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Research shows that teams often fail to surface and use unique information to evaluate decision alternatives. Under a condition known as the hidden profile, each member uniquely possesses a critical clue needed to uncover the superior solution. Failure to share and adequately evaluate this information will result in poor decision quality. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the devil's advocacy technique on the decision quality of hidden profile teams.

In order to mitigate this team decision‐making bias, the present study utilizes experimental research to examine the impact of the devil's advocacy technique on the decision quality of hidden profile teams.

Results show that devil's advocacy groups achieved higher decision quality than groups under free discussion. However, devil's advocacy teams also had higher levels of affective conflict. As a result, while they selected the best solution, devil's advocacy introduced conditions that may hinder the solution's implementation

Similar experiments with advocacy techniques suggest that the positive effect on decision quality found here may be reduced in the presence of stronger hidden profiles.

While the devil's advocacy technique has the potential to uncover hidden profiles and improve group decision making, the paper recommends that managers use this technique only in teams with strong critical thinking norms that foster constructive conflict.

To the authors' knowledge, no study has examined the impact of devil's advocacy in groups where information is not shared equally prior to deliberations.

The deadhead subculture – centered around the band Grateful Dead – has been active for 50+ years. Despite its longevity, academic work is sparse compared to other music subcultures. Given its durability and resilience, this subculture offers an opportunity to explore subcultural development and maintenance. I employ a contemporary, symbolic interactionist approach to trace the development of deadhead subculture and subcultural identity. Although identity is a basic concept in subculture research, it is not well defined: I suggest that the co-creation and maintenance of subcultural identity can be seen as a dialectic between collective identity and symbolic interactionist conceptions of individual role-identity.

This paper forms part of a larger funded research project conducted jointly by the University of Reading and Oxford Brookes University. The purpose of the project was an investigation of negligent valuation and advice, in relation to commercial property lending. A major interview exercise to obtain data relating to commercial loan valuation practice was undertaken. This work, and its initial results, have been reported elsewhere and do not form the main subject matter of this paper, but are referred to. The second part of this project derived from a comprehensive literature search in the area of setting up of a data‐base of sources for research and possible commercial exploitation. It is the database, the rationale for its creation, its features, and prospects for use which are the subject matter of this paper. The paper considers the background to the most recent decisions; the importance of the case law in understanding valuers’ liability exposure; the compilation of the database; the intentions as to its operation and use; and conclusions on the extent to which the project’s objectives regarding the database have been achieved and its potential for further development in the future.

By these we mean the parliamentary counsel responsible for drafting the many statutes and statutory instruments of every kind, against whom there has been much criticism in recent years for the mass of indigestible legislation, a little of it almost incomprehensible, inflicted on society generally. What prompts us to return to the subject, after so recently castigating it as “hurry scurry” law, is the Labelling of Food Regulations, 1970. Not that this particular measure is anything but good, but looking at it, one cannot help wondering what was the purpose of the 1967 Regulations; a useless exercise in law‐making, since they will never come into force, being precipitately revoked by the new ones. Nor does it seem to have been hurried legislation, since it followed the reports of the Food Standards Committee after a lapse of several years. However, instances in which measures have been rushed through the legislative process, to prove subsequently inadequate, perhaps unworkable in parts, and sometimes completely disastrous, are multiplying during the life of the last Parliament. This may not always be the fault of the ligislature, for sometimes a new problem emerges or grows so rapidly that the law cannot keep up with it; then there is excuse for measures being rushed through to cope.

Miller Dispersion Equipment is designing and manufacturing novel blades in Australia, which it claims are set to have a huge impact on the use of high speed dispersers for the combining of dry and fluid solids.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of organizational commitment and the impact on executive's motivational level in providing job satisfaction within a learning organization.

A management development model examines the relationship between the measurable constructs. The model explores the relationship between the executive's motivation level and their outcome with job satisfaction and organizational learning.

The results indicate there is a goodness‐of‐fit for the research model. The path coefficients explained a significant amount of variation along with the identification that organizational commitment is a significant attribute in the management development model.

Limitations include the self‐report methodology that measures perceptual data with a series of questionnaire items.

The study examines executive's perceptions and the significance of organizational commitment. Management development specialists will recognize the dynamics of organizational commitment and its linkage with motivation and job satisfaction in a learning organization. There are practical applications for management development specialists and the model supports an environment in which employees are encouraged to use new behaviors and operation processes within the learning organization.

THE College of Librarianship is best considered on its own terms, as an institution unique in the history and present pattern of British library education, but its significance and probable future development can best be assessed if two external factors are kept in mind.