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Membership decline, marginalization of union influence in a range of businesses and loss of political influence have raised major questions about the survival of the union movement in the UK in anything like its present form. However, such pressures have been in operation for at least a decade and trade unions have responded both by effecting major internal organisational changes (Willman, Morris and Aston, 1993) and by further mergers (Buchanan, 1992).

This paper uses two data sources to map trends in resource availability for trade unions in Britain. Union resources exist, on the one hand, in the form of subscription income and accumulated assets shown in union accounts and, on the other, establishment level resources secured from employers and union members. The paper documents a substantial decline in both the forms of union resource across the period 1990–2004 and attempts to explain both the reasons for this decline and its consequences for employee representation in Britain.

Whilst there has been quite a lot of research and speculation about the ability of the unions to adapt to the changed environmental circumstances of the 1980s, there has been no consideration of the impact of such changes on the financial status and performance of trade unions. It is suggested that, contrary to popular opinion, the unions have fared reasonably well during the period of membership decline, in part because they did not benefit very much during the growth phase of the 1970s. Increased membership will not necessarily solve financial problems.

Reports the results of a repeat survey on the financial performance and management of TUC affiliated unions. Data are available for 1989 and 1993, covering income, expenditure, the management of investments and wealth. Unions remain in a precarious financial position, dependent on subscription revenue and, moreover, on the threatened check‐off mechanism to deliver it. The management of expenditure remains a critical issue, since the net worth of many unions remains small. Financial management is becoming more important and more sophisticated. Unions continue to centralize resource management, but many of these changes remain constrained by the political nature of financial management within voluntary organizations.

By now there should be little ignorance about the advent of the new micro‐electronics technology, large scale integrated circuits made up from little pieces of metal oxited silicon wafers — the so‐called silicon chips. These tiny chips, less than five mm square, can contain microprocessors capable of performing the tricks that room‐sized computers found difficult ten years ago. At the moment their commonest usage is in calculators, electronic games and the remote control for the latest teletext domestic televisions but this may well be the consumer tip of a huge industrial iceberg, upon which this country might just founder. To combat this possibility both the last Labour Government and the present administration are spending large sums of money both in publicising the potential of the new technology to key decision‐makers in industry, through the Microprocessor Applications Programme (MAP), and also by direct investment through the National Enterprise Board in the setting up of companies both to manufacture the chips themselves and to build equip‐ment incorporating these devices.

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.

The issue of union recruitment strategies remains complex and contentious in the present harsh politico‐economic climate. Any assessment of recruitment potential is linked to some view of the condition of the trade union movement and the attractiveness of its policies and methods to those outside its ranks whom it seeks to recruit. Within this context, arguments have raged over three core themes: the extent to which unions should be biased towards offering services to members, or act as ‘militant’ wage bargainers; the relative efficacy of competitive campaigning for membership compared to a more centralised and regulated system; and the degree to which the broader politico‐economic environment influences the ability of unions to increase aggregate membership through interventionist policies.

DISTANT READING COMPASSES ONE of the most interesting German aircraft installations is centred around the distant reading compass.