Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the potential use of virtual reality systems in facilities management design solutions.

The approach focuses on the human designer and acknowledges the importance of human input to the design process. The development of a metaphor‐based VR system is reported along with initial field trials, which compare VR with conventional CAD systems.

In the context of facilities management solutions advantages of using VR over CAD are shown and discussed along with strengths, weaknesses and future work.

The literature reviewed is not exhaustive. Many concepts are mentioned and referenced but not explained fully due to space constraints. The research suggests the future use of VR systems in FM solutions.

This paper discusses immersive virtual reality (VR) in support of building design tasks as an innovative tool, enabling more effective facilities management input at the building design phase.

The paper is based on original research. The paper explains and reviews the uses and potential uses of VR systems.

The purpose of this research is to use an accountability framework to explain the emerging tensions in accountability and how an intended bottom‐up approach became progressively supplanted. This paper is set within an emerging Zambian microfinance organisation moving into crisis.

A series of semi‐structured interviews were conducted with key local microfinance specialists, managers and accountants, clients and past and current loan officers. Live observation of the client‐loan officer interface and internal meetings provided triangulation on accountability relationships in the midst of crisis. Data were analysed using NVIVO, a qualitative computer software package.

The findings show that tensions between vertical and horizontal accountability in practice can be directly translated into heightened pressure and stresses on both the non‐governmental organisation (NGO) and its loan officers, which constrain overall accountabilities to other stakeholders and disguise other potential dysfunctions.

This study focussed on accountability at the grassroots in microfinance NGOs with a social mission. It reveals potential for further personal, community and socially constituted accounting research within microfinance in particular.

The paper adds to the literature on NGO accountability. It will be of value to researchers and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of not‐for‐profit organisations whose goals are not primarily wealth creation. It also gives details on under‐researched areas in accounting, namely NGOs and poverty reduction, and practices in Sub‐Saharan Africa.

Describes an evolving dynamic relationship between protégé and mentor, which strongly impacts on the entire organization and those microcomponents associated with organizational behaviour in general. These include individual processes, interpersonal and work group processes, and organizational structure. Pays specific attention to leadership, corporate culture, gender differences, job satisfaction and performance. Finds that mentoring is related to organizational behaviour in general.

A MAIN purpose behind adopting a policy of bookstock categorisation is to reduce the problem of bookstock supply (which equals customer choice), to understandable terms. If it is possible to determine a working ratio of shelf titles per topic/category to a given community of users a number of possibilities become available. A primary advantage is the determination of the minimum number of titles sufficient to meet a community of users' demand in each interest area. Increasing the range of titles can be seen as improving quality. A cost and quantity factor can be determined for an economic provision of bookstock and a cost factor placed on a stepped improvement in quality. By amalgamating these factors for a number of libraries a minimum economic provision can be determined for a county. The process of finding the minimum required bookstock will automatically, since the community of users is identified, identify both the timescale and the chance of finding a title by the user in which s/he is interested, has not already been read and is on the shelves, and will also identify the level of stock input and extraction that is required to maintain the quality of choice in any one library.

Several tests have been conducted to determine which valuation model best fits stock price data. Given very little success, those studies suggest the need for a clear understanding of the market process of stock price determination. This paper advances the concepts of product costing and product pricing, which pertain to financial accounting valuation and the stock market price determination, respectively. This research effort presents a workable hypothesis of stock price determination.

REPORTS continue to reach us which are heartening to librarians. In the outer unpleasantness of the black‐out there has come a new realization of the inner attractions of the fireside; and libraries are playing a definite part. It has been remarked, and is of course true, that for many of our people the opportunity has been given for the first time for twenty years to cultivate certain self‐activities. Music in the home is one of them; we have met men who used in youth to play an instrument now turning to it again; and the pleasure of creating music oneself instead of listening to wireless or gramophone records is great. For the first time others have turned to hobbies, handicrafts, games of skill, drawing; and many more than these have remembered that certain great books which they have had a life‐long desire to know still remain unread. In all this librarians see opportunity and play a leading part, putting out useful lists on the basis of that good slogan, “Books make Black‐outs Brighter.” We need not enlarge upon matters so obvious to the eager librarian. One thing he must have noted is the return to the greater classics, the land of Don Quixote, the immortal Vicar of Wakefield, of Jane Austen and Dickens amongst many others. It is strange how immortal the Immortals are—but, is it?

MANY and sundry are the worries which fall to the lot of the librarian, and the matter of book‐repair is not the least among them. The very limited book‐fund at the disposal of most public library authorities makes it imperative on the part of the librarian to keep the books in his charge in circulation as long as possible, and to do this at a comparatively small cost, in spite of poor paper, poor binding, careless repairing, and unqualified assistants. This presents a problem which to some extent can be solved by the establishment of a small bindery or repairing department, under the control of an assistant who understands the technique of bookbinding.

According to a report just issued by Dr. ARTHUR NEWSHOLME, the Principal Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, it appears that a majority of the staff of the Medical Department of the Board have been engaged in assisting to establish as favourable sanitary conditions as possible at the training centres for the new troops so that the risks associated with the concentration and feeding of large numbers of men under temporary conditions should be reduced to a minimum.