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ONLY one or two topics of the Scarborough Conference will remain firmly in the minds of most of us. Most firmly, and more clearly than before, will be that of the National Lending Library and Dr. Urquhart's exposition of it or what it is intended to be. It may give no comfort, so far as librarianship is concerned, to existing librarians, but there is little that the public librarian has to fear from it. The second impression that remains is the acute awareness now prevalent of the need for science and technical training in school and college for many more men and women and our relation to that fact. The third was the so often expressed nervousness about the status of the librarian. Fourthly, was the local collection in the light of the ever‐changing character and habits of the people. The President's address was a dignified and grave statement of ideals, in the definition of libraries and librarianship, in book acquirement, reader‐service and in appreciation of the personalities who have made librarianship. It did not produce the press so fine an utterance demanded. What are we to say of the heading a great London paper gave to its two‐inch paragraph devoted to the first day of our Conference: “Librarians are told to be courteous”? To our regret we were unable to hear Mr. O'Leary's paper; judging from the summary in the Programme it was a fine exercise in robust commonsense. We content ourselves in this Editorial with further remarks on one or two of the matters we have mentioned above.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how social power and pressures over the past century have shifted the audience towards which organizations find themselves accountable, as reflected in their social responsibility reporting.

The authors use historical analysis to analyze qualitatively the annual reports of prominent US organizations between the 1900s to the early 2000s. Adopting an integrationist perspective, the authors ground their research in stakeholder theory and reviewed passages in annual reports identifying the audiences of socially responsible organizational initiatives.

The study revealed that the degree and focus of corporate accountability shifted over the course of the 1900s, and that this change was due to shifts in influence and power stemming from different stakeholders. During the early 1900s, organizations were more concerned with pleasing internal stakeholders (i.e. employees); however, economic and social events shifted this attention towards external stakeholder groups (i.e. the environment) during the latter part of the century. More recent events fueled social pressures, resulting in legislation and social reporting guidelines during the first decade of the twenty‐first century.

Organizations will continue to be held accountable as new stakeholder groups emerge and different social movements and economic changes transpire, exerting more pressure on organizations to be socially responsible. Furthermore, organizations need to remain current on social reporting guidelines, as these increasingly become the means of communication with multiple stakeholder groups. In summary, findings suggest that organizations would benefit by staying abreast of economic and social cues when developing their socially responsible initiatives and reporting.

The unique contribution of this paper is to identify how economic and social events place pressure on organizations and shift organizational attention through an accountability mechanism, resulting in changes in the focus of social responsibility reporting.

In high voltage direct current cable systems, cable joints are known as the least reliable components due to the use of multiple dielectrics. Resulting from the electric field and temperature depending conductivity of the different dielectrics, field enhancement at critical areas, e.g. triple points, may result in accelerated aging and the failure of the component. To reduce the stress, different field grading techniques are applied. The purpose of this study is to investigate different grading techniques for cable joints. Different shapes of the electrode and a varying nonlinear conductivity of field grading materials (FGM) are used for the simulation of the electric field.

Coupled electro-thermal field simulations are applied for different joint geometries, to obtain the stationary electric field. Electric field simulations in cable joint using geometric and nonlinear field grading techniques are shown.

Using the geometric field grading, the shape of the stress cone determines the field values in critical areas (triple points). High stress reduction is obtained for a certain curvature of the stress cone. For the nonlinear stress control, materials with a higher conductivity in comparison to the cable and the joint material are used. A field reduction is obtained by increasing the total conductivity. On the other hand, this is also increasing the insulation losses within the total FGM. More applicable is the decrease of the switching field or the increase of nonlinearity, which is only locally increase the conductivity and the insulation losses. Furthermore, simulations results show that an approximately constant field reduction is obtained, if the nonlinearity is above a certain threshold.

This study is restricted to a field dependency of FGM only. For impulse voltages, high temperature and electric conductivity values my result in a thermal runaway. Furthermore, only direct current field grading techniques are studied.

The field grading of cable joints, using geometric and nonlinear techniques, is analyzed. A comparison between the electric field, by varying the curvature of the ground stress cone or the FGM conductivity constants in a complex joint geometry is novel. With its effect on the electric fields, general requirements for the geometry (geometric field grading) or the values of the FGM constants (nonlinear field grading) are defined to obtain a sufficient field grading.

An algorithm for the visualization of the electric force lines is discussed. Based on the nodal potentials calculated by the conventional finite element method, the boundary conditions of the electric flux are determined by the integral of the electric displacement along all conductors. The finite element equations of the electric flux for two‐dimensional fields are derived. Especially for the axial symmetrical field, a new interpolation function is defined in order to avoid the infinity of the vector electric potential at the symmetrical axis. The nodal electric fluxes are calculated and the smooth electric force lines are visualized. Some examples show that this algorithm is very effective.

