Search results

THE paper entitled Memomotion (page 32), delivered by Professor Mundel to a recent meeting organised by the Institute of Industrial Technicians, highlights the scope for this form of photography in work study applications.

5a. Oil of cinnamon, oil of cassia, oil of cassia cinnamon, is the lead‐free volatile oil obtained from the leaves or bark of Cinnamomum cassia (L.) Blume, and contains not less than 80 per cent. by volume of cinnamic aldehyde.

On May 12th the case for the abolition of night baking from the operatives' point of view was placed before the Committee appointed by the Government to investigate the subject under the chairmanship of Sir WILLIAM MACKENZIE. MR. BANFIELD, the General Secretary of the Union of Operative Bakers, Confectioners and Allied Workers, said there was a general demand for legislation prohibiting night work. Bakers looked old before their time, and the Chairman of the Richmond Tribunal had stated that no baker passed A1 had ever been before him. Witness urged that new bread was not so important as the health of the night worker, although new bread could be supplied under a system of day work. The only ground for night work was that it was in the interests of certain employers, but he said that 80 per cent. of the employers had enough ovens and plant to carry on a system of day work. He suggested the prohibition of night baking between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., with legal provision for an extension of the prohibited hours at intervals. He added that 90 per cent. of the operative bakers would prefer day work. Continued night work was bad for the health of the baker. The returns showed that the rate of mortality from bronchitis among working bakers was abnormally high. This was due to the constant change from a heated atmosphere to a cooler one. The mortality from phthisis was slightly higher than the average, while the figures for suicide were considerably higher than the average Replying to the Chairman, MR. BANFIELD said that there need be no increase in the price of bread if night baking was prohibited, as any expense which might be occasioned to the employer could come out of the profits the employer now put into his pocket, instead of using it to extend his plant. His experience was that the bulk of the bread was not sold till late in the afternoon. Witness desired the abolition of the order prohibiting the sale of bread less than twelve hours old. He said that if the order was rigidly enforced it would itself solve the problem of night baking. He did not think, however, that there was sufficient justification for continuing the order, which, in his opinion, should be revoked and replaced by an enactment prohibiting night‐baking. The order, he said, was fairly extensively ignored, simply because, in his opinion, the local food committees refused to prosecute, or would not inspect. MR. CANNON, the owner of fifty bakers' shops in working districts of London, declared that the waste of bread resulting from the order prohibiting the sale of bread less than twelve hours old was enormous. The Food Controller in introducing the order, had introduced a new business—the stale bread industry, which consisted in the buying up of stale bread. He was not prepared to say what was done with it but it was not being used as bread. A strike of bakers would be futile as it would simply mean that housewives would bake their own bread, and after a little practice they would do it better than any baker.

This paper aims to describe an application of key concepts in agency theory to organizational development. Specifically, it seeks to highlight that formal control systems, the ways to regulate employees' performance, are associated with an important factor for organizational development – the capacity for improvement.

The paper presents a literature review on organizational development and agency theory, and an empirical examination of the relationships between bureaucratic control systems, task programmability and the organization's capacity for improvement. The hypotheses of interrelationships among different control systems, task programmability and the capacity for improvement were tested with a sample of 237 employees in the service industry.

Results indicate that input control is a significant factor in determining an organization's capacity for improvement, and task programmability moderates the relation between a bureaucratic control and the organization's capacity for improvement.

The results are based on a cross‐sectional self‐report study. It is advisable to include managers' assessment of subordinates' capacity of improvement in further research.

The effect of formal controls on organizational performance was controversial. This paper reveals the moderating role of task programmability in a control‐performance relationship. In doing so, this paper sheds light on how a manager can enhance his/her subordinates' performance on organizational improvement through different control tactics.

THE bulk of our hospitals, etc., were built about a century ago and when examined in the light of present‐day needs and future requirements they are found to be far from satisfactory. Millions of hours are wasted annually due to the inadequacies of the buildings, equipment and management. Most of these institutions are trying to give a more comprehensive service to a volume of patients twice as large as they were originally designed to accommodate.

About two years ago we took a random sample of reports on legal proceedings received at the offices of this journal over a period of three months to illustrate changing trends in food offences. This drew attention to the enormous increase in prosecutions for the presence of foreign bodies in foods and to the almost complete disappearance of frank adulteration cases. Now we present another random sample consisting of all the reports of legal proceedings received for the three months April, May and June of this year. They obviously are not all the cases brought before the Courts in that period, but are nonetheless a broad selection and give a reasonably accurate picture for the whole country. As before, the results have been tabulated and “foreign body” cases dominate the scene and all except one have been brought under Section 2, Food & Drugs Act, 1955. In the last report, 15.6 per cent had been brought under Section 8. This section appears to have limited use nowadays; offences relating to the sale of food in a state of unsoundness or decomposition are for the most part brought under Section 2.

AT last there is conclusive evidence, of that which we have hitherto proclaimed namely, that incentive schemes based on time and motion study are the best and most satisfactory means, to worker and management alike, of increasing productivity.

Elsewhere in this issue we review the First (Interim) Report of the Joint Survey of Pesticide Residues in Foodstuffs, published by the Association of Public Analysts (Editor: Mr. D. G. Forbes, B.Sc., F.R.I.C.). The Scheme, planned with meticulous care and executed with the best spirit of co‐operation, sets a pattern for this type of investigation; there are other problems which could be studied in the same manner. Such a response from the bodies representing the major local authorities of the country and their food and drugs administrations—inspectors, food sampling officers, public analysts—is evidence of the concern felt over this particular form of contamination of food. It constitutes a public health problem of world‐wide dimensions. The annual reports of public analysts show that many are examining foods outside the Survey lists now that gas/liquid chromatography, spectroscopy and other highly refined methods of analysis are available to them.

THE funeral oration pronounced by Pericles for the Athenians who perished at the battle of Marathon contained the words: ‘It is not the acknowledgment of poverty that we think disgraceful, but the want of endeavour to avoid it.’ His people, demoralized by plague at home and external troubles abroad, refused to heed his words, just as the world has tended to ignore similar counsel for over 2,000 years.

Even those most skilled in the art of diagnosis occasionally need to be reminded that common things occur most commonly; it saves them chasing obscure signs to uncommon conclusions. Having spent several uncomfortable days in snuffling and snivelling, sneezing, streaming; sequestered with the piles of wet handkerchiefs mounting, with which we believe we have developed entirely novel and hitherto untried methods of nose‐drying; in all this, we felt the urge to write a little to those who search for uncommon things in food about that commonest of all common things—the common cold! This may not be so important after all, as there has at last been developed satisfactory culture‐techniques for the common cold viruses and cold vaccines are now distinctly probable, so that for generations unborn, the common cold may become an uncommon infection. Who knows?