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Drawing mainly on the ideas of Manuel Castells, this article discusses how globalization and informatization condition the development of public libraries. To explore this issue, recent public library strategies developed in Britain and Finland are analyzed. The analysis demonstrates how public libraries stand for structures that support and consolidate life forms in local communities that need to adjust to contextual changes. In this way, public libraries serve as mediating and filtering mechanisms in local-global interaction. To do this they may utilize the tools derived from the following four strategic options: institutional resource strategy; networking strategy; commercialization strategy; and civil society strategy. Whatever is the strategic choice or their mix at the national or local level, it seems essential that libraries utilize the potential of a hybrid library, which as a new library paradigm combines traditional local dimension with networked and ubiquitous library services.

Correctional library staff are essential to fulfilling the rehabilitative mission of prisons, but their work is too often misunderstood and neglected. The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) Libraries have a 272% turnover rate and struggle with many long-term vacancies. Despite being the lowest-paid staff in CDOC, library staff are asked to fulfill two distinct sets of responsibilities: that of running a library, and facility safety and security tasks.

Based upon original research, the Colorado State Library (CSL) has created a standard for minimum staffing levels for CDOC Libraries and a formula that can be applied no matter what service model a correctional library uses. CSL has found that to improve recruitment and retention of its library staff, CDOC needs to (1) improve pay and the librarian promotional path by changing staff to a class series which more appropriately reflects the job duties and level of decision-making and (2) create more library staff positions statewide in order to meet the minimum staffing levels.

This is a case study on the opportunities provided by Open Source library systems and the experience of delivering these systems through a shared service.

This chapter derives from desk research, interviews, and direct involvement in the project. The format is a case study, setting out a detailed timeline of events with information that can be applied in other settings.

This chapter presents reflections on the value and limitations of collaboration amongst libraries and librarians on an innovative approach to library systems and technologies. It also presents reflections on lessons learned from the processes and detailed discussion of the success factors for shared services and the reasons why such initiatives may not result in the outcomes predicted at the start.

Libraries and IT services considering Open Source and shared service approaches to provision will find material in this study useful when planning their projects.

The nature of collaboration and collaborative working is studied and observations made about the way that outcomes cannot always be predicted or controlled. In a genuine collaboration, the outcome is determined by the interactions between the partners and is unique to the specifics of that collaboration.

The case study derives from interviews, written material and direct observation not generally in the public domain, providing a strong insider’s view of the activity.

Strategy researchers have given very little attention to services, even though they now dominate the gross domestic product of almost all countries. We encourage more research focused on service as the basic mode of generating revenue today, especially as the economic landscape is being restructured by recent financial crises. This chapter suggests a basic framework for services research and then outlines issues in three areas that are particularly important to customer-oriented service innovation: individuation, standardization, and export. Illustrative examples from Germany provide more specific contexts for considering the range of activity in this under-researched domain.

In Italy, policies and services devoted to persons with disabilities, particularly those with cognitive disabilities, are still characterised by institutional segmentation and are focused on the medical model and therefore on rehabilitation, rather than on social participation, despite the formal ratification of the UNCRPD in 2009. This chapter analyses the pandemic impact by focusing on daily services, as a central service of welfare disability policy, and investigating if the pandemic has strengthened the dominant medical view, or if it has been an opportunity for a more integrated (social and health services) provision of services for people with disabilities, particularly with cognitive disabilities, and their families. Data on two regional case studies show severe differences in implementing national regulation to manage the pandemic at regional level. The difficulties experienced by both families and healthcare and social professionals are similar in the two regions, but the different organisational system concerning social and health care services outlines contexts with different rights.

Purpose – The objective of this chapter is to examine and provide new perspectives on the contributions of public and private R&D to biotech crop improvement.

Methodology/approach – The chapter examines a set of topics that have affected the way that research is undertaken on plant germplasm improvement and how it has changed with the genetically modified (GM) trait revolution.

Findings – Although the basic science providing the foundations for GM crops was undertaken in the public sector, GM traits and GM crop varieties have been developed almost exclusively by the private sector. The biotech events leading to GM traits are currently being developed largely by five companies – all having ties to both the chemical and the seed industries. The GM crop revolution started in North American in 1996 and has spread slowly to the largest developing countries that have large agricultural sectors, including Argentina, China, Brazil, and India, but not to Europe or Japan.

Practical implication – To shed new light on the economic reasons for private sector dominance in GM crop varietal development in selected crops but not in others.

Social implication – Shows how GM traits have contributed to technical change and declining real food prices.

This work aims at investigating how different governments, and political contexts, perform public service organisations as hybrid organisations in the case of health social assistance care services. Run using qualitative methods (interviews and direct observation), it presents a descriptive comparative study upon five local PSOs, from five European countries, engaged in delivering services for people with autism. Analysing their developmental paths in the light of neo-institutional theories, the study points out that the trigger for the development of hybrid organisations lies in the users and governments have the crucial role of being the enabler of the process, within an evolving complex relationship between public sector and third sector, as well as society at large.

We are currently witnessing a new wave of the digital economy. A prime example is the sharing economy where an organization operates a platform for its online community, the sum of individuals who interact to exchange goods and services. The sharing economy blurs several boundaries of economic life – a fact that extant theory on platform organizing has yet paid little attention. We argue to consider two aspects of the sharing economy and revisit related theory to address this lacuna. First, we revive the concept of hybrid community to denote a variant of an online community that mirrors the boundary-blurring nature of the sharing economy. In a hybrid community, individuals interact both online and offline (instead of only online) and consume as well as produce. Second, we revisit the range of strategic responses suggested by extant literature to minimize the dependence of a platform organization on its hybrid community and show that the sharing economy requires management research to adapt and potentially recast existing claims.