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Two projects in the EQUAL programme explore aspects of the influence of building design on the quality of life of people with dementia. Design in Caring Environments (DICE) examined the quality of life of people in residential care homes in relation to building design features. INDEPENDENT (Investigating Enabling Environments for People with Dementia) is a current project with the aim of developing technologies to enhance quality of life by supporting enjoyable activities. One aspect of INDEPENDENT is an exploration of the interaction between spatial settings and meaningful activity, to highlight factors that support and enable activity and to identify barriers. Findings from both projects suggest that a more creative approach to the management of buildings would enhance the well‐being of residents; under‐use of facilities is common. Meaningful space that supports activity is therapeutic but spaces that give confused messages are common in buildings used by older people. Tools to evaluate buildings have a potential role in the long‐term management of facilities to help identify underused spaces, spatial confusion and barriers to activity. Quality of life was shown to be poorer in buildings that prioritise safety and health; buildings that support activity positively by providing good assistive devices, giving people control of their environment and affording good links with the community have a positive association with well‐being.

Discusses an extensive research project relating to the quality and quantity of training available to life assurance representatives. The research was undertaken for LAUTRO, the industry′s self‐regulatory body, and provided background information prior to the issue of training and competence standards which will operate industry‐wide from April 1993. Based on data relating to over 140,000 life assurance representatives, pinpoints the extensive variety in training and recruitment practices between companies in the industry and between categories of representatives, even within one company. Outlines the arguments in favour of providing comprehensive training for life assurance representatives, while concluding that there may need to be flexible forms of training to take account of the differing characteristics of representatives and their companies.

EVOLVE is a tool for evaluating the design of housing for older people. It is used to assess how well a building contributes to the physical support and personal well‐being of older people. Developed from research into extra care housing, it can be used for a variety of building types, including sheltered housing and individual private houses. The tool can be used by architects, housing providers, commissioners, researchers and individual tenants or home owners. EVOLVE can be used as a briefing document or an aid to design. It can provide a rational basis to the selection of proposals in a competitive procurement process. The EVOLVE tool can also be used to evaluate existing housing stock, including schemes where remodelling is under consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of a multi-level approach consisting of individual, human resource management (HRM) team, and organizational contingency factors when considering the efficacy of HR devolvement efforts. The authors accomplish this through a review of the relevant devolvement literature to show how outcomes are impacted by contingency factors, which highlights a gap in extant scholarship, and the authors organize the literature in a way that is meaningful to future researchers interested in the topic as well as practitioners involved with its implementation.

The authors use a narrative review approach to describe previous devolvement research (e.g. Hammersley, 2001; Harvey and Moeller, 2009). In contrast to a systematic review more commonly seen in quantitative meta-analyses, a narrative review allows for a more descriptive and detailed analysis and critique of quantitative, qualitative, and theoretical research (Bezrukova et al., 2012; Posthuma et al., 2002). This methodology produced over 300 books, journal articles, magazine articles, and discussion papers. In this review, the authors chose to focus only on those peer-reviewed papers reporting empirical findings or developing theoretical arguments surrounding devolvement.

While the studies reviewed herein are admirable and help call attention to an important topic in HRM, they nonetheless fail to provide a comprehensive understanding of contingencies affecting devolvement as they do not consider the multi-level nature of the phenomenon. Therefore, the authors’ contribution lies in the identification and categorization of contingency factors affecting the occurrence of devolvement operating at the individual, HRM team, and organizational levels.

As devolvement continues to be a viable means for assigning HR responsibilities from the human resources department to managers, its effects can have an impact on organizational performance, the strategic positioning of HR, and various job attitudes of line managers. Therefore, a clearer picture of devolvement in order to understand its continued significance is an important contribution.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.