Search results

Argues the case for the appointment of specialist information managers to market information internally in organizations. Their role will be to ensure that the information systems of organizations are orientated to the current needs of managers, and are responsive to changes in these needs. Information managers, using the techniques and skills of marketing, can ensure that the information systems on which managers rely to make decisions reflect their individual needs. The effect will be to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business and justify investment in its information systems.

This article aims to uncover the influence employment relations, and more specifically union avoidance has on the decision to outsource road transport. Employment Relations literature often attributes outsourcing decision to decollectivist strategies, minimising the influence unions have in their workplaces or to labour cost reduction objectives. These explanations, however, fail to explain why some firms do not outsource when their sourcing structure incurs greater union involvement or industrial relation.

The author examines two case studies. Company A and Company B, while operating in a similar environment, selling similar products and offering a similar home delivery service have adopted different governance structures for their outbound transport function; Company A has integrated while Company B has outsourced. Was union avoidance or transaction cost reductions central to their respective decisions?

Company A did not integrate in an effort to circumvent union intervention or reduce costs. Company A’s integration, on the contrary, increased the firm’s dealings with unions, as well as regulatory compliance and transaction costs. Company B’s decision to outsource yielded similar results. While not experiencing an increase in union intervention, the firm failed to reduce the density of unionised labour and by maintaining ownership of delivery vehicles, saw a rise in costs.

Union avoidance is not an explanatory factor in the sourcing decision, nor is it possible to explain through transaction cost economics. Explication for outcomes lies in value enhancement. Companies are willing to incur higher employment relations and transport costs if the result is higher value capture.

The role, potential and interaction of networked catalogues and collection‐level description have recently been given emphasis in order that efficient resource discovery mechanisms, and the effective organisation of such resources, be facilitated within the UK's developing JISC information environment (IE). This article describes the work of CC‐interop, a JISC project, and related projects that inform the development of the IE and its ability to instantiate the functional model of online resource discovery to which JISC aspires. The article reviews the evolution of Z39.50 virtual union catalogue services and collection description services that preceded CC‐interop. The paper also discusses how such work is informing regional information environments, with particular reference to Scotland, and reveals how such local arrangements will benefit the wider JISC IE.

To report on the work of the SPEIR project and indicate its relevance beyond the Scottish information environment. SPEIR was funded by the Scottish Library and Information Council to identify, research, and develop the elements of an internationally interoperable Scottish Common Information Environment (SCIE) for Library, Museum and Archive domain information services, and to determine the best path for future progress. A key focus was to determine the distributed information infrastructure requirements of a pilot Scottish Cultural Portal being developed in parallel with the SPEIR work, building on existing pilot initiatives such as the CAIRNS distributed catalogue and landscaper, the SCONE collections database, the SCAMP staff portal and an embryonic organisational infrastructure based on the Confederation of Scottish Mini‐cooperatives (CoSMiC).

A series of practical pilots was undertaken. These were underpinned by relevant desk and field research and conducted within an overarching holistic approach to developing the distributed environment.

Key outcomes included the creation of a single upgraded integrated service incorporating an extended distributed catalogue, collections database, and landscaper, the creation of a pilot distributed digital library, the development of open‐URL‐based facilities to permit portals to incorporate “canned searches” of the catalogue, the collections database, the SDDL, and other compatible services, an illustrative pilot Scottish terminology mapping service, and various organisational infrastructure and professional support improvements.

The embryonic technical and organisational infrastructure reported may provide a model for other small countries (or regions within larger countries) seeking a coherent approach to the development of an interoperable information environment.

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co‐ordinated “virtual Scotland” and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co‐operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini‐Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co‐operation.

It has become generally accepted that “people and not capital add the competitive edge” (The Sunday Times, 17 November 1996). This belief is often put into practice through the use of frameworks of organisational learning and the concept of the learning organisation. These are invariably packaged as initiatives which promise competitive advantage through people. Within this context the paper considers the rhetoric associated with the learning organisation and other frameworks of organisational learning. The research confirms the hypothesis that reliance on rhetoric alone can be dangerous and costly and identifies the problems associated with this approach. The paper recommends a solution which is embodied in the Molecular Development Model together with the “Learning” checklist. Together they enable organisations to become more effective in transforming themselves into learning organisations as well as providing a theoretical and conceptual tool useful in the education and development of managers.

