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This paper aims to advance the literature by extending the empirical relation between a firm’s strategy and socially responsible value drivers (customer/employee relations) beyond firm performance to the impact on earnings persistence. Although existing research demonstrates that management’s effective implementation of a specific strategic orientation such as cost focus or product differentiation leads to better financial performance, no studies, to the authors’ knowledge, directly address the effect of strategic orientation on the persistence of earnings.

This paper utilized the evaluation of a firm’s focus on employee and customer relations through the rating provided by Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini. It uses linear regression analysis to identify statistically significant relations.

The findings demonstrate that simply focusing on socially responsible employee and customer relations alone does not result in higher earnings persistence. But rather, higher earnings persistence is associated with firms whose strategic orientation is aligned with the firm’s socially responsible value drivers. Additionally, we find that the capital market understands the importance of alignment between a firm’s strategy and its value drivers.

The analysis was based on a large-scale sample, and the authors concede that as a consequence of this decision, the results are based on indirect assessments of the firm’s actions rather than direct feedback from the firm. However, the authors believe the large-scale, external assessment that they use increases the generalizability of the results.

The results provide guidance to management and boards of directors regarding the critical nature of disclosure regarding firm strategy and corporate social responsibility (CSR) as well as inform financial statement users as to useful relations beyond the actual reported accounting numbers.

Existing research has explored the relation between CSR and improved financial performance, but no studies, to our knowledge, examine the relation a firm’s strategy and value drivers (customer/employee relations) has on earnings persistence. Earnings persistence is worthy of study, as it captures the non-transitory nature of earnings, which is a useful attribute for both internal and external users of financial reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of large equity ownership by both institutions and outside block shareholders in monitoring the board of directors’ decision to initially adopt defense mechanisms and the subsequent capital market reaction to the adoption.

This paper employs an empirical methodology that controls for selection bias. Multiple regressions were employed to assess the relationship among the variables.

Stockholder wealth effects of poison pills are positively related to pressure‐resistant institutions, which is consistent with effective monitoring. The wealth effects of poison pills, however, are negatively related to pressure‐sensitive investors, consistent with passivity. No empirical relation was found between ownership structure and shareholder approved amendments such as classified boards and fair price amendments.

This study was conducted as a large sample analysis over an earlier time period that was more applicable for evaluating anti‐takeover techniques.

The results are consistent with pressure‐resistant institutions actively monitoring to prevent unilaterally implemented defense mechanisms of all types, whereas pressure‐sensitive institutions appear to more readily accept poison pills.

These results suggest that failing to control for the type of outside investor may not clearly portray documented relations in other corporate governance studies.

This paper aims to argue for the curricular inclusion of youth-generated young adult literature (YAL) alongside canonical literature and adult-generated YAL. The authors support this argument with the results of a qualitative analysis of youth memoir published in The Best Teen Writing. They strive to inform the debate between educators who value memoir as part of the secondary curriculum and critics who question the ability of youth to write purposeful, meaningful narrative. Additionally, the authors also present memoir as a unique genre for youth to document and process adolescence, and for youth to speak to issues which they deem important.

Informed theoretically by the Youth Lens, which considers how texts reinforce and/or disrupt various figurations of adolescence and youth, this study uses a multistage qualitative analysis of 83 youth memoir published in nine volumes of the Best Teen Writing from 2010 to 2018. First, the authors conducted a Labovian plot analysis to consider what themes and topics were present as well as what this sample could teach us about youth. Next, they analyzed the sample for genre hallmarks specific to creative nonfiction and memoir to consider the question of quality of youth memoir.

The findings suggest that there is no typical adolescence and that youth are balancing complex, intersectional identities, which they write about skillfully through memoir. These findings directly contrast with critics of youth memoir. Rather than clichéd, the memoirs the authors analyzed show youth as intercultural, capable of thoughtful reflection, capturing the transitory state of their youth (knowing they are not children anymore and lightly speculating about their future), skillfully integrating memoir genre hallmarks, and recording important events and perspectives with appeal to a broader readership. Furthermore, these findings position youth memoir as worthy of curricular inclusion alongside adult-generated YAL.

If the critics of youth memoir are the loudest voices, youth memoir will be, at best, relegated as examples for writers rather than seen as valid additions to curricular canon. This work gives due credit to the quality of published youth memoir to showcase their potential for curricular and canonical addition. This study builds on smaller-scale case studies and personal accounts to make an argument for curricular inclusion of youth voices and youth memoir in the secondary canon.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems.

A structural methodology of graph theory and matrix approach is used for developing a framework for safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems.

The development of a framework for safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems is essential for ensuring plant safety. For this, safety performance factors, including design and operating contextual factors of belt conveyor systems, are identified. The factors along with their interrelations are modeled using digraph. An equivalent matrix of the digraph provided safety performance function (SPF) of belt conveyor systems, leading to the development of a safety performance index (SPI).

The developed framework will enable the designers for evaluating and comparing alternative designs of conveyor systems from the safety viewpoint. The plant operators can make inferences from the SPI to identify the weak contextual factors in the plant and develop action plans for its mitigation.

The paper is novel and employs graph theory and matrix approach for safety performance measurement. The methodology helps in the quantitative evaluation of the safety performance of belt conveyor systems.

