Search results

This case requires a decision on the possible consolidation of three Midwest business-travel centers. Significant cost savings in service representatives can be achieved by combining the front-end (booking) operations. The sensitivity of cost to service-productivity levels and customer waiting time is also explored. This case and related materials can be used as part of the Workforce Planning Module.

States that the mid‐Kent area of Kent Social Services has been engaged in a programme of organization development for the last three years. The objective of this initiative has been to provide high quality services to the vulnerable people who need them. There was early recognition that the organization needed to be more responsive to those who used its services, but also to its staff. Explains how agreement was reached on the content of a learning organization policy. Sets out how, by asking two key questions of staff and listening and responding to their replies, it was possible to introduce a programme of personal development and performance management, along with an assessment programme which is helping to develop the behaviour of managers and supervisors. Gives practical examples of the opportunities created by staff to share their learning, demonstrate initiative, effect change and enjoy recognition for their efforts.

The information which has hitherto appeared in the daily press as to the evidence laid before the Departmental Committee which is inquiring into the use of preservatives and colouring matters can hardly have afforded pleasant reading to the apologists for the drugging of foods. It is plainly the intention of the Committee to make a thorough investigation of the whole subject, and the main conclusions which, in the result, must bo forced upon unbiassed persons by an investigation of this character will be tolerably obvious to those who have given serious attention to the subject. At a later stage of the inquiry we shall publish a full account of the evidence submitted and of the Committee's proceedings. At present we may observe that the facts which have been brought forward fully confirm the statements made from time to time upon these matters in the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and amply justify the attitude which we have adopted on the whole question. Representatives of various trade interests have given evidence which has served to show the extent to which the practices now being inquired into are followed. Strong medical evidence, as to the dangers which must attach to the promiscuous and unacknowledged drugging of the public by more or less ignorant persons, has been given; and some medical evidence of that apologetic order to which the public have of late become accustomed, and which we, at any rate, regard as particularly feeble, has also been put forward. Much more will no doubt be said, but those who have borne the heat and burden of the day in forcing these matters upon the attention of the Legislature and of the public can view with satisfaction the result already attained. Full and free investigation must produce its educational effect ; and whatever legal machinery may be devised to put some kind of check upon these most dangerous forms of adulteration, the demand of the public will be for undrugged food, and for a guarantee of sufficient authority to ensure that the demand is met.

In the past, social exchange based on reciprocity has been important to the ways in which people in rural areas have made their living. Our study shows that contemporary reciprocal labor exchanges continue to be integral to the ways in which households sustain themselves economically and socially. However, unlike the relations of reciprocity of the past, which were based upon accomplishing harvest work among neighboring dairy farms, the current patterns of exchange are situational and contingent, and often embedded in kin and other social networks, rather than immediate neighbors. Understanding reciprocity reveals a fundamental element in the livelihood strategies of low‐income, land‐based, rural people.

THE training model to be discussed is based on an integrated set of manual and mechanised indexing systems, all handling the same body of information from a limited subject field. By extending the scope of the model's operations to include prior and subsequent activities like the selection and abstracting of the documents to be indexed, and the preparation and dissemination of material through the use of the indexes, the model may be used for a wide range of documentation training, principally at three levels: demonstration by the lecturer to the students; use by the students in the retrieval and dissemination of information; and development by the students through the selection and abstracting of documents, the indexing and storage of information and ultimately the use of feedback from the dissemination stage to improve the systems.

This project represents a rarity among the production of specialised databases: one intended to give detailed access to a small area of imaginative, rather than scientific, technical or commercial literature. It is funded for an initial nine month period (April 1987‐January 1988) by the Welsh Arts Council and Yr Academi Gymreig. By the end of the first phase, the database will hold about 2,500 records of publications by and about 24 prominent, modern Anglo‐Welsh authors. Work on the project is being carried out at the College of Librarianship Wales (CLW). The database is designed to meet two main requirements:

Federal judges can execute at will—execute U.S. corporations, that is. Buried in the 1991 sentencing‐guidelines is a clause that gives courts the power to put any business out of business—permanently.

Upon completion of the analysis of the case, the students will be able to distinguish between a family business and a non-family business, evaluate the professionalization strategies used by Jeff Hamilton and categorize the type of family business that Jeff Hamilton is so far using the model of professionalization developed by Dekker et al. (2013). The model classifies family firms into four types according to their level of professionalization: autocracy, domestic configuration, administrative hybrid and a clench hybrid.

The case highlights how Jeff Hamilton, a family business that began in Kenya and has grown regionally in East Africa, has professionalized its operations and, by so doing, facilitated its growth. The family business is run by Major Boke and his wife Lucy Boke and was ranked number 31 in the 2019 top 100 SME survey conducted yearly by KPMG in collaboration with Nation media group – a Kenyan media company. The dilemma revolves around decision-making in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, where structures put in place to professionalize the business facilitated the decision-making.

The case can be taught to undergraduate and graduate-level entrepreneurship and family business courses. It can also be taught to executive education short courses on family business and entrepreneurship.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Three men decided to set up on their own in the fiercely competitive road trailer market. Chris Phillips reports on the enthusiasm which keeps the company thriving — and the problems which threaten its future.

Blues music is in the midst of its second revival in popularity in roughly thirty years. The year 1960 can be identified, with some qualification, as a reference point for the first rise in international awareness and appreciation of the blues. This first period of wide‐spread white interest in the blues continued until the early seventies, while the current revival began in the middle 1980s. During both periods a sizeable literature on the blues has appeared. This article provides a thumbnail sketch of the popularity of the blues, followed by a description of scholarly and critical literature devoted to the music. Documentary and instructional materials in audio and video formats are also discussed. Recommendations are made for library collections and a list of selected sources is included at the end of the article.