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The term “Electronic Mail System,” or EMS, has many different definitions. In introducing this topic which will be a regular feature of LHT, it is useful to define the scope of that term, at least enough to give readers some idea of what to expect.

Anne Grodzins Lipow is a whiz at helping people satisfy needs they never knew they had. Who would have suspected a market for small wooden dreidls (first‐of‐a‐kind in California) when she and a partner began to make and sell these special children's tops a few years ago? Now it is a Berkeley tradition: just step up to Anne's Berkeley street‐stand during the holiday season to buy one of these attractive, inexpensive Chanukah offerings. Not enough time for your library research? Call the University of California at Berkeley Library's Baker service (dial 64‐BAKER) and order campus‐mail delivery of copies of one or more articles or books, located on the Berkeley campus or elsewhere. Lipow began this service for Berkeley faculty and students in 1974, an advance that generated many an “Of course!” from colleagues at the time and scores of “copycat” services since. If you were hunting for a list of female judges in California, you would look in the state almanac, naturally; but a California almanac for adults did not exist until this year. That was when librarian Lipow, having again heard opportunity tapping, joined with political scientist James Fay, and American literature scholar Stephanie Fay, to bring out the inaugural edition of California Almanac (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1984; $12.95).

Although there appears to be a never ending number of organisations concerned at both national and international levels with systems and cybernetics there can only be one institute that has been set up to bring the East and the West together to deal with international issues through the application of system science. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is a non‐governmental research institute located in Austria, with the task of bringing together scientists from East and West to develop practical options to deal with issues of international importance. Details of the background of the Institute and its activities and policies are included in the Technical Reports section of this journal.

Obtaining, handling and distributing information among participants in the building design process has become more difficult with increasing project complexity. In individual areas such as scheduling, estimating and drafting, it is possible to have access to computerized tools but it is clear that there is a gap in architects’ offices regarding the integration of these tools into a unified system. Architects work closely with engineers, clients, suppliers, and public authorities. Managing the information flow among these participants may not be much of a problem in small offices. But the larger architectural offices face serious management‐related problems in the design process because of the lack of an efficient information system. This paper presents a computer‐based information system called ASAP that was developed to respond to the stated problem of large architectural offices. The conceptual framework as well as a description of the prototype are presented in this paper.

The structure of the Turkish banking system is described. The research methodology and the background to internal audit are examined and the examination system and advantages of the profession outlined. Suggestions to departmental managers and internal auditors are presented.

The design of effective systems for cooperative work must be based on a thorough understanding of the forces that shape cooperation and influence the productivity of the work group. We argue that cooperative work is not a straightforward social process whose stability can be taken for granted. On the contrary, each case of work group formation and process is uniquely influenced by its contextual forces. The appropriate type of information technology for the work group, and the impact of the technology on work group performance, are also determined in part by that context.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an improved, enumerative solution procedure for solving the original selective maintenance problems. Selective maintenance refers to the process of identifying the set of maintenance actions to perform from a desirable set of maintenance actions.

A series of four improvements to a previously proposed enumerative solution procedure are presented. The improvements are defined and tested sequentially on an experimental set of problem instances. The improvements are characterized relative to the achieved reduction in CPU time for a software application.

The improved enumerative procedure reduces the CPU time required to solve the selective maintenance problems by as much as 99 per cent. There is a corresponding increase in practical problem size of more than 200 per cent.

Almost all organizations use a variety of repairable systems to achieve their mission. Typically, these systems have to share the limited maintenance resources possessed by the organization. Therefore, an improved ability to solve selective maintenance problem is relevant to many industries.

The body of knowledge relative to selective maintenance continues to grow. However, this is the first study aimed at improving the capability of engineers to solve practically‐sized selective maintenance problems.

Field Aircraft has won British Aerospace Commercial Aircraft designation as an approved centre for BAe 146 maintenance, overhaul and customization.

Technological innovations can have Important strategic implications for individual companies and can greatly influence industries as a whole. Yet, not all technological change is strategically beneficial. This article focuses on ways to recognize and exploit the competitive significance of change.

Recent anti‐fraud enforcement policies across the US health‐care system have led to widespread speculation about the effectiveness of increased penalties for overcharging practices adopted by health‐care service organizations. Severe penalties, including imprisonment, suggest that fraudulent billing, and related misclassification of services provided to patients, would be greatly reduced or eliminated as a result of increased government investigation and reprisal. This study sought to measure the extent to which health information managers reported being influenced by superiors to manipulate coding and classification of patient data. Findings from a nationwide survey of managers suggest that such practices are still pervasive, despite recent counter‐fraud legislation and highly visible prosecution of fraudulent behaviors. Examining variation in influences exerted from both within and external to specific service delivery settings, results suggest that pressure to alter classification codes occurred both within and external to the provider setting. We also examine how optimization influences vary across demographic, practice setting, and market characteristics, and find significant variation in influence across practice settings and market types. Implications for reimbursement programs and evidence‐based health care are discussed.