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My objective is to give a thumbnail sketch of the computing art, and perhaps to kill a few fallacies on the way. One fallacy which I will tackle right away is the idea that computers are essentially for numerical computations, and that if they do anything else it is, like Dr Johnson's description of a woman's preaching, ‘not done well, but it is surprising to find that it is done at all’. It is true that numerical computing was the umbilical cord on which the electronic computer was born; but the digital computer uses pulse patterns to represent the data, and there is nothing essentially numerical about the pulses.

This paper is in two parts. The purpose of the first part was to explore the basis for the creation of an agentic ecology theory that could provide a generic multidisciplinary context-free manifold that can be applied to specific domains and contexts. As an element of this, it explored the relationship between agency and its agents (at various foci) and the nature of agency ecologies. It also explored the relationship between viability and sustainability. In this second part, the purpose is to create an agency model that will recognise the analytical and decision-making attributes of the viability–sustainability relationship by centring on the modelling a socioeconomic ecosystem and a social disciplinary species model.

Agency theory will be used to model a generic agency ecology and its environment of subordinate elements – especially those subordinates that can be used as amenities to satisfy the needs to agency development. Part 1 of the paper took a tour of concepts relevant to the representation of ecosystem structures and their application. Part 2 will centre on delivering a schema capable of embracing agency ecology from which applications may derive.

It is shown agency theory is not only a modelling schema but can also provide diagnosis to examine the condition of, or for locating problems within, an agency in its ecosystem environment. This is illustrated within a socioeconomic context.

The paper is conceptual in nature, without any to diagnose any substantive issues within the socio-economic context.

A generalized agency ecology approach is proposed over this two-part paper that is novel through the use of 3rd order cybernetics.

Beginning next September, technical colleges will offer courses for junior office staff who wish to take a course of further education connected with the work they are doing, but lack the educational qualifications necessary for entry to an ONC course in Business Studies.

‘To help the colleges to make their full contribution to higher education by providing a range of degrees of unimpeachable standards of quality which reflect the diverse needs of the colleges and the distinctive character of their work.’ This was how the Secretary of State for Education and Science described the task of the Council for National Academic Awards, when, at its first formal meeting, he handed to the Chairman, Sir Harold Roxbee Cox, the Royal Charter establishing the Council. It was, he said, ‘the first time that comprehensive powers to award degrees have been entrusted to a body other than a university or the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the establishment of the Council marks a turning point in the development of higher education in regional and other colleges of further education engaged in advanced work’.

IT is always safe to criticise our educational system. What you publicly charge against it may have no foundation in fact; but that will not affect your reputation in the least; and if you can manage to suggest as well that the schools in Latvia or Liberia have introduced a great “novelty” (which our own schools have been practising without advertisement for years) the news will be headed “Great Educational Innovation,” and there will probably be an editorial asking whether it is not time this country began to wake up and take lessons from young and adventurous territories.

WHAT a wonderful lady is Dr. Lillian Gilbreth. Whatever her age it can be discounted since years have little or no effect on one so youthful in spirit.

The professionalization of IT has long been complicated by disagreement over the appropriate model to employ. Physicians, lawyers, scientists, engineers, artisans, and artists have all one been invoked at one time or another by one group or another as guiding examples for the development of an IT profession. Yet none of these has proved fully convincing. Discusses the different kinds of professional practice which have been likened to IT, considers why it has proved so difficult to settle on a single one, and suggests an alternative way of conceptualizing IT practice.

Guided by the social exchange theory, this study aims to examine the mediating relationship among trust in employee, felt trust, and trust in supervisor, and these trust-related factors’ direct and indirect effects on frontline hotel employees’ customer-focused voice and silence.

Survey questionnaires were distributed to collect 307 valid paired supervisor–employee responses from 32 hotels in Taiwan. Structured equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

First, treating trust-related variables as two-dimensional constructs (reliance and disclosure), the results confirmed that reliance-based trust in employee increases trust in supervisor through felt trust. Second, supervisor trust in employee was generally stronger than employee felt trust. Third, while felt reliance and disclosure-based trust in supervisor were found to promote customer-focused voice and discourage silence, such opposite effects on voice and silence were not observed for reliance-based trust in employee, felt disclosure and reliance-based trust in supervisor. Fourth, indirect effects of trust in employee and felt trust on voice and silence through trust in supervisor received partial support.

This study provides business insights into managing frontline hotel employees’ voice/silence behaviors through trusting relationships.

This study verified employee felt trust as a mediating mechanism in their trusting relationships with supervisors as well as supervisors’ roles in initiating trust in vertical dyads. Using a two-dimensional trust measure, our analysis illustrated the differential effects of trust-related variables on customer-focused voice and silence, shedding light on the double-edged effects of felt trust and trust in supervisor as well as the conceptual distinction between voice and silence.

ESTIMATE time is here again. Yet once more librarians are preparing their plans for next year with the same mixture of realistic pessimism coloured with only occasional dashes of idealistic optimism. Some of them during the past nine months will have made an effort to create and foster a higher regard for the library service among their councillors, and none but the most blatant cynic would suggest that such efforts are foredoomed in the harsh atmosphere of the finance committee meeting.