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Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Recognizing the demand for a reliable subjective instrument to gather information on walking to occupational activities on the neighbourhood scale, this paper outlines the Neighbourhood Walking to Occupational Activities Questionnaire (NWOAQ) recently developed at the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. The approach follows reliable techniques in the design of questionnaires including the analysis of currently available instruments, interviews with the potential case study participants, and the use of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). It describes the testing of NWOAQ, following a ‘mixed method' adopted to sample the population of three case studies in Basra City, in Iraq (Al-Saymmar, Al-Mugawleen, and Al-Abassya). Cronbach's ‘Alpha Test' (Cronbach, 1951) was conducted on three significant variables selected; ‘the perceived environment' variables; the ‘constructs of the TPB' variables; and the ‘walking outcome' variables. This displayed different alpha levels, which were; 0.76; 0.74; and 0.87, respectively. Based on CAT, the level of internal consistency that would render a group of indicators reliable should be no less than 0.60.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The Walsall clinic for survivors of myocardial infarction is described. Coronary heart disease is a major health issue in Walsall. The starting point for the project was the publication of the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S) in 1994, which showed the benefit of cholesterol treatment in these patients. Although the new clinic was established primarily to implement a 4S‐based regime, the cholesterol regime has been modified in the light of newer evidence, and the service broadened to encompass cardiological assessment and the use of other forms of secondary prevention. Several factors have contributed to the success of the service, including support from the Health Authority, patient involvement, partnership with Primary Care and the use of information technology. The latter has integrated routine clinical record keeping and correspondence with complete prospective audit data accumulation and measurement of performance against evidence‐based standards. These principles are of potential value in other clinical effectiveness initiatives.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

A new type of high‐level robot command library is presented, which can be viewed as a marriage between simulation and control. The library commands contain simulations of the physical abilities of the robots as well as having the ability to control the physical machinery. The control of the machinery is performed by translating parameter information and then mapping the library commands to the robot controller commands. To demonstrate the use of the libraries, two robot programming languages have been analysed and new robot command libraries created for two types of machine. The robots selected were a Fanuc A600 and a Unimation PUMA robot. The paper also presents criteria that were used for assessing programming languages for use in programming and controlling robots. The paper shows how simulation can be incorporated into a high‐level robot command library (or object library) and how the command library can be used for the programming of industrial robots. The work has demonstated the advantages of including simulation within robot command libraries. The purpose of the research has not been to define another new robot command library, and the techniques presented here can be applied to other robot languages and high level robot command libraries.

The Food Bill has emerged from the Grand Committee on Trade, and will shortly be submitted, as amended, to the House of Commons. Whatever further amendments may be introduced, the Bill, when passed into law, will but afford one more example of the impotence of repressive legislation in regard to the production and distribution of adulterated and inferior products. We do not say that the making of such laws and their enforcement are not of the highest importance in the interests of the community; their administration—feeble and inadequate as it must necessarily be—produces a valuable deterrent effect, and tends to educate public opinion and to improve commercial morality. But we say that by the very nature of those laws their working can result only in the exposure of a small portion of that which is bad without affording any indications as to that which is good, and that it is by the Control System alone that the problem can be solved. This fact has been recognised abroad, and is rapidly being recognised here. The system of Permanent Analytical Control was under discussion at the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, held at Brussels in 1894, and at the International Congress of Hygiene at Budapest in 1895, and the facts and explanations put forward have resulted in the introduction of the system into various countries. The establishment of this system in any country must be regarded as the most practical and effective method of ensuring the supply of good and genuine articles, and affords the only means through which public confidence can be ensured.

Cold case review teams and the processes that they adopt in their endeavour to solve historic crimes are varied and largely underreported. Of the limited literature surrounding the topic of cold case reviews, the focus is on clearance rates and the selection of cases for review. While multiple reports and reviews have been undertaken and recommend that the interface between investigators and forensic scientists be improved, there is little evidence of cold case teams comprised of a mixture of investigators and scientists or experts. With the growing reliance on forensic science as an aide to solvability, the authors propose that the inclusion of forensic scientists to the central cold case investigation may be a critical factor in future success. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To support the proposed approach, the authors conducted a review of the current literature seeking insight into the reported make-up of cold case teams. In conjunction with this, the authors reviewed a number of commissioned reports intended to improve cold case reviews and forensic services.

