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In the five years that have elapsed since Sloane reported on the changing patterns of working hours in Britain, the rate of change has increased and the pattern of change has become more complex. This paper sets out to update thinking about patterns of change, proposes a research model and poses a number of research issues. Since terminology can be confusing, we start with some definitions.

The debate surrounding flexible working hours or “flexitime” has progressed from exploratory summaries of its “advantages” and “disadvantages” for employees and companies to more advanced studies of the degrees and forms of flexibility available and the factors which influence their suitability in a managerial sense.

Recent experiments with changes in work week structure from ‘rigid’ to ‘flexible’ have alerted employers and employees to the possibility of varying existing hours arrangements. The decision to change (or not to change) is often based on inadequate consideration of the consequences and an incomplete identification and analysis of all the available alternatives. Different degrees and forms of ‘flexibility’ may be appropriate for different work situations. The decision‐maker must appraise the work situations under his control and determine from the alternatives available which particular structure(s) are most suitable. To this end it is necessary, firstly, to conceptualize about the major variables in work week structures and then to develop a model which will allow the work situation characteristics to be ‘matched’ with a suitable work week structure. Research carried out in the Department of Management Studies at Loughborough University indicates that a ‘contingency’ model seems most appropriate.

The application of flexibility to shift systems of working has generally been limited to individual arrangements between ‘opposite numbers’ on other shifts. This article describes a successful experiment to design and implement a flexible system that greatly extends the discretion accorded to operatives on shiftwork in their overall use of time. The scheme appears to be unique in that over 1,500 production workers are involved in operating a scheme that was largely designed by themselves.

Dispersant and surfactant additives, although used in minor amounts, exert a major influence in latex paints, controlling, for example, long‐term and freeze‐thaw stability in the can, application properties, and the opacity, gloss, and scrub resistance of the dry film. In such complicated multiphase systems, exact knowledge of the role played by these dispersants and surfactants and their distribution is vital to optimum formulation. For instance, the amount of dispersant required to ensure pigment deaggregation during ‘grinding’, and to ensure stability of the resultant mill base, has been one of the principal concerns of paint formulators. Several techniques to determine this have been reported‐i.e., Daniels Flow Point measurements in resin or dispersant solutions, or Brookfield viscosity measurements at various dispersant levels after dispersion, and titration of pigment with dispersant solutions with a Brabender Plastigraph‐type sigma blade mixer.

Four common goal setting practices in public schools are assessed from the perspective of modern organization theory. The major thesis of the paper is that organizational goals are established through the process of committing policies and allocating resources. Thus, the paper questions the rational approach to goal setting in which goal statements are developed by ad hoc committees independent of the arena in which operative decision making occurs. The paper concludes that goal setting should be viewed as a major confrontation of values and that administrators and policy makers might better clarify school goals by examining their actions.

From its origins in West Germany in the late sixties ‘flexitime’ has spread in various forms across Europe, The United States and the Western World generally. A number of organisations have emerged to provide time recording equipment for monitoring flexitime systems, their rapid growth in the seventies bears witness to the fertile conditions for flexitime which evidently existed during that period. In the U.K. applications of flexitime have been in Insurance, Banking, the Civil Service and Local Government as well as retailing and manufacturing.

At regular intervals over the past two decades, management has been presented with various attractively packaged techniques, offered as the panaceas to cure hitherto perennial managerial problems. Although these “cure‐alls” may differ greatly (cf. MBO and productivity bargaining) they tend to have a common characteristic, that is, they claim that advantages will result for all the parties involved, and, often, that they will produce results in every organisation in which they are properly applied and given a chance to work. The experience that, in practice, some of the benefits claimed by the different groups involved are incompatible, or that some are more difficult to bring about than anticipated, or that the supposedly “universal” panacea “just does not work in our company”, does not seem to inhibit the discovery of new panaceas to replace or supplement the old.

ALTHOUGH the University of Southampton has had an independent existence for ten years it has roots going back almost a century in the Hartley Institute. An early pioneer in aeronautics, F. W. Lanchester received his technical training in Southampton and the first of the new engineering buildings at the university has been called after him.

Organisational hours systems are a major feature of the overall web of controls and influences which are applied to employees. For this reason alone it is surprising how little attention has been focused on them relative to other influence mechanisms, such as pay, job design, appraisal systems, budgets and so on. Yet when we consider that, with the arguable exception of pay, hours systems have the most intrusive effect on the employee's total life pattern, their neglect as a field of study is all the more disconcerting.