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John Hamilton Bradford completed his dissertation entitled “Systems, Social Order, and the Global Debt Crisis” in 2010 from the University of Tennessee. He has since taught sociology as Lecturer at the University of Tennessee and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and in Fall 2012 will be joining Mississippi Valley State University's Department of Social Sciences as Assistant Professor. His current research interests include the meaning and function of social scientific explanations, the sociology and political economy of money and finance, formalizing sociological theories with multi-agent computer simulations, and the sociology of environmental risk and policy.

This paper presents a practical methodology for developing a process‐based knowledge management system (KMS) for supporting continuous improvement (CI) and asset management.

An action research methodology was used to develop a KMS to support CI in a manufacturing company. The KMS is evaluated through application in the case study company. This methodology ensures a consistent approach to carrying out all improvement initiatives. The final part of the methodology addresses the construction of an intranet‐based knowledge warehouse. This contains several searchable areas such as existing information on assets, new knowledge generated from projects, details of expertise in the business and links to the key business drivers through the corporate intranet.

The KMS is shown to support CI initiatives through the utilization of available data already held within the company's management databases (production, quality and maintenance) including consideration of corporate strategic plans. Process models trigger the application of improvement tools and projects in a true CI environment.

This methodology acknowledges both tacit and explicit knowledge within the company, and it represents an appropriate environment to promote and develop a true learning organization.

The system developed is shown to be flexible and has been implemented in a manufacturing environment. Financial benefits are presented.

The approach used is novel and integrates several areas of IT and process improvement techniques. The resulting methodology is applicable to large and small companies without requiring major IT support facilities. The methodology supports the development of true learning organizations.

This paper describes the results of surveys which provide information on the relative status, qualifications, knowledge, practices and needs of production/operations managers within the UK. The qualifications and ambitions of production managers are shown to be lower than managers in other functions. A disturbing finding is the level of knowledge of established operations management techniques and concepts. Moreover, those who do have knowledge make low utilisation of it. Comparison of American and British‐owned companies indicates that production managers in the former make greater use of good management techniques. There is demonstrated a need for active career development to enable well qualified and ambitious recruits to enter the profession and progress to senior management positions.

In any country which relies heavily on manufacturing for a healthy economy, its production managers constitute a major asset. Yet a recent study has revealed that the qualifications and ambitions of production managers are lower than those of other managers in other functions. More disturbing still, is the low level of usage of operations management techniques and concepts in Britain. Indeed, if British manufacturing industry is to survive, let alone succeed, much needs to be done to improve the education, training and status of the production manager in the UK.

To clarify and address questions that have arisen concerning John Levi Martin’s Explanation of Social Action (2011). I reply to some of Martin’s comments to my original review of his book (2012). In particular, this paper examines the distinction between first-person and third-person accounts of human action and whether third-person explanations of action are ever justified.

This paper concedes several of Martin’s points, but contra Martin, maintains that third-person accounts are sometimes valuable forms of explanation. This paper also concludes that the distinction between first-person and third-person explanations is relative to the actor.

A careful and close analysis of his reply is employed along with careful explication and exemplification of central concepts related to the study of human action.

Martin has argued that third-person explanations of social action generate epistemological instability and hierarchical social relationships between researchers and those researched. This paper expresses doubts about the generalizability of these claims.

To date, no extended discussion has been published pertaining to the social value of third-person explanations of social action.

LOCATION of industry policy in Great Britain has its origins in the Special Areas Act of 1934, which marked the beginning of government's acknowledgment of the need to influence the distribution of industry. Since then, successive governments have continued to accept the need. But ideas on how the need should be met have changed considerably, although almost entirely constrained by the principle of taking the work to the workers. Such changes as have taken place in location policy have often led to companies alleging inconsistency on the part of government since the companies have found themselves left high and dry by a change in policy which, having influenced a decision on location, now by‐passes them.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 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.

Introduction All people of responsibility in marketing need to plan for the future. The marketing manager has to ensure that his company has the resources and products that will be needed in the 1980s and beyond. The marketing educator is training the marketing executives of the future. To do this they need to be aware of the direction of change of the total environment in which they operate and the organisations in which they work. The alternative to planned change toward a target in an identified future is to drift aimlessly or to make changes to suit crises as they arise.

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.