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You won't have to turn yourself into a propeller‐head, but it would behoove you to sharpen your focus on technology in the coming year.

While large corporations have metrics experts, most managers do not need skills of that order. What they need is a clear understanding of how measurements affect the activities and behavior of their own organizations.

This is a selective annotated bibliography of the literature on Christopher Columbus from 1970 to 1989. The subject is particularly relevant considering the approach of the Quincentenary of the “discovery” of America in 1992. For that same reason, there has been an outpouring of literature on the subject since 1990, a significant subset of which contributes to are interpretation of Columbus the man, his voyages, and their impact on the new world. It is hoped that this more recent literature will be part of a subsequent annotated bibliography.

The chapter proposes a three step framework to assist in the study of technological change in historical terms, using one class of technology, computational devices and computers, to illustrate the approach. Step one explores the economic dynamics of computing to demonstrate the value of studying a specified technology to gain insights about other forms of technologies. Second step attempts an understanding of users and historians respond to the issue of change. Finally, a framework for studying the role of change in technology is presented. Many examples are drawn from different periods in the modern history of information processing.

The Quality Yearbook is an annually published 800‐page book designed to keep people who are interested in quality management practices up to date. The editors have employed quality management practices throughout to put each edition together, make improvements from one edition to the next, and to reduce cycle time in the production process. Describes the various practices they have adopted to deliver a timely and high quality product.

This is a report on an IBM Institute for Business Value study, based on responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more than two dozen executives from leading organizations, that aims to suggest ways organizations can use social approaches to create meaningful business value.

IBM conducted interviews of key executives of companies learning to embed their external social tools into core business processes and capabilities.

The paper reveals that leading firms are using social approaches not only to communicate better with their customers, but also to share knowledge with their suppliers, business partners and, perhaps most important, their employees.

Social business tools facilitate engagement in extensive discussions with employees, customers, business partners and other stakeholders and allow sharing of resources, skills and knowledge to drive business outcomes. Executives are concerned because social business represents a different way of thinking about employees, customers and how work is accomplished, as well as the potential risks of increased organizational openness and transparency.

Leading firms are rapidly progressing to a substantive transformation in how they work, an approached called social business. Social business can create valued customer experiences, increase workforce productivity and effectiveness and accelerate innovation.

Until recently, most North Americans thought of Central America as the land of bananas and exotic vacations. Today, government, media, and public concern are focused on the region's instability and the United States' role in it. This “crisis” in Central America has generated a barrage of publications. Perhaps an appropriate title for this article would have been “Central America: Crisis in the Library.” The growing number of publications on Central America is matched by growing demand for them in both public and academic libraries. This bibliography will help librarians build an adequate and balanced collection on Central America without having to locate and examine each book.

[O]nce people recognize that focusing everyone's attention on firm value may not be the best way to generate firm value, they then tend to conclude that it is management's task to set up correct local goals to align local actions with systemwide performance. I am dubious of this conclusion. It presupposes an almost god‐like level of understanding of the system as a whole that does not match my experience of managers, even highly competent ones. It also results in the imposition of goals from outside a work community on the members of that community. … In short, I see no substitute for the messy, ongo‐ing process of everyone working together to make sense of the dynamic, nonlinear, highly interdependent realities in which work gets done.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the role that context plays in managerial decision making. The paper aims to argue that managers increasingly need to take into account broader contexts of information in decision making. It seeks to define managerial context, how it is of use, and to provide a set of recommendations about how to integrate context into the daily work of management.

The paper approaches the topic of context by providing a definition of the concept, examples, and description of benefits of integrating context into daily work. It concludes with a proposed methodology for doing that.

The paper finds that context is an increasingly important tool for managerial decision making, particularly the more senior an executive is or the more ambiguous an issue being addressed.

The paper offers useful guidelines and approaches to the application of context into managerial work.

This paper is one of the first – if not original – discussions of the role of context in managerial decision making. It is an outgrowth of many of the findings of students of KM and managerial practices. It provides management with specific hands‐on advice.