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This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

Mastering aesthetics is a precious source of competitive advantage in creative industries. In fashion, innovation is reflected by how and how much styles change. Elite designers claim to be the only endogenous force shaping fashion innovation season by season. Yet, each season, fashion critics vet the new collections these designers introduce, assessing what is original as opposed to reworked and uninspired, in this way playing a fundamental role as gatekeepers in setting taste within the industry. In this research, we document how stylistic innovation, vis-à-vis the styles premier design houses introduced each season, is impacted, among the others, by the specific exogenous force of critics' assessments of designers' past work. Our data, which include 61 measures detailing the styles introduced by 38 prestigious Italian and French design houses over a nine-year period, suggest designers move further away from styles reviewed less favourably while adhering more closely to styles reviewed more positively. Additionally, the styles a designer introduces are shown to depend on critical assessments of competing designers' styles, revealing how design houses attend to each other's work. This work documents the strong correlation between style dynamics and critics' feedback. It also has important implications for any company trying to find a balance between independence and conformity in setting its own unique positioning into the market.

Long considered the classic coordinated market economy featuring employment security and relatively little employment precarity, the German labor market has undergone profound changes in recent decades. We assess the evidence for a rise in precarious employment in Germany from 1984 to 2013. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel through the Luxembourg Income Study, we examine low-wage employment, working poverty, and temporary employment. We also analyze changes in the demographics and the education/skill level of the German labor force. Although employment overall has increased, there has been a simultaneous significant increase in earnings and wage inequality. Moreover, there has been a clear increase in all three measures of precarious employment. The analyses reveal that models including a wide variety of independent variables – demographic, education/skill, job/work characteristics, and region – cannot explain the rise of precarious employment. Instead, we propose institutional change is the most plausible explanation. In addition to reunification and major social policy and labor market reforms, we highlight the dramatic decline of unionization among German workers. We conclude that while there are elements of stability to the German coordinated market economy, Germany increasingly exhibits substantial dualization, liberalization, inequality, and precarity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the preparation of a sustainability report and a large‐scale energy‐saving campaign with regards to their role for organizational learning (OL). Similar processes indicating OL were observed during the implementation of both projects. Along the lines of a theoretical framework of OL these processes will be discussed. Potential of institutional transformation regarding sustainable development is indicated.

Following calls for “unified theory” on OL which can be used for empirical research, an integrative perspective has been proposed. Based on this perspective, two projects are discussed with respect to five dimensions in the process of OL: actors and media as communicative characteristics and triggers, factors as well as results as information processing characteristics.

The results show the driving role of making data available to the public (transparency as incentive for organizational change) and the need to change structures for cross‐linking information. Furthermore, benefits of creating new networks of actors for reflecting current structures and developing visions for future change are outlined.

Possibilities for transferring the project designs and experiences to other institutions are shown. Need for further research on the mechanisms of OL for promoting structural change toward a stronger role of sustainability in higher education is indicated.

The perspective of OL for sustainability reporting and energy saving offers new perspectives for internal change processes triggered by sustainability related projects. Promising research opportunities on triggers and drivers of such processes evolve.

There are cloud computing (CC) services available for various applications within supply chain management (SCM) processes and related enterprise information systems (ISs). These services offer, for example, consistent global networking platforms and shared real-time information. Furthermore, they enable quick decision making and ensure efficiency, which may strengthen competitive advantages as to digital processes within the supply chain (SC). However, research lacks a paper that systematically analyzes the interrelation between CC and SCM in detail and aims to become a reference point in the intersection of both research fields. Moreover, the purpose of this paper is to gain a deep understanding of the current state of research and to identify future research challenges.

This paper provides a cross-discipline systematic literature review from the research perspectives of ISs and SCM. In total, 99 papers have been investigated by combining qualitative and quantitative content analysis. As a side effect the authors developed a new methodological framework for conducting comprehensive literature reviews that could be applied by future research.

The authors discover the most important influence factors for CC implementations in SC processes and pay special attention to major issues, research methods, applied theoretical concepts, and geographical differences. Until now, SCM research in the realm of CC usage is still in its infancy both in theory and practice.

Possibly not all of the relevant papers have been filtered during the paper selection phase. The findings of the literature review and the conceptual framework identifying different areas of concern are believed to be useful for future research to obtain an overview of the evolution of CC in SC processes.

To the best of the knowledge, there is no systematic literature review that consistently focusses CC usage within SC processes while integrating strategic aspects. Additionally, the authors constructed and applied a unique keyword analysis.

THOSE who were present at the induction of the President of the Library Association on January 26th must have left that pleasant, but very limited, assembly with two thoughts ; that the speeches were adequate and deserved a much wider audience than the relatively small Council Chamber at Chaucer House can accommodate, and that our affairs are in good hands for 1949. Mr. McColvin made the speech of thanks to Mr. Nowell, as a man straightforward, sane, loyal, simple, broadminded and fundamentally sound. We echo these and could add other praises but, fortunately, Mr. Nowell has many years of active service ahead, and we hope for many opportunities yet to acknowledge it. Sir Ronald Adams showed that modesty and charm which we were assured from his record he possesses. Our readers have found these speeches in the L.A. Record for February, and our only purpose in alluding to them is to say our own word of thanks for past service and our good wishes to both outgoing and incoming Presidents. And again to repeat our view that the Association loses a great ceremonial opportunity by holding the inauguration in a small room in London in the winter, rather than at the great annual assembly of the Conference as was at one time the practice. It was the central occasion of the year.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and explains the development of the evolving mental phenomenon of alternative history.

The article analyzes the role of the fiction known as the “What if?” school of speculation about the past, some of its conspicuous exemplars, and how its adaptation might affect attitudes and even prejudices about how to view life.

Present and future are not always what one thought they could become. “What if?” also gives rise to endeavours in “science” fiction and structured projections today dealing with circumstances of tomorrow and after.

Besides providing diversion, the approach serves to illustrate foresight's conception of “retrostrategy”.

The World Bank has been the predominant institution for developing and enforcing a global education policy for over three decades, eclipsing UNESCO, UNICEF, and bilateral institutions. Every decade or so the Bank writes up their current version of global education policy in a strategy report. The most recent strategy continues past trends that offer little actual attention to education itself but instead focus on a particular, narrow, ideologically based approach to managing education. This chapter highlights three of these trends. First, the title of the strategy is misleading as the report has little to do with “Learning for All.” More accurately, the approach should be known as “Testing for All,” focusing on partial measures of just two of the many outcomes of education that are important. Second, the strategy emphasizes that the Bank will use a “system approach” to analyze and manage education around the world (continuing their infamous one-size-fits-all methodology), yet it offers no evidence to support the productivity of such an approach and ignores decades of criticism of its narrow and distorting nature. Third, the strategy emphasizes the benefits of the privatization of education, ignoring issues of education as a public good and the inequities associated with fee-for-service, especially for marginalized groups.

An aspect of globalization is the creation of macro-regions through integration. A macro-region is a territorial unit created through the process of cooperation, cohesion, and integration. Areas of integration can be political, economic, and social. An example of a macro-region is the European Union (EU). For EU member states and for acceding countries economic integration means accepting EU rules and regulations. The rationale behind these laws and rules is to increase economic, financial, and trade cooperation among partner countries. To increase the viability of this macro-region, the EU, has emphasized the need for social integration, which is the expansion of self-identification by individuals from viewing themselves as citizens of a country to a broader European identity, a citizen of Europe. This paper evaluates the impact of joining the European Union on the labor markets of Central and Eastern Europe countries, an economic integration; and the parallel expansion of the citizens’ identity expanding to include a European self-image, a social integration.