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Since the 1980s, higher education institutions in many developed Western countries have been facing competition for resources, have undergone economic rationalisation, adopted a New Public Management style of performance management and aspired to meet global standards of quality. This chapter explores the self-tracking practices of academic institutions and workers as they negotiate a field that has moved away from a quality evaluation system based primarily on social reputation towards one based increasingly on quantified outcome indicators. Universities typically measure research performance not only in terms of quantity of outputs but also the ‘attention capital’ they receive, for example, the number of citations or awards and prizes. These metrics and the emphasis on attention capital generally encourage a culture of competition rather than collaboration, while promoting the ‘celebrification’ of academic life. We argue that this trend has been intensified by technologies that gamify research achievements, continuously update citation and ‘read’ counts, and promote networked reputation. Under these conditions, academic institutions and workers have attempted to pursue a variety of positioning strategies that represent different degrees of conformity, resistance and compromise to the power of metrics.

The purpose of this paper is to present and evaluate an innovative classification system for medieval seals that was created as part of the Seals in Medieval Wales (SiMeW) project, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The classification system developed in response to the cataloguing challenges associated with rapidly gathering sigillographic information on about 2,500 medieval seals from a number of collections in several UK repositories.

This paper outlines the challenges involved in recording and classifying medieval seals from the British Isles, and describes existing systems for organizing sigillographic information. The SiMeW system is explained as a response to the limitations of existing systems.

Designers of systems for recording seals need to take into account the physical characteristics of seal impressions, matrices, and casts, the strength and limitations of digital media, as well as the need of cataloguers and users.

In recent years scholars have systematically investigated the problems associated with text-based image indexing and retrieval. Nonetheless, medieval seals have been largely overlooked, even though they are common in UK repositories. SiMeW’s system offers cataloguers an example of an approach that they can use in new and existing seal catalogues, to generate metadata that can help make seals, which are a key component of the cultural legacy of the Middle Ages, more accessible to users.

AN ESTEEMED correspondent points out that there are about two dozen library magazines of all sorts and sizes in circulation, whereas when he started his career there were no more than three. Our correspondent has himself had considerable editorial experience, and it may be that he is still in harness in that regard. One of his earliest efforts was in running the magazine of the old Library Assistants' Association, and it is not likely that that magazine has ever reached the same heights of excellence as it attained in his day. He observes that there are far too many library magazines now in circulation. We agree.

This paper aims to present the process and results of a local‐level South African action research project on introducing foresight methods into a local government planning process.

The paper outlines the evolutionary process followed, and documents the practical insights gained and lessons learnt in relation to the concept of pro‐poor foresight.

Positive outcomes in the King Sabata Dalindyebo (KSD) foresight process included a high level of stakeholder engagement and senior management buy‐in, supported by positive evaluations by diverse participants. The learning was subsequently incorporated into long‐term development plans and proposals such as the ten‐year development plan for the region. The experience yielded key lessons about the recruitment of participants, policy alignment, communication in diversity, active participation, facilitation as learning, the influence of technical inputs, and the importance of integration.

Further academic research could build upon this case study to investigate longer‐term impacts of the initiative in KSD, tracking replications and adaptations of the KSD experiment, comparative research between contexts where foresight is used and where it is not in development policy and planning processes, enquiry into how foresight might be formally incorporated in the routine development policy and planning processes of municipalities, and undertaking more theoretical enquiry on the “localising foresight” concept and experience, including the development of guiding criteria and indicators for procedural and outcome success.

The case focuses on learning in a developing world context where foresight is less advanced than in other contexts. The results of the exercise in KSD suggest that it is possible to embed pro‐poor foresight in a large‐scale policy programme to enhance the resilience of communities, supported by appropriate plans and budgets.

The long‐term nature of foresight can create a “safe” platform for an otherwise difficult engagement, as is this case where three levels of government and various segments of civil society are to be beneficially engaged.

This was a unique action research project in South Africa, where foresight has tended to be mainly at a top or central level – that being the level of corporate executives, national government, or national‐level stakeholders.

The authors present nine dimensions to provide structure for the many Futures of Work (FoW). This is done to advance a more sociotechnical and nuanced approach to the FoW, which is too-often articulated as singular and unidimensional. Futurists emphasize they do not predict the future, but rather, build a number of possible futures – in plural – often in the form of scenarios constructed based on key dimensions. Such scenarios help decision-makers consider alternative actions by providing structured frames for careful analyses. It is useful that the dimensions be dichotomous. Here, the authors focus specifically on the futures of knowledge work.

Building from a sustained review of the FoW literature, from a variety of disciplines, this study derives the nine dimensions.

The nine FoW dimensions are: Locus of Place, Locus of Decision-making, Structure of Work, Technologies’ Roles, Work–Life, Worker Expectations, Leadership Model, Firm’s Value Creation and Labor Market Structure. Use of the dimensions is illustrated by constructing sample scenarios.

While FoW is multi-dimensional, most FoW writing has focused on one or two dimensions, often highlighting positive or negative possibilities. Empirical papers, by their nature, are focused on just one dimension that is supported by data. However, future-oriented policy reports tend are more often multi-faceted analyses and serve here as the model for what we present.

In past literature, employee has been extensively utilized as input in most data envelopment analysis (DEA) studies, but different labor types are identically defined to be the same input factor without a specific assumption for their heterogeneity. The influence of manual and non-manual labor utilization on performance also has not been investigated in hotel efficiency analyses. The purpose of this study is to assess inefficiency indices derived from manual and non-manual labor, and analyze the influence of labor utilization on hotel’s operational efficiency.

Based on the different features of the two labor types, performance indicators are evaluated through the hybrid DEA model.

More than 32 per cent of tourist hotels are evaluated as efficient and more than half the hotels have an efficiency score lower than the average. The author evaluated the inefficiency caused by radial inputs that have a greater influence on efficiency. This finding indicates that most hotels are efficient in their utilization of non-manual labor. The investigation of external factors shows that excessive utilization of non-manual labor results in a slight influence on operational efficiency across many non-chain hotels. The author also found the efficiency of non-manual labor utilization to be lower at hotels located in resort areas.

This study used the hybrid DEA model, in which non-manual and manual labors are assumed as non-radial and radial inputs, respectively, to evaluate efficiency. Finding the significance of heterogeneous assumptions for manual and non-manual labor types is the main contribution to the theory of hotel efficiency measurement.

This article assesses pronatalism in the non-industrialized Caribbean in light of contributions that children make to household production. The place that the economic utility of children has in determining pronatal attitudes and behavior has been increasingly neglected by social scientists. This trend is especially unwarranted in regard to the traditional Caribbean. As an example, it is shown that the primary reason farmers in Jean Rabel, Haiti, are in favor of high birth rates and reject contraceptives is because the farmers conceptualize children as necessary to their economic survival.