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This paper is principally aimed at two groups of people: (a) those who manage property on behalf of non‐occupier institutions or investors; and (b) those who manage property on behalf of occupier companies. However, a brief historical review followed by an exposition of the immediate future is pertinent to both groups.

Sexual harassment is more than a social issue; it impacts on worker productivity, employee communication and organizational morale. These are direct costs to industry, combined with indirect costs such as worker discontent, absenteeism and stress. Discusses the challenge for management to respond to educating employees before charges are filed; this includes policies, training programmes and punitive measures. Cites the controversial nomination of US Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, which galvanized women′s groups, who believe that he had engaged in prior harassment of an assistant, as a case study worthy of examination. In addition, a survey of several hundreds of men and women underscores differences in how gender affects attitudes towards appropriate behaviour in the work setting.

Discusses the NHS Executive′s information management and technology (IM&T) strategy and its relationship to the 1991 reforms. Examines the recommendation for large acute hospitals to adopt integrated hospital information support systems (HISS). Reports that a recent census of these hospitals, undertaken by the authors, suggests that the implementation of the strategy′s recommendations has been slow at the local level. Attempts to diagnose the factors that are impeding implementation, using the evidence provided by the census. Identifies four main problem areas: the lack of success of past IM&T initiatives undermines confidence in the current strategy; the strategy is poorly aligned with other policy initiatives; the legacy of discrete, proprietary information systems within hospitals makes the creation of an integrative information environment difficult to accomplish without massive investment in new systems; and there are implicit contradictions between the following: the absence of a comprehensive post‐implementation evaluation of the economic, technological and cultural feasibility of HISS at any of the three HISS pilot sites; the strategy′s advocacy of HISS as the way forward for large acute hospitals; the requirement for a comprehensive business case to support any substantial investment in IM&T. Concludes that a massive rethink of policy is required, with a much greater emphasis on research, development and independent evaluation.

This paper marks the centenary year of W. Ross Ashby (1903‐1972), one of the founders of the interdisciplinary subject of cybernetics. Its purpose is to Ashby's cybernetics to construct a framework for understanding some of the features that presently characterise British higher education.

The contents of Ashby's 1956 book, An Introduction to Cybernetics, are outlined. Cybernetic concepts, principles, and laws are then applied to some of the features that presently characterise UK universities: growth in student numbers, the modularisation of curricula, concerns over academic standards, and bureaucracy.

The paper finds Ashby's writings to be critical to understanding the nature of many of the contemporary debates about UK higher education. A diagnosis and critical evaluation of the policy impetus to increase student numbers and modularise curricula is supplied. A cybernetic analysis in support of the current concerns over academic standards is provided. The paper demonstrates why the current higher education quality assurance regime produces a bureaucratised university.

The paper's framework is supported by an analysis of available national statistics and other secondary evidence, but more detailed, cross‐comparative, longitudinal studies of the UK labour market and educational attainment are required.

Given the economic perspective adopted by policy‐makers – the paper identifies three reasons why the current policy of expanding UK higher education may be flawed.

The paper marks the centenary year of W. Ross Ashby by demonstrating how his writings can supply a framework for understanding the current debates about UK higher education policy.

This paper is written in memory of the late Stafford Beer. The paper engages with only one dimension of the whole man: Stafford Beer as the diagnostician and prognostician of the social conditions that he so keenly observed.

The paper revisits a talk that Stafford Beer gave, over three decades ago, to administrators of the UK National Health Service (NHS). It uses the content of the talk, entitled “Health and Quiet Breathing”, to diagnose the problems that have been encountered in the development of NHS information management strategies. The paper concludes with some brief personal recollections of Stafford Beer as a friend and as a teacher.

The paper finds Stafford Beer's managerial cybernetics to be a useful tool in understanding many of the problems that have beset NHS information management strategies: lack of operational research, problems in the commodification of information, financial scandal, and bureaucracy. In its examination of these issues, the paper recognises Stafford Beer's status as a legatee of not only Norbert Wiener but also of the great philosophers.