A LETTER from the President of the Library Association (Mr. Berwick Sayers) has been received which we have pleasure in giving prominently.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the sources of meaningfulness at the workplace, according to the perceptions of hospitality employees from different national cultures in one US‐based hotel, based on Dimitrov's empirical study about the features of the humane organization.

This was an exploratory research that employed a single embedded case study. There were 17 employees, selected via purposeful convenience sampling. The process of data gathering involved: personal statements, interviews, complete observations, and document analysis. Data were coded using open and theoretical codes. Content and constant comparative analysis was used to link the emerging themes.

The respondents felt that sources of meaningfulness in the workplace are: work itself and pride in the product; the social environment; the self and spirituality at work; and becoming a humane organization.

The main recommendations for future research are to: explore the meaning of work and meaningful workplace human resource development concepts in more culturally diverse organizations in different counties and economic sectors (government and non‐profit); study the national cultural differences more specifically per cultural type, utilizing systematic methodologies for cultural differentiation; and explore other study designs.

Organizations are advised to: create flexible schedules and WFB policies; exhibit social responsibility; and broaden the cultural horizons of their workforce.

The discussion in this paper will further enhance the understanding of international human resource development as it provides a focused review of the sources of meaningfulness in the workplace found in the study of one US‐based organization, populated by the international influences of a global industry in a global world.

This paper provides a critical review of prevention methods in mental health. Information from existing literature, ideologies, theories and clinical practice will be utilised to gain further insight into the kind of prevention strategies that aid and assist black and ethnic minority communities (BME) in understanding the effects of mental illness in their communities. It is hoped that a real world analysis approach can collectively demystify and change the communities' perception of mental illness. For the purpose of this article, the term black and ethnic minority communities (BME) refers to all classification of people as described in the national census categorisation; expect white (Anglo‐Saxon) ‐ British.This classification of BME refers to a tangible quality, or a sense of being, derived from a position of a shared racial or cultural affiliation. The term, service user, refers to those who have had assessment and treatment by mental health services.

MID‐OCTOBER sees the activities of the library world in full swing. Meetings, committee discussions, schools at work, students busy with December and May examinations in view, and a host of occupations for the library worker. This year—for in a sense the library year begins in October—will be a busy one. For the Library Association Council there will be the onerous business of preparing a report on State Control; for libraries there will be the effort to retain readers in a land of increasing employment and reduced leisure; and for the students, as we have remarked in earlier issues, preparations for the new syllabus of examinations which becomes operative in 1938. It is a good month, too, to consider some phases of library work with children, “which,” to quote the L.A. Resolutions of 1917, “ought to be the basis of all other library work.”

THE recruitment, training and payment of librarians are matters of import, not only to the youngest entrant into this work, but also to established librarians and to the public. Although training was initiated forty years ago by the then chief librarians of libraries, it has in recent years become a very intimate concern of library assistants and of parents and others in charge of young folk who are considering librarianship as their possible career. After thirty years of experiment, with minor changes, the Library Association syllabus has now been completely remodelled. We have also reached a stage when we can consider to some extent, although not adequately, the effect upon the profession of our whole‐time library school of university rank. The various phases of the work must therefore be of great interest to every reader of The Library World; and this is sufficient justification for the special attention which the subject receives in this number. The first question must always be the economic and human one. Is the profession sufficiently large, and of enough importance, to justify parents in allowing lads or girls, who have gone through a secondary or even university training, to devote themselves to the somewhat protracted study which is prescribed for the work? Then, again, is the training now placed before the would‐be aspirant to library work a wise training? Is it too special, too technical, too scholarly; indeed, is the library authority, whoever and wherever it may be, asking too much for what most people regard as the very simple work of managing and distributing and exploiting books?

An International Exhibition of Hygiene, Arts, Handicrafts, and Manufactures will be held in the Crystal Palace, Madrid, from September to November next, under the patronage of the Spanish Government. The participation of British exhibitors is particularly desired by the promoters, who state that the attendant expenses will be small. His Excellency the Spanish Minister of Commerce will be the Honorary President; the President of the Committee will be his Excellency the Duke of Tamames and Galisteo, Grandee of Spain, Senator, and ex‐Governor of Madrid. The American war on the one hand, and political changes on the other, have had the effect of seriously damaging the credit of Spain, and many exporters, in view of then existing difficulties, refused to trade until affairs became mere settled. To‐day, however, the Spanish Government are making every effort to restore the economical prosperity of their country. Markets have gained strength, commerce has quadrupled, imports have trebled, and exchange is greatly improved. Well‐advised manufacturers sell in quantity and at good prices, the demand being greater than the supply. Again, the immense natural richness of the Iberian Peninsula, which has not yet received the attention of enterprising and powerful capitalists in any proportion to its value, makes Spain one of those countries where industrial progress is the more certain. The decision to hold this exhibition is evidently a wise one, and considerable advantages may accrue to British manufacturers and merchants taking part therein. There appear to be ample guarantees to show that the undertaking may be supported with every confidence. We understand that all detailed particulars with reference to this important exhibition can be obtained from the Spanish representative in London, Mr. A. DONDERIS, Spanish Arts Exhibition, Compton House, 99A, Charing Cross Road, London, W.C.