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Service recovery strategies are efforts used by organizations to bring back dissatisfied customers to a state of satisfaction with the organization. It has been argued that successful service recovery by organizations is dependent on the effectiveness of front line employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine a model of service recovery performance (SRP) of front line employees in the retail industry in Ghana.

The study uses personally administered survey data collected from 136 employees in 20 micro and small retail enterprises in Ghana. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis is used to test the direct and interactive effects of organizational variables such as perceived managerial attitudes and work environment factors on the SRP of front line employees.

The findings indicate that the SRP is influenced by employee empowerment, interaction between customer service orientation and empowerment, interaction between customer service orientation and training for customer service excellence, and the interaction between empowerment and training for customer service excellence.

Focussing only on the antecedents of SRP, and using cross-sectional data based on the self-assessments of the front line employees from one country.

Empowering front line employees to deal with service failures should be combined with training them in job related and behavioral skills to attend to the needs of customers. Moreover, it is critical to combine perceived customer service orientation with training front line employees in job related and behavioral skills.

First study to examine the antecedents of SRP of front line employees in a sub-Saharan African environment. Moreover, study examines the interactive effects of organizational and work environment variables on SRP.

THE College of Librarianship is best considered on its own terms, as an institution unique in the history and present pattern of British library education, but its significance and probable future development can best be assessed if two external factors are kept in mind.

1916, the most difficult year in the history of the library movement, has passed not without some satisfaction to library workers. The war dominated everything, and in its atmosphere most intellectual movements have paused somewhat so far as practical activities were concerned. At the end of the financial year in March, the voice of the Philistine was prominent and strident, and many reductions were made in the rate grants to public libraries. Few, however, did more than cripple their activities, and on the whole a fair measure of public sanity prevailed. In the circumstances the wider progress of the library movement has been small, but there has been progress. Unostentatiously, but systematically, the Carnegie Trustees have urged rural library schemes upon several county councils, and have made grants to urban libraries for new buildings, the erection of which, however, they have required to be postponed until the peace. The tercentenary of Shakespeare found librarians and library authorities awake and interested, and much good work was done. Towards the end of the year commercial libraries were discussed with remarkable unanimity in most of the great cities, and actually materialised in the fine experiment at Glasgow described in our last issue. In so far as librarians are concerned, the year has been eventful for the calling away of nearly all remaining men of military age. In connection with this the military authorities in many districts have shown a complete indifference to the intellectual requirements of the people. It is difficult to say how many library workers are now with the Colours, but six hundred would be a very conservative estimate. Some, alas, of the most promising men in the profession have fallen. An endeavour is being made by the Library Assistants' Association to preserve a record of all who have gone forth for the Empire. Naturally, library appointments have been few, and most of those that have been made have been of a temporary nature. On the literary side, too, librarianship has been practically sterile in this country. The book by Messrs. Gower, Jast and Topley, on photographic record work is a remarkable exception, but is not entirely a book of library methodology. America has not produced very much, but we noted a useful book by Mr. Arthur L. Bailey on library bookbinding, which appeared in the middle of the year. Throughout the year the Library Association has pursued a policy of masterly inactivity, and has missed most of the opportunities for constructive schemes which war time has offered. Its general meetings were abandoned in London, its Council has met irregularly, and it has eluded practically every problem which it ought to have faced. We have been consistently critical of this state of affairs, but we still believe in the Library Association, and our criticism, however trenchant, has not been to destroy but to revivify and accelerate. We do not think that librarians can do without the Association, and in all our attacks upon its stagnation we have kept this view clearly before us. The President of the Association, while condoning the suspension of the general meetings, has generously filled the gap made by their omission with the interesting reunions at the Royal Society of Medicine. Hope of better things has been raised by the belated establishment of the Technical Libraries Committee, to which we look for a forward and aggressive policy. The Library Assistants' Association has wisely refused to follow the example of its seniors. The few monthly meetings it has held have been intensely practical and focussed upon the problems of the hour. We hope they will continue in spite of the increased railway fares which in the new year have added difficulty to travelling. The establishment of the North Central Library Association provided an immensely important part of England with a means of creating and circulating library opinion. This brief chronique of the doings of the year leaves us hopeful if not contented. Financial and staff problems are likely to increase while the war endures, but having surmounted these and our other difficulties thus far, we look forward with confidence to similar success.

IN The verdict of you all, Rupert Croft‐Cooke has some uncomplimentary things to say about novel readers as a class, which is at least an unusual look at his public by a practitioner whose income for many years was provided by those he denigrates.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of marketing in the economic growth and competitive strategies of Sub-Sahara African firms. It also seeks to offer a backdrop for the papers in the present volume of AJEMS.

It is based on a review of a selection of literature that highlights past and current perspectives of marketing’s contribution to economic growth and firm performance in developing economies.

The review suggests that trade liberalization in African countries since the 1980s has changed the competitive landscape of firms located in these countries and has compelled them to develop market-oriented strategies in order to enhance their performance. But the strategies adopted tend to target the growing middle income segments of the population in the urban areas and to ignore the poor.

It provides directions for future research into issues of inclusive marketing policies and strategies – i.e. strategies that embrace the bottom of the pyramid and transforms the production base of African economies.

THERE has recently sprung up a great interest in antiques, probably due to Arthur Negus and his TV and broadcast programmes, and perhaps it is this which has made county librarians also, think about their past and their beginnings. Gloucestershire was the first to become aware of the fact that its library was fifty years old, and that a genuine antique, in the shape of its first librarian, still existed and could be questioned about the early days. So in December, 1967, the Gloucestershire Library Committee staged a most successful 50th birthday party, and invited me to cut the birthday cake, on which were 50 candles! And a very great occasion it was.