While many of the reviewed reports and recommendations suggested better integration with scientists and external expertise, little evidence of this in practice was reported within published literature. Open dialogue and cross pollination between police investigators and forensic scientists are likely to mitigate biases, inform case file triage and better equip investigations with contemporary and cutting-edge scientific solutions to the evidence analysis for cold cases. Furthermore, with respect to scientists within academia, large pools of resources by way of student interns or researchers may be available to assist resource-sparse policing jurisdictions.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed recommendation for the consideration of integrated forensic scientists within a cold case review team. Multiple reports suggest the need for closer ties, but it is the anecdotal experience of the authors that the benefits of a blended task force approach may yield greater success.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to make tele‐operated tasks easier using an expert system to interpret joystick and sensor data.

Current tele‐operated systems tend to rely heavily on visual feedback and experienced operators. Simple expert systems improve the interaction between an operator and a tele‐operated mobile‐robot using ultrasonic sensors. Systems identify potentially hazardous situations and recommend safe courses of action. Because pairs of tests and results took place, it was possible to use a paired‐samples statistical test.

Results are presented from a series of timed tasks completed by tele‐operators using a joystick to control a mobile‐robot via an umbilical cable. Tele‐operators completed tests both with and without sensors and with and without the new expert system and using a recently published system to compare results. The t‐test was used to compare the means of the samples in the results.

Time taken to complete a tele‐operated task with a mobile‐robot partly depends on how a human operator interacts with the mobile‐robot. Information about the environment was restricted and more effective control of the mobile‐robot could have been achieved if more information about the environment had been available, especially in tight spaces. With more information available for analysis, the central processor could have had tighter control of robot movements. Simple joysticks were used for the test and they could be replaced by more complicated haptic devices. Finally, each individual set of tests was not necessarily statistically significant so that caution was required before generalising the results.

The new systems described here consistently performed tasks more quickly than simple tele‐operated systems with or without sensors to assist. The paper also suggests that the amount of sensor support should be varied depending on circumstances. The paired samples test was used because people (tele‐operators) were inherently variable. Pairing removed much of that random variability. When results were analysed using a paired‐samples statistical test then results were statistically significant. The new systems described in this paper were significantly better at p<0.05 (95 per cent probability that this result would not occur by chance alone).

The paper shows that the new system performed every test faster on average than a recently published system used to compare the results.

The authors explore several aspects of communications theory to identify their relevance to managing a project-based productivity improvement intervention. The literature on communication accommodation theory, groupthink and trust appear to have important implications for improvements. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research methodology used in conducting empirical data collection in the field to test the developed conceptual framework. The authors emphasize the importance of management theory to project-based interventions. The focus of this work is summarized by the research question: “what facets of communication impact on the success of a project-based improvement intervention?”.

Following a focused literature review, learnings from specific research were used to identify a series of propositions. The scope of the work was established to limit the range of issues under review. Next, a conceptual framework was designed that allowed a case study to be tested with regard to validity of the propositions. Further testing will be undertaken in a single company.

There is clear evidence showing the relevance of effective communication when executing an intervention to seek performance improvement. In particular, understanding the need of stakeholders’ is paramount that allows the design of a communications strategy. Each phase in a project-based intervention requires different styles of communication. There is also a need to have varying degrees of trust. Total unchallenged trust invariably leads to groupthink that hinders critical decision making.

The work contributes to the understanding of the application of communication theory to project-based interventions – that invariably aim at performance improvement initiatives. While currently the work is in the early stages of research, it does nevertheless show some useful early findings. Clearly further work is needed in international projects in the context of multi-cultural teams and external stakeholders.

With many interventions failing to meet their planned objectives there is a need to isolate possible reasons and to rectify or mitigate the causes. Project management and change management training should include a comprehensive understanding of management theories. This research will contribute to this knowledge base.

Project-based activities are used in most walks of life; the need for excellent management is therefore important. Invariably interventions involve considerable capital investment and their success advances productivity of nations. Understanding and integrating communication theories to their management, therefore, has significant social benefits.

The importance of communications is identified in the project management literature and adjunct disciplines. Professional associations and leading bodies in performance and project management, while emphasizing the need for excellent communication, have not adequately addressed underpinning theories. There is little research focusing on communication accommodation theory, groupthink and risk in the context of project management. The authors’ have not been able to identify any research on an integrated framework that combines these theories with managing a project-based performance improvement intervention.