The report of the Chief Veterinary Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries which records the proceedings taken under the Diseases of Animals Act for the year 1929 has just been issued. It indicates clearly the enormous amount and complexity of the work which devolves on the officers of the Ministry. They may very well say with John Wesley, “ All the world is my parish.” For instance in seven outbreaks of anthrax “ which …. occurred a few years ago,” the cause was found to be infected bone meal used as a manure and imported from an Eastern country (p. 43); another outbreak was traced to beans that had been imported from China (p. 44); again, special measures have been taken, at the instance of His Majesty's Government, by the Governments of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentine to prevent the introduction of foot‐and‐mouth disease into this country by chilled or frozen meat (p. 46); an outbreak of foot‐and‐mouth disease at Los Angeles, California, led to an embargo being placed on the importation of hay and straw from that State (p. 52); while an outbreak in Southern Sweden led to similar steps being taken (p. 52). It is unnecessary to give further instances, but it is evident that the complexities of modern commerce and the development of rapid means of transport imposes world‐wide duties on the Ministry of a nature that were by no means contemplated when in 1865 the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council—of which the present Ministry is a lineal descendant—was instituted as a result of the outbreak of cattle plague which had ravaged the country. Table I. (p. 94) gives the total number of cattle in Great Britain for the five years 1925–1929 inclusive, each year ending in June. The percentage variation in the number of cattle during that time appears to be four per cent., so that the Ministry is responsible under the Act for about 7¼ millions of cattle, the 1929 return gives 7,190,539. The census and the subsequent co‐ordination of the returns made is in itself a task of no inconsiderable magnitude. In addition to this, however, veterinary skill of a high order is demanded, not only in the interests of a trade whose dimensions are indicated by the figures just given, but in the interests of public health in relation to notifiable cases, under the Act, of bovine tuberculosis. The number of cows and heifers in milk or in calf is given as 3,166,292 or 44 per cent. of the total number of bovine animals. It is of course from these that we derive our supplies of fresh milk, so that on their health our own health to a certain extent depends, and to a greater extent the health of invalids and children to whom milk is a prime necessity. It is therefore scarcely possible to over‐rate the weight of responsibility resting on the Ministry when the relation of its duties to the incidence of bovine tuberculosis is considered. Two important facts, however, demand attention. The first is that the Tuberculosis Order of 1925 was, as the Report points out, neither designed nor expected to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. The disease is widespread, and it is to be feared somewhat firmly established in our herds—an evil legacy from the past. The most that can be done at present is by means of the Order to remove as far as possible the danger to human health from the ingestion of the milk of infected animals and to reduce the number of these animals. Any attempt which might be made to completely eradicate the disease would in our present state of knowledge lead to a serious depletion of our herds throughout the country, and large expenditure in compensation (p. 23). In the second place while the Order of 1925 requires certain forms of the disease to be reported, no steps are at present taken or can be taken to search out the disease. An organisation designed so to do would be costly, as it would in the first place involve “ a considerable extension of periodical veterinary inspection of all dairy cows, coupled with the application of the biological test ” (p. 23). Hence leaving out of consideration our deficient knowledge of the disease, though its effects are horribly evident in our national life, the old conflict of public health versus public pocket is presented to us in an acute form.

IF SONS DID NOT EXTOL, many a worthy father would sink into oblivion and forever go unsung. As filial biographers, however, sons customarily meet with intimidating scorn and derision. There is a generally accepted notion that consanguineous biography is fraught more with fealty and filial frailty than with disinterested depiction. The best way to disprove this false assumption is to muster meritorious biographies written by scions and compare them with representative biographies of the ‘blame and blemish’ variety. Sympathetic assessment always stands up stronger than ostensible objectivity, for writers of the ‘warts and all’ kind of biography lose track of virtues and nearly always become engrossed in the imperfections of their victims.