The paper demonstrates how the problem‐orientation of Stafford Beer's managerial cybernetics continues to be fresh and relevant to today's society and provides a brief portrait of him both as a friend and as a teacher.

YOU MAY recall that the December 1974 issue of NLW contained a Christmas Quiz. Readers were asked to identify various libraries described in passages extracted from a motley and heterogeneous selection of books the compiler had chanced upon in half‐a‐lifetime's casual reading. In all honesty the response to the quiz was a little less than heartening and never reached even modest expectations. Not to put too fine a point on it, there was not one single entry. Clearly the books from which the passages were quoted lacked any discernible theme and the odds against anyone duplicating the compiler's miscellaneous reading habits were so outrageous that this caused no surprise.

The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of how information technology (IT) resources influence a firm’s channel power development. Specifically, this study hypothesizes that two types of IT resources (i.e. IT infrastructure resources and IT human resources) are key antecedents to channel power and that information management capability is a key mediator between IT resources and channel power.

The hypotheses are tested using survey data gathered from a sample of Chinese companies. The analyses are performed using partial least squares technique.

The results suggest that both of the two IT resources play key roles in enhancing a firm’s channel power, but they do so in different ways. Specifically, while IT human resources can enhance a firm’s channel power by strengthening both information acquisition and dissemination capabilities, IT infrastructure resources can influence channel power only by enhancing a firm’s information acquisition capability.

The measurement of IT resources might potentially be influenced by subjective divergence. In addition, information management contains many sub-processes, and this study only examines two of them: information acquisition and information dissemination.

The findings suggest that managers should develop/improve both IT infrastructure and human resources to enhance channel power by building stronger information management capability. More importantly, the findings reveal that IT human resource can provide more benefits as it strengthens both information acquisition and dissemination capabilities.

This study extends the existing literature by investigating how a firm’s IT resources affect its channel power. The results of this study provide insightful guidance for managers and researchers in how to better manage IT resources to improve channel governance performance.

The purpose of this paper is a description of DITCI, its drop loads and sensors, the impact tools, the robot dynamic impact safety artifacts, data analysis, and modeling of test results. The dynamic impact testing and calibration instrument (DITCI) is a simple instrument with a significant data collection and analysis capability that is used for the testing and calibration of biosimulant human tissue artifacts. These artifacts may be used to measure the severity of injuries caused in the case of a robot impact with a human.

In this paper, we describe the DITCI adjustable impact and flexible foundation mechanism, which allows the selection of a variety of impact force levels and foundation stiffness. The instrument can accommodate arrays of a variety of sensors and impact tools, simulating both real manufacturing tools and the testing requirements of standards setting organizations.

A computer data acquisition system may collect a variety of impact motion, force and torque data, which are used to develop a variety of mathematical model representations of the artifacts. Finally, we describe the fabrication and testing of human abdomen soft tissue artifacts with embedded markers, used to display the severity of impact injury tissue deformation.

DITCI and the use of biosimulant human tissue artifacts will permit a better understanding of the severity of injury, which will be caused in the case of a robot impact with a human, without the use of expensive cadaver parts. The limitations are set by the ability to build artifacts with material properties similar to those of various parts of the human body.

This technology will be particularly useful for small manufacturing companies that cannot afford the use of expensive instrumentation and technical consultants.

Impact tests were performed at maximum impact force and average pressure levels that are below, at and above the levels recommended by a proposed International Organization for Standardization standard. These test results will be used to verify whether the adopted safety standards will protect interactive robots human operators for various robot tools and control modes.

Various research groups have used human subjects to collect data on pain induced by industrial robots. Unfortunately, human safety testing is not an option for human–robot collaboration in industrial applications every time there is a change of a tool or control program, so the use of biosimulant artifacts is expected to be a good alternative.