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As digital natives, young adults have been found to consider themselves to have good information literacy skills, when in fact many do not. Past research indicates that not only do young adults rely heavily on information obtained from the web and social networks, but also that they may not be able to judge the authenticity, validity, and reliability of digital information, and may share misinformation among themselves. This can be particularly problematic in the context of health information. Two complementary research studies investigated young adults’ information needs and information seeking in support of their personal well-being, and in comparison to academic and other everyday-life information domains. Results show that young adults consider a range of factors as part of their well-being; these include physical and mental health, spirituality, social connections, and financial stability. They engage in information seeking (active and passive) in support of all of these factors. While they were able to identify information resources as more or less credible, they did not necessarily choose highly credible resources most frequently. Interestingly, they did not use social media sources frequently in the context of health information, choosing to deliberately maintain a degree of privacy with respect to health. While there is evidence of some information literacy skills, there remains a need for further and more extensive information literacy education. This should be addressed by librarians from academic, consumer health, public, and school libraries.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether the UK regional electricity companies (RECs) has used total quality management (TQM) as a “push” or as a “pull” change methodology. “Push” is the operational improvement role of TQM; “pull” is the strategic or direction giving, improvement role of TQM. Following the onset of privatisation in 1990 there has been evidence of the RECs adopting TQM in both “push” and “pull” methodologies with varying degrees of success. An evaluation of the change processes involved will enable improved change models to be developed leading to increased business effectiveness in this £30 billion industry. Other possible benefits include the possible generalisations to other utilities such as water, roads, gas and telecoms. The research methodology includes a comparative case study analysis of five RECs, which have used TQM as their overarching approach to change. One of the cases is analysed to a more in‐depth level based on the multiple case findings. The findings indicate that the “push‐pull” analysis enables the full range of TQM activities to be evaluated in the RECs studied. Overall, there is a need to have a balanced portfolio of operational or “push”‐based TQM activity that is driven by strategic or “pull”‐based TQM planning and activity.

The motivation for this paper comes from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation’s (TRC) Calls to Action, and in particular, the call for more meaningful consultation and respectful, consent-based relationships between businesses and Indigenous communities in Canada. To this end, this study empirically examines leadership in the context of a wicked problem faced by a pulp and paper mill and suggest an Indigenous epistemology as helpful to inform the leadership behaviours employed in this company.

Firstly, this study established that the problem faced by the company aligns with the characteristics of wicked problems, hence necessitating a collective leadership approach. This study then compiled a database from publicly available documents and inductively coded this data to identify themes that told us something about the leadership behaviours employed by the company as it attempted to resolve the problem at hand.

This study provides evidence that the company did not employ collective leadership when attempting to tame its wicked problem. It then shows that the context in which the firm operates lends itself well to the Mi’kmaw concept of Two-Eyed Seeing as a guiding principle that could have informed the company’s leadership and contributed to a long-overdue process of reconciliation. This study proposes several specific actions that plausibly could have helped produce such an outcome.

This paper helps fill a void in applications of the wicked problem construct to businesses. Further, this study suggests that the problem faced by this firm remained difficult to tame precisely because it failed to employ a collective leadership approach. The contribution to the leadership literature comes from introducing Two-Eyed Seeing and showing how it may help produce leadership that is inherently more collective in nature. Beyond its instrumental value, this approach may nurture more consent-based relationships between businesses and Indigenous communities in Canada, as called for by the TRC, hence contributing to reconciliation with a long-suffering neighbouring Indigenous community.

Increasing competitive pressure from global markets and technological developments has resulted in the continual demand for business improvement philosophies and methodologies in operations management to address this challenge. The Six Sigma approach to business improvement has emerged in both the practitioner and academic literature as having a significant role in this area. There are many documented case studies of organizational applications of Six Sigma, where large‐scale improvements in defect and process measures have been attributed to this approach, mainly in the mass‐manufacturing sector. Moreover, there are claims, less well documented, that Six Sigma can be used as a change management approach at a strategic level and thus it can be applied to other sectors such as service industries. It is contended that there is a paucity of critical reviews of the Six Sigma literature, beyond that of descriptive accounts. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to critically review the literature of Six Sigma in relation to its effect on organizations and those that work in them. A broad theoretical perspective is used to guide the review process. The paper structure is based on the dichotomies within the Six Sigma literature, namely, what is Six Sigma — strategic change or operational methods; is Six Sigma a TQM appendage, or something new; will workers in a Six Sigma environment have more empowerment or be more controlled and is Six Sigma applicable to the service sector or only for that of the manufacturing sector?

This study aims to review all frameworks of strategic international human resource management (SIHRM) published between 1990 and 2022 to ascertain their relevance in the current context with a focus on methodologies and theories in the post-pandemic era.

In this study a pool of 69 papers published in 16 journals was considered for full-text evaluation using a set of relevant keywords and pre-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria.

The number of qualitative research papers is the highest (90%) and theoretical perspectives are dominated by research-based (17%), institutional (17%) and SIHRM (14%) theories that emphasize competitive advantage, resource dependence and multiple SIHRM frameworks.

This research incorporates dominant theoretical perspectives and methodologies within an integrated SIHRM framework which accommodates the post-pandemic era.

The integrated SIHRM framework reinforces the alignment of multiple contexts, dimensions, models and proportions to enable effective decisions for mitigating the current crisis and future research.

This research integrated a hybrid model of SIHRM by aligning the relevant existing SIHRM frameworks, which management can choose from to leverage the benefits that distributed remote work in an international context and decide what is most suitable for their businesses as they prepare for the future.

This paper aims to analyze different brand clarity levels (BCLs) of local, global and glocal types of brands in fast-moving consumer goods from the consumer's perspective. The study also intends to identify whether the consumer's previous experience with such brands may impact BCL.

Twenty-eight global and local brands were used to test the hypotheses by conducting a survey with 400 consumers in the emerging economy of Iran. The authors applied a quantitative technique of brand classification, previously proposed in the literature. After categorizing the brands as local, global or glocal, one-way ANOVA, Tukey post hoc and t-test analyses were performed to identify whether the different types of brands had different BCLs.

The results showed that brand clarity was significantly higher for local bands than for global or glocal brands and that it was higher for glocal bands than for global brands. Furthermore, the consumer's prior experience with a brand had no impact on BCL for different types of brands.

For global brand managers, it is essential to know that local brands in Middle Eastern emerging markets may have more brand clarity than global brands. Therefore, if global brands intend to enter these markets, adopting a glocal positioning appears to be a helpful strategy. Besides, the results suggest that managers should analyze brand categorization from the consumer's perspective, i.e. from a subjective instead of an objective perspective.

This was the first study analyzing the BCL of local, global and glocal brands and identifying significant differences in their BCL.