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AFTER the trenchant paper by Mr. A. O. Jennings, read at the Brighton meeting of the Library Association, and the very embarrassing resolution which was carried as a result, one can only approach the subject of the commonplace in fiction with fear and diffidence. It is generally considered a bold and dangerous thing to fly in the face of corporate opinion as expressed in solemn public resolutions, and when the weighty minds of librarianship have declared that novels must only be chosen on account of their literary, educational or moral qualities, one is almost reduced to a state of mental imbecility in trying to fathom the meaning and limits of such an astounding injunction. To begin with, every novel or tale, even if but a shilling Sunday‐school story of the Candle lighted by the Lord type is educational, inasmuch as something, however little, may be learnt from it. If, therefore, the word “educational” is taken to mean teaching, it will be found impossible to exclude any kind of fiction, because even the meanest novel can teach readers something they never knew before. The novels of Emma Jane Worboise and Mrs. Henry Wood would no doubt be banned as unliterary and uneducational by those apostles of the higher culture who would fain compel the British washerwoman to read Meredith instead of Rosa Carey, but to thousands of readers such books are both informing and recreative. A Scots or Irish reader unacquainted with life in English cathedral cities and the general religious life of England would find a mine of suggestive information in the novels of Worboise, Wood, Oliphant and many others. In similar fashion the stories of Annie Swan, the Findlaters, Miss Keddie, Miss Heddle, etc., are educational in every sense for the information they convey to English or American readers about Scots country, college, church and humble life. Yet these useful tales, because lacking in the elusive and mysterious quality of being highly “literary,” would not be allowed in a Public Library managed by a committee which had adopted the Brighton resolution, and felt able to “smell out” a high‐class literary, educational and moral novel on the spot. The “moral” novel is difficult to define, but one may assume it will be one which ends with a marriage or a death rather than with a birth ! There have been so many obstetrical novels published recently, in which doubtful parentage plays a chief part, that sexual morality has come to be recognized as the only kind of “moral” factor to be regarded by the modern fiction censor. Objection does not seem to be directed against novels which describe, and indirectly teach, financial immorality, or which libel public institutions—like municipal libraries, for example. There is nothing immoral, apparently, about spreading untruths about religious organizations or political and social ideals, but a novel which in any way suggests the employment of a midwife before certain ceremonial formalities have been executed at once becomes immoral in the eyes of every self‐elected censor. And it is extraordinary how opinion differs in regard to what constitutes an immoral or improper novel. From my own experience I quote two examples. One reader objected to Morrison's Tales of Mean Streets on the ground that the frequent use of the word “bloody” made it immoral and unfit for circulation. Another reader, of somewhat narrow views, who had not read a great deal, was absolutely horrified that such a painfully indecent book as Adam Bede should be provided out of the public rates for the destruction of the morals of youths and maidens!

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between product customization and servitization strategies, specifically the relationship between product customization strategy intensity and degree of servitization (offering of basic and/or advanced services) and the moderating role of product customization strategy alignment on that relationship.

The authors develop and test hypotheses through partial least squares path modeling to analyze data from the Sixth International Manufacturing Strategy Survey, involving 931 manufacturers in 22 countries.

The results indicate that customization strategy intensity is positively associated with the offering of basic and advanced services; these relationships are not moderated by customization strategy alignment.

Manufacturers pursuing product customization strategies may be especially well positioned to servitize, even those with misalignment in strategic choices. Paradoxically, while manufacturers of standard products might look at servitization as an attractive strategy to differentiate their value proposition, they appear to be less servitized than manufacturers pursuing product customization.

This is one of the first studies to examine how manufacturing strategy choices (intensity and alignment) influence the adoption of servitization strategies. The study introduces manufacturing strategy as a contingency factor that influences the adoption of servitization, answering calls for the study of servitization contingencies.

Innovation is a key factor in assessing organizational success. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational culture and operations strategy impact organizational innovation. It explores the influence of various combinations of organizational cultures and operations strategies on a firm’s ability to innovate both in process and product.

A conceptual model is developed which attempts to explain how the reciprocal and dynamic interactive relationship between organizational culture and operations strategy and innovation is structured. In total, 233 valid questionnaires were collected from 17 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the direction and strengths of the relationships and develop a comprehensive picture to illustrate the drivers of successful innovation.

