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As CD‐ROM becomes more and more a standard reference and technical support tool in all types of libraries, the annual review of this technology published in Computers in Libraries magazine increases in size and scope. This year, author Susan L. Adkins has prepared this exceptionally useful bibliography which she has cross‐referenced with a subject index.

This paper examines the Random Walk Hypothesis (RWH) for aggregate New Zealand share market returns, as well as the CRSP NYSE‐AMEX (USA) index during the 1980‐2001 period. Using several indices, we rely on the variance‐ratio test and find evidence to support the rejection of the RWH with some evidence of a momentum effect. However, we find evidence to suggest the behaviour of share prices to be time‐dependent in New Zealand. For example, we find the indices tested were closer to random after the 1987 share market crash. Further analysis showed even stronger results for periods subsequent to the passage of the Companies Act 1993 and the Financial Reporting Act 1993. We also find evidence that indices based on large capitalisation stocks are more likely to follow a random walk compared to those based on smaller stocks. For the USA index, we find stronger evidence of random behaviour in our sample period compared to the earlier period examined by Lo and Mackinlay (1988)

There can be few who will regret the departure of 1966. As he makes his way towards that dim hall where the years are supposed to sit on their granite columns there will be few sighs at the parting. The year has been ‘a holy terror’ to almost everybody. Contraction has been its forte and uncertainty its foible. There have been severe restraints on enterprise, the crushing of many hopes and an air of apathy verging on despair. Future historians may well describe contemporary events as taking place ‘in the year of the Freeze’, much as it was once common to say ‘in the year of the French Revolution’.

Using the global financial crisis as a critical event and based on institutional theory and stakeholder theory, this paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The question is how stakeholders can influence corporate responses to societal change by using their position in the governance structure.

The analysis is based on a historical analysis of data collected mainly between 2002 and 2004. The historical perspective enables an understanding of the response of the company to environmental changes.

The approach enables researchers to relate the normative component of CSR to specific governance mechanisms. These governance mechanisms are specified in direct and indirect influence pathways. Historical data shed light on how, in the upbeat of the crisis, stakeholders have influenced the principles and policies of the ING Group, a Dutch financial company.

The paper suggests that stakeholders influence principles – normative assumptions that guide corporate decisions – mainly in dialogue-based meetings (direct influence pathways). Companies are made accountable in indirect influence pathways such as regulations. The author also demonstrates that a historical approach enables an understanding of long-term historical developments and the linking of corporate policies to the normative assumptions of stakeholders.

If stakeholders wish to assess the social responsibility of a company, then they should assess the governance structure in relation to the principles and policies. The power structure within a company and that within the institutional framework in which the company operates (the governance system) strongly influences how a company executes its social responsibilities.

The paper demonstrates how stakeholders can use the governance structure to influence a bank. If society – or a specific group in society – wants banks to play a different role, this paper points to what could be the levers of change in the governance system and the governance structure.

Insights into the complex relationship between corporate governance and the processes in which the social responsibilities of a company are developed.

GUEST editor of this South African issue of THE LIBRARY WORLD is Hendrik M. Robinson, Director of Library Services, Transvaal Provincial Administration, Pretoria.

Boxing Not so Clever In this first issue of what will be a regular review of the world's marketing literature, it is a challenge to an editor to extricate a theme from such an abundance of riches.

Interest in developing institutional explanations of political and economic behavior has blossomed among social scientists since the early 1980s. Three intellectual perspectives are now prevalent: rational choice theory, historical institutionalism and a new school of organizational analysis. This paper summarizes, compares and contrasts these views and suggests ways in which cross‐fertilization may be achieved. Particular attention is paid to how the insights of organizational analysis and historical institutionalism can be blended to provide fruitful avenues of research and theorizing, especially with regard to the production, adoption, and mobilization of ideas by decision makers.

The word “librarian” sums up brilliantly the notion that librarians work in libraries, but is in other respects most uninformative: it tells the world nothing about the myriad activities with which librarians are associated. One of the latest specialised activities is conservation, which means much more than being the “keeper” of our collections. Conservation as currently understood implies taking active steps to prevent the physical deterioration of the collections in our care, and involves bringing in to play the knowledge and skills of the paper and leather chemists. As conservation becomes established as an essential part of librarianship, white‐coated laboratory scientists become part of the library team and management makes contingency plans in case of disasters such as fire or flood. Stirling University Library has responsibility for a number of special collections whose quality and diversity may surprise those who think of the university as one of the smallest in the country. We also have a link with the Leighton Library, Dunblane, whose Trustees look to us for advice on the care and maintenance of the books and manuscripts in their ownership, and it was through this partnership that practical conservation first took hold at Stirling about five years ago. At that time it was the conservation of items produced in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that was of most concern to us, and we were fortunate in finding to hand Jan Michaels, a Canadian conservation scientist living locally, and more than happy to act as consultant. The British Library was happy too, and provided financial support for the project. The main conservation effort in recent years has however been concentrated on two modern archives held in the university library, the Howietoun Fish Farm Archive and the Grierson (film documentary) Archive, and it is this work, under the title “Conservation of Scottish library materials of national importance” that has attracted most external interest and attention.

Promotional cues related to notions of fair prices or pricing designed to fit consumers’ needs are prevalent for many service offers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how both customers’ price fairness and idiosyncratic fit perceptions shape their tariff evaluations.

Two experimental studies involving different tariff types and service contexts test the complex interplay of customers’ perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit with customer and context characteristics on their tariff evaluations.

Customers judge tariffs drawing on both the perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit, driven by the perceived price level of the tariff and the perceived pricing transparency of the firm. Customers’ service usage and consumption goals moderate these effects: heavy users and hedonic consumers indicate lower price sensitivity while focusing more on their transparency perception. The role of perceived price fairness and idiosyncratic fit for tariff choice depends on the tariff/service context; idiosyncratic fit is important when it is incidental (e.g. flat rates) rather than intentional (i.e. customized tariffs) and when customers lack the expertise or confidence to evaluate price fairness such as in the case of relatively new services.

Prior studies focused on either price fairness or idiosyncratic fit and thus cannot fully explain the complex interplay between both in the context of tariff choice. This paper explicates the conditions that affect the relative importance of both concepts and under which incidental offers are better received than premeditated ones.