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Resistance to change has generally been understood as a result of personal experiences and assessments about the reliability of others. Accordingly, attempts are made to alter these factors in order to win support and overcome resistance. But this understanding ignores resistance as a socially constructed reality in which people are responding more to the background conversations in which the change is being initiated than to the change itself. This paper proposes that resistance to change is a function of the ongoing background conversations that are being spoken and which create the context for both the change initiative and the responses to it. In this context, resistance is not a personal phenomenon, but a social systemic one in which resistance is maintained by the background conversations of the organization. Successfully dealing with this source of resistance requires distinguishing the background conversations and completing the past.

So how might you describe you and your firm’s attitudes? Complacent? How about resigned or cynical? If you are lucky enough to be part of an organization that has enjoyed continued success, you would not be blamed for believing things will always continue to work well as they are. On the other hand, if you have had to get through a few failures, you might well be resigned to thinking you will never get it right so why bother. Or, if you have been let down in the past, you are probably a bit pessimistic in your outlook, whether you have noticed it or not. Whichever most applies to you or your firm, chances are you are not keen on the idea of change.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

SOME years ago a saying was current that when two English librarians met they talked classification, but when two American librarians met they talked publicity. Perhaps the long‐held opinion that Americans are necessarily good business men has been somewhat discounted by the state of their country financially at the present moment. But on the whole they are probably the best business people still inhabiting this planet. It was natural, therefore, that what was apparently the main interest of the American librarian should in time become a very substantial interest of his English brother. It is a good thing at intervals to review the manner and methods of our publicity, to see if they are in keeping with the needs and with the spirit of the time. There is the publicity which is good, which is necessary; there is also the publicity which is ostentatious, vulgar and in the end misses its aim. There is also a very definite danger of overdoing publicity. Those libraries which are one mass of posters, advertisements, admonitions, and other notices, suffer from the public neglect of them all. What the librarian who uses publicity methods has to do is to study the current psychology of his readers, and to adapt his posters and publications—indeed all his methods—to harmonise with that psychology.

The term “library management” covers many different aspects of the way that a library is operated and conjures up different concepts in the minds of different people, depending on their own interests, agendas and requirements. Research into the subject is even more difficult to define because the application of research in one field can be vital to the development of another. Some researchers would not consider their research central to library matters at all, whereas the practising librarian might well see it as casting new light on a difficult area of understanding or development.

THIS is the time of the year when, with the strong opening of the Spring publishing season, librarians take a review of matters which definitely concern books. There is a cant saying amongst certain eager librarians that their colleagues are too concerned with technical matters and too little, if at all, concerned with books. There may have been isolated cases of this kind, but it is merely untrue to say that the average librarian is not concerned, deeply and continuously, with the literary activity of his day. It is well that men should live in their own time and be thoroughly interested in the work of new writers. There is danger that exclusive occupation with them may lead to an unbalanced view of the book world. If one judged from the criticisms that occasionally appear in our contemporaries, one would suppose that the only books that mattered were the authentic fiction of the day, and by authentic is meant the books which go beyond average contemporary thought and conventions. Librarianship, however, is concerned with all books of all subjects and of all time. This note is merely a prelude to a number of THE LIBRARY WORLD which deals mainly with literature and with reading. Here we return again to the perennial fiction question.

In an effort to encourage more probing studies of organizational learning and the learning organization (OL/LO), this paper aims to highlight the value of extended periods of fieldwork and suggest priorities for future fieldwork-based research into OL/LO.

The paper draws on the author’s research and consultancies in the OL/LO field and on systematic reviews of OL/LO literature.

Evidence is presented to justify the following four priorities for future fieldwork-based studies of OL/LO: to obtain trustworthy data, to bring the role of time and place into sharp focus, to explore the relationship between organizational learning and interests and to identify strategies for improving organizational learning in particular contexts.

The paper suggests priorities for a research approach that is not often used to study organizational learning and the learning organization, namely, to undertake extended periods of fieldwork in individual organizations or parts of organizations, gathering trustworthy data and interpreting it with the help of extant OL/LO theory.

SEPTEMBER is the month when, Summer being irrevocably over, our minds turn to library activities for the winter. At the time of writing the international situation is however so uncertain that few have the power to concentrate on schemes or on any work other than that of the moment. There is an immediate placidity which may be deceptive, and this is superficial even so far as libraries are concerned. In almost every town members of library staffs are pledged to the hilt to various forms of national service—A.R.P. being the main occupation of senior men and Territorial and other military services occupying the younger. We know of librarians who have been ear‐marked as food‐controllers, fuel controllers, zone controllers of communication centres and one, grimly enough, is to be registrar of civilian deaths. Then every town is doing something to preserve its library treasures, we hope. In this connexion the valuable little ninepenny pamphlet issued by the British Museum on libraries and museums in war should be studied. In most libraries the destruction of the stock would not be disastrous in any extreme way. We do not deny that it would be rather costly in labour and time to build it up again. There would, however, be great loss if all the Local Collections were to disappear and if the accession books and catalogues were destroyed.

This paper aims to investigate the roles of non-CEO inside directors (NCIDs) in the new CEO-firm matching process using the context of unplanned CEO departures when immediate CEO succession planning becomes a sole board responsibility. Although critics argue that inside directors decrease the monitoring effectiveness of a board, inside directors arguably possess superior firm-specific experience and knowledge that can be beneficial during the leadership transition.

The authors use a comprehensive, manually collected data set of unplanned CEO departures from 1993 to 2012.

The authors find that NCIDs play an important role in the CEO transitioning process. They help firms identify qualified inside replacements and provide stability as the new permanent or interim CEO. In addition, NCIDs facilitate the transfer of information and help the new external CEOs succeed. They show that the longer the NCID stays with the company, the longer the tenure of the new CEO. They also document that the presence of NCIDs improves operating and stock performance; especially when the new CEO is hired from outside of the firm.

The impact of NCIDs is particularly important when the firm hires an outsider as the new CEO. These results suggest that board composition affects frictions in the CEO labor market.

The literature has predominantly focused on the downside of having inside directors. Too many inside directors on a firm’s board is often associated with ineffective boards and entrenchment. To the contrary, the authors focus on a potential benefit of having inside directors.

ON December 6th Mr. Salter Davies was installed President of the Library Association at Chaucer House in succession to Mr. S. A. Pitt. A word first should be said about the Presidency of Mr. Pitt. It has been carried on under handicaps that would have deterred most men in such a post. A severe illness, successfully encountered and gallantly overcome, has been the main personal feature for Mr. Pitt of what should have been the most distinguisned year of a quite eminent library career. We had looked forward to very active work from him during his Presidency, and so far as circumstances permitted, he fulfilled all the obligations laid upon him completely. We can thank him more warmly, if not more sincerely, than perhaps would ordinarily be the case, because of the difficulties he has victoriously surmounted. With newly established health, we wish for him a continuance of the great work he has done for librarianship not only in Glasgow but in the Library Association and in the world of libraries generally.