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Since the definition of objectives lies at the basis of any programme, an analytical system of classifying service organisation activities is proposed in which the focus is on internal characteristics of the activities, and differentiation among programmes and treatments. This taxonomy may be used by social welfare organisations who wish to know what they do, and to what extent they adhere to what they aim to do, as it makes both a conceptual and empirical contribution, increasing awareness of what the organisation and its professional staff do, and allowing examination of the consistency of any programme.

This article has several purposes. One is to give some rather elementary facts about both the concept and scope of unemployment for those readers that are not specialists in the field. Another purpose is to discuss some related concepts that could be of use in understanding the development and trends of the labour market. Finally, I will discuss the meaning of the “right to work”, and some possible scenarios for the future. My main focus will be the industrialised nations, while the problems of the so‐called developing countries will be touched upon only very briefly.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.

Responses to open‐ended questions concerning sources of work satisfaction among social workers indicate that instruments and methodology which have been devised in industrial settings may create distortions when applied to human services. The most important sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction differ from those elicited in industry, a fact which points out the need to begin detailed research in the service sector using workers' own conceptions of their situation rather than preconceptions drawn from other areas of work.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

In arguing that the traditional mechanistic approach of economists to the production process, with its accompanying assumption of a maximising calculus, should make more room for qualitative workplace considerations, Keith Newton (“Some Socio‐Economic Perspectives on the Quality of Working Life”, International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 3, 1978, pp. 179–87) in effect, adds asocial aspect to the economics of the Quality of Working Life field. This is a welcome and important perspective.

Although scientific interest in work motivations dates back at least to Adam Smith who, in his Wealth of Nations, examined “The Causes of the Improvement in the Productive Powers of Labour”, the appearance of Maslow's theory of a hierarchy of human needs offered a useful framework and explanation for many studies of work incentives. Maslow postulated a series of pre‐potent needs, each of which assumed potency as the previous need was relatively satisfied. With physiological needs as the most fundamental, or originally most potent, self‐actualisation was described as the final, or highest, need.

The search for increased productivity through increased or improved human labour has deep historical roots. In relatively recent times this search has included the scientific management school, the human relations school, and the structuralist school. In the thousands of studies which constitute the field of work satisfaction and/or work incentive research, however, that factor which Neff terms the “work personality” remains underemphasised. Despite some scattered references to mediating variables arising from individual or idiosyncratic differences; and despite a few studies which attempt to correlate work patterns with personality attributes, such as anxiety, authoritarianism, and others, there are very few studies which take into account the effects of relatively stable work personalities, and even fewer which address the question as to how these differences in work responses arise and develop. Yet the effect of basic, rooted, enduring attitudes toward work may influence differential reactions to various intended and purported work incentives, and may outweigh them in total consequences. An understanding of work personalities and the factors which form them can therefore be of importance in attempts to understand work patterns and to influence them.

In this paper a sector will be dealt with, which is lately characterized by an increase in decision‐making in a scientific rationalized way, i.e. the sector of personal social services. Decision‐making is in many cases closely related and attributable to the fact that the social services are increasingly availing themselves of personal computers. An innovation which is most often discussed in terms of technological rationalization and facilitation for the provision of personal social services. This may be the case as long as the computer is used as just another, be it a different, mode, to provide services, e.g. to do away with routine, administrative, and management tasks, such as record keeping (Bloom 1975), information retrieval systems (Rubin 1976), fiscal management (Mutschler 1983), etc.

Of all discoveries and inventions of the past fifty years, information technology is probably advancing more rapidly, and touching more aspects of society as a whole, than any other. Comparisons between the speed with which information technology has been developed and disseminated have been made by a number of observers. Perelman estimates that had the productivity of education increased during the last forty years as did the productivity of computers, a bachelors degree from Harvard could be attained in ten minutes at a cost of ten cents. Similarly, had the airplane advanced at the pace of the computer, the time from the Wright brothers to the Concorde would have been six months (Freedman). Finally, if automobiles had developed like computers you could buy a Rolls‐Royce for $2.75, get 3 million miles to the gallon, and have enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II across the Atlantic (Evans).