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As from this year all but the smallest companies are required to include lists of fixed assets in their current cost accounting. Whatever method used, the recording and processing of fixed assets registers is a complex matter in which the accountant is almost inevitably dependent upon the computer. Laura Tatham, who has been writing about computer‐related subjects for many years, has been delving into the subject and here describes two of the software packages which are available for fixed asset accounting.

Each Colgate‐Palmolive salesman now has a lightweight portable terminal linked to a central mini‐computer that incorporates a voice response unit. Marketed by Menzies Communications Systems Ltd, the system provides faster service to customers and speeds cash flow.

E'ectronic data processing and other modern techniques do not have to be the sole preserve of whizz‐kids: old‐timers of 35 and more can make a real contribution — even if they have never done anything so demanding before. However, their re‐training needs some thought …

The role of the Youth Service in integrating immigrant teenagers into the community is to be examined by a committee of the Youth Service Development Council, set up by Mr Denis Howell, Joint Parliamentary Under‐Secretary of State for Education and Science. The committee — which will consist of Sir John Hunt as Chairman, Mr Stuart Hall of Birmingham University, Dr J. Klein from the University of Sussex, The Rev F. Milson, Westhill College of Education, Birmingham, and Mr P. Stevenson, a youth field worker in Bristol — will be considering how to stimulate the interest of young immigrants in the Youth Service and how to make it more attractive to them. It will try to promote a greater understanding and readier acceptance of the immigrants by present members of youth clubs and organizations.

In recent years, the balanced scorecard (BSC) has received considerable interest among practitioners for managing their organization’s performance. Unfortunately existing BSC frameworks, particularly for humanitarian supply chains, lack causal relationships among performance indicators, actions, and outcomes. They are not able to provide a dynamic perspective of the organization with factors that drive the organization’s behavior toward its mission. Lack of conceptual references seems to hinder the development of a performance measurement system toward this direction. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors formulate the interdependencies among key performance indicators (KPIs) in terms of cause-and-effect relationships based on published case studies reported in international journals from 1996 to 2017.

This paper aims to identify the conceptual interdependencies among KPIs and represent them in the form of a conceptual model.

The study was solely based on relevant existing literature. Therefore further practical research is needed to validate the interdependencies of performance indicators in the strategy map.

The proposed conceptual model provides the structure of a dynamic balanced scorecard (DBSC) in the humanitarian supply chain and should serve as a starting reference for the development of a practical DBSC model. The conceptual framework proposed in this paper aims to facilitate further research in developing a DBSC for humanitarian organizations (HOs).

Existing BSC frameworks do not provide a dynamic perspective of the organization. The proposed conceptual framework is a useful reference for further work in developing a DBSC for HOs.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked , which may be consulted in the Library.

INDUSTRIALLY the two ‘in’ words today seem to be participation and consensus, the first leading to the second. How these can become a reality in modern business was discussed recently by the London Region of the Institute of Work Study Practitioners.

THE joint publication, by the Institute and Society of County Treasurers, of Public Library Statistics for 1963–4 provides material of considerable topical interest at this time. The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 came into force on 1 April 1965 and only a day or so before this date the Department of Education and Science issued Circular 4–1965, which, in addition to giving a general description of the provisions of the Act, includes an appendix drawing attention to the report of the Ministry of Education published in 1962 (“Standards of Public Library Service in England and Wales”) which, the Circular says, “gives guidance on the factors to be taken into account in considering the adequacy of the service”.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how coordination has evolved in humanitarian logistics (HL), what were the triggers for change and how have they been facilitated.

This paper applies a systematic literature review of academic journals.

This is the first paper to discuss the concepts of network orchestration and choreography in a humanitarian context. The research revealed that network coordination has moved on in the commercial sector to include orchestration and now, choreography concepts which have not been tested in HL literature. This reveals a lag exists between HL research and practice.

This paper represents an exploratory study and provides the basis for further research on the concepts of orchestration and choreography in HL. The paper sets a research agenda for academics.

This paper is the first to discuss the concepts of network orchestration and choreography in a humanitarian context.

The areas of orchestration and choreography have received limited consideration within the humanitarian aid logistics literature to date. This paper is designed to redress this shortfall. As a result, it is hoped that it will act as a catalyst for further research and to widen and deepen the resultant debate with a view to improving the outcome for those affected by current and future disasters.

By constantly working in environments with high degree of uncertainty, humanitarian organizations end up becoming specialists in the implementation of agile systems. Their counterparts in profit‐making organizations have a lot to learn from them in this domain. Volatility of demand, imbalance between supply and demand and disruptions are all factors that affect commercial supply chains and call for a high level of agility. The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to clearly define the concept of supply chain agility, and second, to build a model for assessing the level of agility of a supply chain.

Three approaches are used in this research: literature review, case study and symbolic modeling.

The paper developed first, a framework for defining supply chain agility and second, a model for assessing and improving the capabilities of humanitarian and commercial supply chains in terms of agility, based on an analysis of humanitarian approaches.

The model has been developed thanks to inputs from humanitarian practitioners and feedbacks from academics. The practical application to various humanitarian relief operations and commercial supply chains is yet to be done.

This paper contributes significantly to clarifying the notion of supply chain agility. It also provides a consistent, robust and reproducible method of assessing supply chain agility, which seems appropriate for both humanitarian and business sectors. Finally, it is complementary to existant research on humanitarian logistics. It shows that though humanitarian professionals have a lot to learn from the private sector, the reverse is also true.