression years of the 1930s. During the Depression of the Thirties, production fell by a third between 1929 and 1933, unemployment reached 13 million and even by 1938 one person in five were unemployed. No economist has predicted these dire consequences even for the crisis of 2007–2009. In 1999, Paul Krugman published his short book: The Return of Depression Economics in which he not only reminded us of the 1930s Depression but suggested that the then economic crises bore an “eerie resemblance to the Great Depression.”¹ He retreats within a few pages and describes the events as the Great Recession because the global damage has been “well short of Depression levels” (Krugman, 1999). A decade later, Krugman, by then a Nobel laureate for economics in 2008, began his 2009 revised edition of Return of Depression Economics thus: “The world economy is not in depression: it probably won't fall into depression (though I wish I could be completely sure about that)” (Krugman, 2009). By early January 2009, he surprised other economic commentators by using the term “depression” in his New York Times column.

This paper investigates the determinants of the capital structure of large corporations headquartered in the United States and Korea. We consider five explanatory variables: profit, company size, non‐debt tax shields, growth, and business‐risk, along with several industry indicator variables as independent variables and examine, for each country, the relationship to market value based leverage ratio. With our rigid criteria for inclusion in the study, we study the top thirteen companies (by size) in each of seven industries. The majority of our findings indicate that we can generalize to Korea what has been found for Japanese companies/industries relative to the U.S.