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The purpose of this case study was to explore senior librarians’ perceptions of successful leadership skills in the 21st century. The data gathered from 10 senior library leaders consisted of demographic information and responses to six open-ended interview questions. From the NVivo 10 analysis, several significant themes emerged regarding successful library leadership skills in the 21st century at two levels: foundational and interpersonal. At the foundational level, technical and knowledge skills form the building blocks for the next level of interpersonal skills. Persuasion and collaborative skills are interwoven with these interpersonal skills, both of which are at the core of the postindustrial paradigm of leadership. These two levels of skills, with an emphasis on persuasion skills, should form the basis of succession planning programs for next generation librarians. Implementing such programs could lead to increased leadership diversity, greater job satisfaction, improved job performance and effectiveness, all of which help retain librarians and ease staff shortages. Further studies are recommended.

The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified.

The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements.

Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts between environment and development are acknowledged by most participants. However, an agonistic debate that will create spaces, practices, and institutions through which marginalised understandings of sustainable development might be addressed and contested, is yet to be established and will not be easy.

The paper contributes to the few empirical investigations of the plurality of understandings of sustainability held by those people working to incorporate sustainability within business. It is further distinguished by the authors attempt to describe divergent beliefs and values, absent from their immediate business context, and absent from any academic priming. The paper also provides an illustrative example of the application of Q methodology, a method not commonly used in accounting research.

In this article, I have traced the literature of marketing libraries and information services from 1970 to the present. This period immediately follows Kotler and Levy's introductory article in the Journal of Marketing (January 1969) which first suggested the idea of marketing nonprofit organizations. The use of the marketing concept for libraries and information services was an idea which did not appear until after that date. However, many articles on specific aspects of marketing, such as publicity and public relations, were published prior to 1970. These areas have been touched upon only briefly to show their connection with marketing.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the themes and aims of this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability (AAAJ) special issue and comments on the papers included in the issue. The paper provides a thematic outline along which the future researchers can undertake more empirical research examining how neoliberalism shapes, and shaped by, management accounting.

This entails a brief review of the previous critical accounting works that refer to liberalism and neoliberalism to identify and highlight the specific themes and trajectories of neoliberal implications of management accounting has been and can be explored. This is followed by a brief commentary on the papers the authors have included in this special issue; these commentaries explain how these papers capture various dimensions of enabling and enacting neoliberal governmentality.

The authors found that management accounting is now entering new territories beyond its conventional disciplinary enclosures of confinement, reconfiguring its functionalities to enable and enact a circulatory mode of neoliberal governmentality. These new functionalities then produce and reproduce entrepreneurial selves in myriad forms of social connections, networks and platforms within and beyond formal organizational settings, amid plethora of conducts, counter-conducts and resistances and new forms of identities and subjectivities.

This review can be read in relation to the papers included in the special issue as the whole issue will inspire more ideas, frameworks and methodologies for further studies.

There is little research reviewing and commenting how management accounting now being enacted and enabled with new functionalities operating new territories and reconfiguring forms of governmentality. This paper inspires a new agenda on this project.

Knowledge acquisition is a pivotal concern for the students and many sources help them to obtain knowledge. In this paper, the authors theoretically examine three engagements such as social media, peer and academic engagement by the theoretical foundation of engagement theory which tells that students interact and collaborate, sharing information for the acquisition of knowledge that enhances their academic performance. But due to the abundance of information, knowledge and resources available to students for the acquisition of knowledge, it becomes difficult for them to comprehend the most relevant information. In this vein, this study examined the impact of information overload on the relationship between social media, peer and academic engagement and knowledge acquisition of students.

The proposed model and structural relationships were validated using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique through AMOS, version 24.0. To empirically test the hypothesized model, data are collected from the universities of the Sahiwal region (Sahiwal, Okara, Pakpattan) using structured questionnaires.

The findings revealed that social media engagement and academic engagement are positively associated with knowledge acquisition, whereas peer engagement is negatively associated with knowledge acquisition. Moreover, the results of the study further suggested that information overload dampens the positive relationship between social media, peer and academic engagement and knowledge acquisition, which causes negative consequences on students' knowledge acquisition and learning outcomes.

Researchers can use this study as the literature as many of the previous studies focused on the positive side of social networking sites and technologies for knowledge purposes, but this study extends the research and focused on the other side of the picture which has been ignored earlier by researchers. The authors theoretically explained the adverse effects of information overload on students' academic progress caused by social media and the abundance of irrelevant information these advanced technologies offer daily. The current research focused on identifying the critical role of social media, peer and academic institutions providing a lot of information to students which caused stress, anxiety and other psychological issues in them. So, this study adds to the literature by highlighting the adverse effects of unnecessary information provided by multiple resources to students.

Educationalists can adopt this study as a tool in academic institutions for promoting learning and to actively engage students in collaborative learning activities. As the findings of the study confirm that information overload is caused by the imbalanced use of information technology (IT) and social media sites, so teachers can help students in developing creativity and maintaining the balance between using technology and innovation in their studies pattern. Universities and institutions can play a vital role by exploring further opportunities for students and by making such policies that can help students in their learning progress. For this purpose, the authors developed a model based on the literature and theories that could change the academic system of Pakistan and enhance students’ practical knowledge by motivating students in taking part in learning activities by making the higher education system of Pakistan more engaging.

The authors are presenting simulation games-based learning as an alternate approach to learning and teaching that can positively influence students' engagement with learning activities in Pakistan. By adopting this model, the education system of Pakistan could improve as it can lead to better academic performance of students, which ultimately leads to a better education system. Thus, games if correctly designed and implemented in the education system of Pakistan, it can make a great difference in students' value of learning experience. The enjoyment, interactive and realistic nature of the simulation games appears to produce this value, and students tend to engage more toward these types of games rather than traditional learning methods. Simulation games provide students with an opportunity to engage in both hard (financial management, strategy making, decision-making) and soft skills (negotiation, collaboration) in business by challenging their thinking and decision-making power in a safe learning environment.

The phenomena of overload have become increasingly viable due to abundance of resources providing unnecessary information to students as they can get information from peers, teachers, social media platforms, blogs, wikis and many other platforms, which ultimately exhaust their capacity and leading them toward poor academic performance and other negative consequences (Yu, 2019; Bosch, 2016). This study focuses on students of higher education in Pakistan (Sahiwal region) and discusses the major challenges and opportunities that they had to face with the advancement of technology and the current social state of the knowledge in society.

THE Programme of the Library Association Conference which reached us on April 22nd is one of much interest. Every year increases the difficulty of providing matter which has such appeal that members can say at the close that the time has been spent profitably. The pre‐print of the papers—a rather incomplete affair—raises the thought that Conference time could be better used than in discussions on such “Research Committee” matters as library vans and temporary buildings, excellent as we admit the enquiries and results of them to be. Yet this reflection is accompanied by the certainty that there have been few conferences which have not contributed something of material use to every participator and we still hold the view that more is learned in “a week at one than in months of hermit‐like seclusion.” That last quotation was written in the first edition of Brown's Manual and is valid to this day. Our representatives will write impressions after the event, not by way of detailed report, but as endeavouring to sum up what, if anything, material has been achieved. The report published by the Association usually gives the papers in extenso, but we wish its issue could be delayed long enough to provide more informative records of the discussions. As the best contributions occasionally come from the floor, the bare‐bones notes of the names of speakers and almost telegram‐like utterances they are supposed to have made, which have been the customary report, could be greatly improved.