This study examines the roles of market demand, industry structure, and firm strategy in the development of the robotics industry in the United States and Japan, focusing on differences between the two countries. On the demand side, Japan had a strong market for robots in the automotive and electrical machinery sectors. The U.S. got a slow start in the automotive sector and was unable to move rapidly to other customer sectors. On the supply side, the U.S. robotics industry consisted of mostly small and medium‐sized firms, while the Japanese robotics industry included many large‐diversified firms. Also, many U.S. robotics firms entered the market through acquisitions of and licenses with others, while many Japanese robotics firms moved forward in measured steps rather than attempting to make great leaps. Understanding these differences in market demand, industry structure, and firm strategy can help assess the overall competitiveness and development of the robotics industry in the U.S. and Japan.

This paper aims to conduct a historical study using both primary (archival data) and secondary sources to evaluate the social conditions of the community of employees at Hawthorne Works between 1907 and 1933.

This paper evaluates the historical and social context of the 1915 Eastland disaster, specifically, the effects of the Eastland disaster on the community and the company to improve understanding of the contextual background and conditions which influenced the Hawthorne studies. This will also serve as a case study of crisis management.

The findings of the paper argue that the Eastland disaster likely contributed to the expansion of welfare capitalism practices by Western Electric in the 1920s–1930s and established the social and communal conditions which made the Hawthorne studies (1924–1933) possible.

Rather than evaluating the Hawthorne studies themselves, this paper focuses on social factors which made the Hawthorne Works plant site and the community serving it an ideal locale to host the famous studies as part of Western Electric’s practice of welfare capitalism and a distraction from the traumatic event which scarred the community and urged the Western Electric company to react. This study also provides an early example of crisis management.

The important series of mechanical charging systems known generally as Indicators, have never been fully described, either from the historical or structural standpoint. Papers describing one or other of the individual varieties have been published from time to time during the period of thirty‐six years they have been in use, but except the partial notices of a select few published by Mr. F. J. Burgoyne and myself, nothing of a comprehensive or accurate nature has ever appeared. Before proceeding to describe each separate invention in its order, it may be well to enquire briefly into the reasons for the origin of a device which has called forth not a little ingenuity and inventive talent. When libraries were first established under the provisions of the various Acts of Parliament, two things happened as a matter of course in every district: a building, suitable or otherwise, was provided; and, the readers in a town increased in number to an enormous and unprecedented extent. Straitened means generally led to the provision of a cramped and inconvenient building, in which the space set apart for books was often ridiculously inadequate; with the result that lofty shelves were the rule, which secured economy of storage at the expense of rapidity of service. Previous experience in mechanics' institutes, or similar libraries, was found by the new librarian a useless criterion for public library needs, and especially as a guide to the multitude of readers and the variety of their demands. Delays in service occurred continually and the poor librarian was often abashed or offended at the freely expressed scepticism with which the public received his reports of books being out. From these factors was evolved the idea of the indicator, which by and by took practical shape as a machine for saving the legs of the librarian and his assistants from frequent and fruitless climbs to high shelves, and enabling readers to satisfy themselves that books were actually in use. The original indicators were intended only for showing, by means of numbers, the novels which were out or in, but since then a considerable number of libraries have applied them to all classes.

This paper describes how “pre-market activities” shape the competitive context. Such activities are neglected in both empirical and conceptual studies of strategic management scholars. Thus, pre-market activities have not yet been covered in the concept of the “competitive context.” Pre-market activities let firms collaboratively prepare for industry transition; firms also collaborate in standard-setting and gathering a shared view of future competition. Therefore, pre-market activities also shape next technologies’ business ecosystems where product offerings are systemic in their very nature. The author takes a Hayek–Schumpeterian economic perspective. In other words, markets are taken as the processes of making, integrating, searching, and destructing knowledge. Such a perspective is applied to competence-based theory because competences are built on knowledge in a broad sense.

Chester Street, Aston, Birmingham, 6. The ‘Donald’ Patent Barrel Lifter Truck and Stand, the three‐in‐one appliance. Barrels up to 7 cwts. lifted and transported by one man. ‘Donald’ Patent Barrel Lifter Stands for Oil Stores.

An approach for electrical machines design by using a software which links the sizing procedure to the magnetic field computation is presented in this paper. After reviewing the principles of an electrical machine general design, the process of the development and the use of a special link between the dimensions data and the magnetic field computation is described. The whole solution procedure is conducted automatically. Any change on the machine dimensions can be made and the sequence of the CAD tasks can be prepared and run automatically without any user intervention. The whole procedure is applied to a comparative study of different structures of permanent magnets synchronous motors.