The analysis and conclusions confirm the suitability of Culture–Strategy–Innovation Model and the detailed results demonstrate that a combination of innovative organizational culture and flexibility-oriented operations strategy has the strongest influence on a firm’s innovation process thereby improving their innovative organizational outcomes.

Although based on Taiwanese manufacturing industries these results provide useful insights for manufacturing industries in general. In alternative contexts, the combination of different dimensions of culture and strategy can be expected to cause different levels of success in innovation. This study provides robust evidence to explain the organizational climate needed to guide the innovative and flexibility considerations needed for SMEs in the manufacturing industry.

This is an empirical study which specifically investigates the activities of SMEs in the metal/plastic manufacturing industry in Taiwan and in particular examines organizational culture, operations strategies and innovation. The research model proposed and confirmed offers a new multi-dimensional structure of culture and strategy linked with their various related dynamic interrelationships and the drivers that impact organizational innovation.

Although 76% of the population of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is Muslim, takāful (Islamic insurance) has a much smaller share of business in the UAE than conventional insurance does. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of brand equity (BE), which is known as the incremental value that provides reason to buy a brand. This study provides useful insights that can help the health takāful industry to gain a feasible market share in the UAE.

This is a quantitative study in which stratified random sampling was adopted for data collection from 300 respondents through a self-administered questionnaire from August to November 2018. Underpinning the study is the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique has been used to examine the impact of BE on purchase intentions (PI) through the moderating role of demographic factors such as age, income, education and religion. Three dimensions of BE, i.e. brand awareness (BAW), brand association (BAS) and perceived quality (PQ), are evaluated in terms of their significance as dimensions of BE.

The major findings of this study confirm that BE has a strong positive influence on the PIs of health takāful customers in the UAE and that all three dimensions of BE make significant contributions to the overall BE. The results show that education does moderate the relationship between BE and PI while age, income and religion do not. A new finding of this study is the nonsignificant moderating role of religion, whereby it was found that takāful products in the UAE are not limited to Muslim customers but can include potential customers who are followers of other religions.

To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of BE on the PI of health takāful customers in the UAE. The findings of the study give academia, researchers and marketers a better understanding of the importance of BE and of its vital role in promoting takāful products in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as the UAE.

Laboratory studies of social interaction have revealed a wide range of phenomena that are difficult to explain using standard economic models. For example, people will often sacrifice their own earnings in order to be generous, cooperative, punitive, and retributive in interactions with anonymous strangers. “Behavioral” models that redefine agents’ preferences attempt to provide an account of these phenomena as reflecting a “taste for fairness” or altruism, aversion to inequality, concern about others’ beliefs, and so on. Such models either fail to account for the rich sensitivity of actions to context or in allowing for rich context-dependence, these models ultimately substitute description for explanation. Hayek’s work provides a foundation for thinking about how to explain these phenomena, by conceiving of people as both purpose-seeking (as in economic models) and rule-following. Decisions are shaped both by material interests and by a normative framework that is evoked by context and helps people decide what one ought to do in a particular situation. The implication of this approach is that rather than trying to understand heterogeneity across individuals in terms of preferences, experimenters should instead try to understand heterogeneity across contexts in terms of the rules and norms that operate in the background and guide or constrain people’s purpose-seeking tendencies. What economics needs, then, is a theory of how and why these rules and norms vary with context as they do.

THE title of this short paper is somewhat of a misnomer, as the German Volks bibliothek is not the same as an English Public Library. As Dr. Schultze says: “When we speak of an English Public Library we know exactly what is meant, but the German Volks bibliothek does not convey any definite impression. Too often it still means a very small collection of books, probably gifts which are accessible to borrowers at certain hours each week. As a rule, the revenue is so trifling that after paying the small working costs there is little or nothing left for buying books.” Taking, therefore, the term Public Library for the sake of convenience, we may assume that the first Public Library in Germany was opened in Hamburg, in 1529, as the result of Luther's recommendation (1524) “that good libraries, especially in the large towns, should be established.” At the beginning of the 18th century, a number of free libraries were established, these were usually connected with churches and schools, yet their very name “free” seemed an invitation to everyone to share the treasures they contained. These libraries were principally in central Germany and Saxony.