Search results

Without the stories, or narratives that organisations construct, there could be no social negotiation or sense making. A problem is that the narratives are often “too straight”, too simplistic and self‐serving to be helpful representations of reality. Most stories in organisations that are used to manage change efforts are too simple, and too much believed. They foster naive optimism that soon degenerates into cynicism. Stories are maps, but are often confused with the territories themselves. Some examples of stories or accounts of organisational change efforts that are straight, and how they might have been made more “crooked”, are discussed. Some suggestions on how leaders in organisations can become more thoughtful consumers of straight stories and make those stories more helpful maps to guide organisations through the turbulence of change are offered.

This paper explores the issue of transferring western human resource management (HRM) practices to Algeria. Drawing on a case study of a large industrial company, the research identifies the motives for the transfer and examines the selection and implementation process of western HRM practices in Algeria. Evidence generated from the case study reveals that while management justifications for the transfer of western HRM practices capture the economic and technical rationale for western HRM practices, they fail to identify local conditions under which these HRM practices might be transferred. The applicability of western HRM is hindered by the unplanned and haphazard importation of western HRM practices.

The challenge is to manage the organization's culture so that you can tap the company's strengths to achieve superior performance and identify its weaknesses in time to overcome them before they cause serious damage.

Research on organizational culture has provided much needed subtlety in understanding organizational events. However, it has a cognitive bias which leaves implicit the treatment of emotional phenomena. Organizational stories can provide a window on affect in organizations if we view stories as symbolically embedded appraisals of wellbeing. Presents an illustrative case to demonstrate how such enquiry might proceed.

THE responsibility for materials handling methods, as for all other production methods, should be made the clear responsibility of the head of Work Study. The reasoning behind that firm conclusion is very logical. Industry in general depends for its success upon the application of some process such as machining or finishing of raw materials. Every such operation adds to its value and builds up a firm's turnover. It is therefore obvious that the more time there is devoted to conversion the less will be wasted on profitless storage or unproductive transport from one part of the works to another.

Using his Information Scientist pseudonym of Icarus, Alan Gilchrist once called the Aslib Co‐ordinate Indexing Group (CIG) (now Aslib Informatics Group) a bunch of free‐thinkers—the hippy fringe of the information profession. As the leading light of this Group (Leo Jolley was its Chairman from its formal inception in 1970 until his death on Christmas Day 1976) one might have expected him to epitomize these alleged qualities, but this was not so. Leo was neither long‐haired, figuratively or otherwise, nor was he a particularly free‐thinker. His work relating to information retrieval tended to be highly formalized: for a time he was unjusdy criticized for his attempt to rigorously define the fundamental nature of feature card systems. Later he had to suffer similar criticism from the present writer when he attempted to define and standardize the vocabulary relating to co‐ordinate indexing and thesaurus construction. Leo was a highly individual thinker, however, and he certainly existed at the fringe of the information profession. His contacts with the profession appear to have been limited to the CIG and to the Classification Research Group. He was neither a member of the Institute of Information Scientists nor of the Library Association, and was affronted if accused of being a librarian. Thus, he formed a part of that limited band who have contributed much to the profession without really being a part of it. This must be qualified, however, in that he had established a company (J. L. Jolley and Partners) which operated a range of services from consultancy to punching holes in feature cards.

Talk around Britain's application to enter the European Economic Community goes on; it has never really ceased since the first occasion of the French veto, although in the last year or so, the airy promise of the first venture has given way to more sober thoughts on the obstacles to joining and the severe burdens to be carried not only by the British people but by many of our kith and kin beyond the seas if the country becomes a full member of the Community.

The study of birth defects has increased in importance in recent years because the rate of infant mortality due to other causes (such as infection and nutritional disease) has decreased more quickly than has the rate of deaths due to birth defects. Today, abnormalities are detected in approximately 3 percent of newborn humans, and twice as many prenatally acquired defects are found in children after infancy as are discovered at birth. In addition, many of the more than 500,000 miscarriages and stillbirths that occur each year in the United States are due to abnormal fetal development.

The actions of employees such as service personnel are seen as being important in communicating a company’s corporate values and goals, particularly where they interact directly with customers and other corporate audiences. Their beliefs, norms and values derived from the organisational culture influence their actions and the informal messages that they communicate. A mystique still exists around the concept of organisational culture. This paper attempts to rectify this by reviewing the literature relating to organisational culture, focusing on its definition, the factors which influence it and the arguments as to whether it can be managed. The paper highlights the complexity of the phenomenon and the need for corporate marketers to be more sensitive to this complexity in the development and execution of corporate communication strategies. This requires marketers to work more closely with researchers and practitioners working in the fields of organisational behaviour and human resource management.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.