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ON October 19 the Minister of Aviation formally opened the two new high‐speed wind tunnels which have been constructed at Wharton, Lancashire, for English Electric Aviation Ltd.

IT was in September, 1950, that Alcan Industries Ltd. (or the Northern Aluminium Co. as it then was) opened the continuous strip mill at Rogerstone in South Wales. In March, 1958, new plate handling facilities were inaugurated, and it was announced at that time that the company had embarked on a four‐year programme of expansion which would involve an investment of a further £8 million in new plant and buildings, with the intention of increasing the output of rolled aluminium to 75,000 tons a year. This ambitious programme has now reached the halfway stage with the installation of a 144 in. hot rolling mill, and on October 6 Alcan Industries Ltd. invited us to inspect the present stage of development at the Rogerstone works.

THE paper began with a brief historical survey of the cold extrusion process since its first practical use over sixty years ago. The extrusion of special materials such as molybdenum, beryllium and zirconium was described. The problems relating to the production of suitable tooling for the extrusion process and the preparation, heat treatment and lubrication of extrusion billets and slugs were discussed. Following discussion on temperature and speed effects, prestrain of work material, presses for extrusion and component design, the paper concluded with an outline of the applications and advantages of the cold extrusion process.

Manufacturers use communication strategies to inform potential consumers of their product's existence, its main features and benefits, its advantages over competing products, with the aim of persuading them that purchase is a desirable action. This set of promotion objectives is based on models of consumer decision making which are coming under increasing attack. The relevance of the accepted process of choice with other conceptions is compared. How manufacturers may have to modify their promotional activities to satisfy our present knowledge of how consumers acquire and use information is considered.

Semi‐structured focused interviews were used to analyse the supposedly extended decision process involved in the choice of video recorder. The results suggested that the proposed three‐stage model was a meaningful reflection of the decision‐making process. First the respondents clarified the problems and benefits of video recorders. Next they created consideration and choice sets excluding more extensive searching. Conjunctive decision rules (weirs) were used to simplify the final decision. The implications for manufacturers are discussed.

Retailer bankruptcy provides an opportunity for studying the relationships among members of a channel of distribution because bankruptcy disturbs the ongoing pattern of such relationships. This study employs qualitative research to model the criteria that suppliers use in selecting their response to a bankrupt retailer. Results show that suppliers who continue cooperative behavior with a retailer employ a model that assesses whether the risks in continuing to supply that retailer are in balance with the outcomes generated from the relationship. However, behavioral variables appear relevant as well: retailers appear to benefit from adopting a collaborative communication strategy and building supplier confidence so that a turnaround will in fact occur.

This study seeks to explicate how institutional disruptions impact multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary control choices. It uses institutional theory to understand the influence of formal and informal institutions across countries on the type of control system employed in an MNC manufacturing subsidiary.

This study’s sample is based on a unique dataset from five trustworthy sources. We use multi-level models to account for the hierarchical nature of the sample of 1,630 multinational subsidiaries spread across 26 host countries by firms from 21 home countries.

The institutional distance between the host and the home country has a negative relationship with strategic control. In contrast, the home country’s power distance has a positive relationship with strategic control.

Study findings indicate the need to incorporate formal and informal institutional elements in the control system’s conceptual framing and design. This notion complements existing visualizations of optimizing MNC controls through extant articulations of minimizing governance costs through organizational design choices or strategic needs.

Existing studies of information systems development (ISD) control commonly examine controller-centric considerations, such as the antecedents and performance impacts of control mode choices. In contrast, little is known about the controllee-centric factors that may influence the effectiveness of control activities. Drawing on institutional theory, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of control legitimacy to the ISD literature – a concept that past organizational research has linked to outcomes such as employee commitment and performance. Specifically, the authors explore how different dimensions of control activities (mode, degree, style) relate to controllee perceptions of control legitimacy in terms of justice, autonomy, group identification, and competence development.

Interviews were conducted with 20 practitioners across three companies. A structured data coding approach was employed and analysis was conducted within and across each case study.

The authors find that the control degree and control style can help explain control legitimacy perceptions better than control modes alone. For example, the results suggest that formal controls enacted in a bilateral style correspond with higher perceptions of justice and autonomy, when compared to formal controls enacted in a unilateral style.

The study results imply that ISD managers should be increasingly mindful of enacting controls in a way that is perceived to be legitimate by subordinates, thereby potentially enhancing both staff well-being and ISD performance.

This paper examines the problems of translating marketing theory into effective marketing practice and specifically concentrates on the difficulties that surround the marketing planning process. First the authors explore the barriers to marketing planning and relate these to the lack of specific marketing competencies. Then the concept of work‐based learning is discussed and a programme of this nature suggested which builds on key marketing planning competencies.

This study aims to the OQuaRE quality model to the developed methodology.

Ontologies are formal, well-defined and flexible representations of knowledge related to a specific domain. They provide the base to develop efficient and interoperable solutions. Hence, a proliferation of ontologies in many domains is unleashed. Then, it is necessary to define how to compare such ontologies to decide which one is the most suitable for the specific needs of users/developers. As the emerging development of ontologies, several studies have proposed criteria to evaluate them.

In a previous study, the authors propose a methodological process to qualitatively and quantitatively compare ontologies at Lexical, Structural and Domain Knowledge levels, considering correctness and quality perspectives. As the evaluation methods of the proposal are based on a golden-standard, it can be customized to compare ontologies in any domain.

To show the suitability of the proposal, the authors apply the methodological approach to conduct comparative studies of ontologies in two different domains, one in the robotic area, in particular for the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem; and the other one, in the cultural heritage domain. With these cases of study, the authors demonstrate that with this methodological comparative process, we are able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of ontologies, as well as the gaps still needed to fill in the target domains.

Using these metrics and the quality model from OQuaRE, the authors are incorporating a standard of software engineering at the quality validation into the Semantic Web.