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How many times have you heard of a manager within your organization or in the wider sphere of business who has risen swiftly through the ranks on the basis of his or her technical ability only to find that, once they reach the top, these abilities pale into insignificance in comparison with the need for interpersonal and leadership skills? Such a problem is certainly not uncommon yet according to a recent study in the UK by Whitehead Mann Group, these senior executives are receiving little or no training in order to develop the necessary attributes.

A common issue in leadership development is the high flyers who reach a position where their lack of “soft” skills hampers their performance and proves a barrier to their continued progression to higher levels of responsibility. This paper sets out some observation and learning of my own and my colleagues, gained from our work in coaching and mentoring leaders, and incorporates the insights gained from an interactive workshop at the EMC in November 2001.

As a new editor faced with a short deadline, it was gratifying to receive a large number of outstanding submissions in the past 6 months. This volume focuses on topics that push the edge in our increasingly electronically driven world. Not only is the field of library and information science awash in changes wrought by rapidly evolving technologies but so are almost all sectors that touch our daily lives. From e-banking to movies delivered through Wii and to smart phones with webcams and GPS applications, we face complexities that can paralyze us or make us embrace the digital environment. As our information environment becomes enriched, so do the challenges of keeping current as individuals and as librarians and information scientists. The most troublesome quandary is how we can learn from these early days of becoming digital to plan and accept changes in our work, our learning environments, and our personal and family lives. Just as industrialization changed the world a century ago, the digital explosion is causing another radical shift in our world.

The increase in environmental consciousness around the world since 1970's pushed firms to engage in socially responsible behaviors. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has naturally gained attention in the academic and business world (Colvin, 2001; Harrison & Freeman, 1999; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Waddock & Smith, 2000). The reasons for these socially responsible behaviors are not only the external obligations or regulatory compliance but also the firms desire to increase competitiveness, to improve stock market performance (Bansal & Roth, 2000; Drumwright, 1994, 1996; Klassen & Mclaughlin, 1996; Russo & Fouts, 1997; Waddock & Smith, 2000) and to create a positive self‐image among consumers. There have been numerous studies on CSR suggesting a link between social initiatives and consumer's positive product and brand evaluations, brand choice and brand recommendations (Brown & Dacin, 1997; Drumwright, 1994; Handelman & Arnold, 1999; Osterhus, 1997; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). Moreover, the consumers are continuing to become more interested in CSR and green product market is fast growing so the use of CSR initiatives by the firms to receive the support of the society and to influence consumer behavior has become quite common. However, these socially responsible steps must also have an effect on corporations' major objective: maximizing the profits.

College placement assessments in the USA have underperformed in predicting college readiness. This has prompted a wave of reforms to placement practices and policies. Recently, student preparation for placement assessments has come to the forefront as a means for enabling better evaluation of college readiness. In this study, the authors explored the effects of an intervention aimed at preparing students for precollege placement assessments. The intervention focused on the provision of mathematics discipline-specific literacy skills because demonstrating mathematical mastery depends on students’ ability to read, understand and translate text into mathematical computations.

In this study, the authors used a randomized control trial design. The design enabled the authors to draw causal inferences while examining the effects of a placement assessment preparation intervention on mathematics placement and course outcomes. The authors also examined the intervention’s effect across incoming first-year college students with varying levels of readiness.

Findings demonstrated a positive and significant effect on assessment scores and placement for intervention participants with a stronger effect for those with higher levels of readiness. Intervention participants exhibited comparable academic success outcomes as those who did not receive the intervention.

Little assessment research has explored the intersection of mathematics and literacy skills in relation to college readiness assessment. In addition, findings support the utility of preparation for college placement assessments.

The purpose of this paper is twofold in examining the international transmission of REIT returns volatility. The first purpose is to add to the literature on whether the real estate securities market and the broader equity market are integrated. The second objective of the study is to determine whether geographic risk factors can be transmitted beyond their region of influence.

The study uses the GARCH(1, 1), EGARCH, and GARCH‐M models.

The results show that there are significant international spillovers of REIT returns volatility within the Pacific region. The results also show that there are significant volatility transmissions between the Pacific and the Atlantic regions.

The results are consistent with the implication that the real estate sector and the general equity market are integrated such that geographic risk can be transmitted across national borders. The result will have major implications for international investment strategies.

To date, there has been no published study on the international transmission of REIT returns volatility. This study therefore examines whether the conditional variance of REIT returns of a country is affected by volatility transmission across markets in the same region using four Pacific markets.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and exhibition catalogues examining library instruction and information literacy.

The paper provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper aims to review how current policy instruments drive (or not) environmental innovation and, by doing so, to reinvestigate the relationship between innovation and regulation.

A comprehensive literature review on innovation and environmental regulation created a theoretical foundation of the paper. Using the grounded theory, a model was developed and evaluated using interviews. This is a timely topic as the new shape of recent environmental regulation appears to be fairly strict. A new model is presented to encapsulate highly dynamic interaction of environmental innovation and regulation to provide results that reflect on the present innovation behaviour and its implications.

The model highlights various diffusion pathways that are triggered by the main three drivers of innovation namely government (regulation), market (competition and cost) and technology which has the possibility of an autonomous diffusion.

The empirical data are limited to 13 qualitative experts' interviews within industry, consultancies and governmental departments.

The suggested model is particularly useful for policy makers to better understand the innovation dynamics and its diffusion pathways to design smarter regulations that incentivise rather than force organisations to comply with regulation.

The paper shows how regulation drives (or not) innovation and how various diffusion pathways can be used by external stakeholders to direct and promote innovation.

Modelling users' interactions online is envisaged to allow developers to increase the usability of online systems and will aid system developers in building better systems to meet users' needs, hereby creating better system design processes. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

The normative task model that was developed in this paper was created through an expert review of 14 online grocery stores, using a reverse engineering technique to model the features of the stores' ordering process.

The research identified three main areas of user experience when undertaking the process of adding a product to an online trolley: attempting to retrieve the product, receiving the results of the retrieval attempt, and adding the product to the trolley. These three classifications were used as the basis for an analysis of errors.

The findings present a model that can be used to further understand the processes of customers as they engage in an online grocery shopping visit. The normative task model presented is expected to help in the future design of online grocery stores by identifying the possible errors that users can encounter, and methods to reduce the occurrence of these errors. Errors are one area that traditional task‐modelling processes ignore, due to their focus on successful processes.

This paper presents the innovative process of the development of a normative task model for modelling user interactions when using online grocery stores.