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In the decade after the end of World War II, Japan commenced a new kind of invasion of the West. Japanese companies, trade associations and government organisations began to send missions of industrialists, bureaucrats and scholars overseas to study advanced systems of industrial production. Japan needed to adopt as much state‐of‐the‐art technology as possible in order to take advantage of its abundant labour supply and to produce goods at low prices and of sufficient quality to penetrate world markets.

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.

SO much controversy has raged around the subject of newsrooms in the past two years, that librarians are, as a rule, utterly tired of it, and the appearance of still another article upon the subject is not calculated to tone down the general spirit of vexation. It requires no little courage to appear in the arena in this year of Grace, openly championing those departments of our institutions which were originally intended to convey the news of the day in the broadest manner.

This paper aims to examine the impact and the link between some key strategic choices and financial performance of energy companies. In fact, in the light of the European energy directives and the related ransformations, it is interesting to analyze how much the financial performance of electricity and gas companies affects some choices related to some main characteristics of companies, and thus their active role.

This study uses data collected from Amadeus, a database from Bureau Van Dyck, to create a sample consisting of an unbalanced panel of annual period series from 2009 to 2017. The sample includes all the electricity and gas limited retailer companies registred in two countries, Italy and the UK. The used method and post-estimations include probit models and as post-estimation marginal effects and matrices of correlation.

Results identify asset turnover (sales revenue/total assets), efficiency of invested capital, as the key drivers of the strategic decisions analyzed (that is being part of a group of companies, the business chosen, the type of country and if they are companies operating in more than one phase). Age, size and headquarter of company are also significant when they are included in a larger model as control variables.

The combination of the analysis of two of the largest European electricity and gas retail markets and inclusion of financial values as performance measures are key contributions of this paper.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which changes in communication media are associated with changes in the nature of manager-expatriate employee communications. Using an affordance lens, the authors explore how hierarchical level and communication medium interact to influence status dynamics manifested in communication attributes.

The hypothesis was tested with a 2 (hierarchical level)×3 (communication media) multivariate analysis of covariance (experience level) in a sample of 1,193 messages that were transmitted between managers and field employees in a global organization over a ten year period.

The authors found significant interaction effects between communication media and hierarchical level on communication attributes such that changes in communication media intensified status differences between managers and their employees.

Communications media may be appropriated differently depending on one’s hierarchical level.

Managers should adopt new communication media more consciously given their potential influence of how people communicate.

Unlike many computer-mediated communications (CMC) effects studies that compare face-to-face communications with CMC or employ self-report questionnaires or laboratory designs with student samples, this study examines a complete set of manager-employee communications over an extended period of time.

If the ideal self is the emotional driver of intentional change, the purpose of this paper is to explore the components of a person's personal vision and how it comes from their ideal self.

Based on the concept of the ideal self from intentional change theory, the paper examines a variety of theoretical foundations, from psychoanalytic to positive psychology. Each views the ideal self and its components as deficiencies needing therapeutic intervention or the heights of human experience and intrinsic motivation.

The ideal self is a primary source of positive affect and psychophysiological arousal helping provide the drive for intentional change. Many current frameworks or theories examine only portions of this model and, therefore, leave major components unaddressed. The ideal self is composed of three major components: an image of a desired future; hope (and its constituents, self‐efficacy and optimism); and a comprehensive sense of one's core identity (past strengths, traits, and other enduring dispositions).

Intentional change is hard work and often fails because of lack of sufficient drive and the proper intrinsic motivation for it. This model of the ideal self creates a comprehensive context within which a person (or at other fractals, a group or system) can formulate why they want to adapt, evolve, or maintain their current desired state.

Despite its central importance in nearly all societies, religion has been largely neglected in the study of organizations and management. In this introduction to the volume on religion and organization theory, we argue that such neglect limits unnecessarily the relevance and scope of organization and management theory (OMT) and that there is therefore great value in connecting organizational research with a deeper appreciation and concern for religion. We begin by speculating about some of the reasons why organization and management theorists are hesitant to study religion, and go on to discuss some nascent points of contact between religion and OMT. We conclude with a discussion of the articles in this volume, which represent an attempt to remedy this unfortunate blind spot within OMT scholarship.