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Schools face a formidable task as they come to terms with the effective management of the special educational needs response in the light of changes in culture, legislation and public expectations. Explores new ground in the development of flexible training modules which are designed to be practical and relevant for schools. These modules are designed collaboratively between serving teachers, LEA staff and local providers of accredited training. The process which has evolved ensures flexibility and maximizes the most efficient use of GEST and LEA funding.

Even though innovation is widely understood as a critical success factor, little is still known about the top management ability to steer small firms’ innovativeness. In an attempt to fill such gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between strategic orientation and propensity to innovate of a representative sample of Italian small-sized organizations.

Secondary data collected from the Community Innovation Survey performed in Italy by the Italian Institute of Statistics were investigated. Data concerned a representative sample of 5.833 units of analysis. Ad hoc logistic regression models were designed to illuminate the relationship between small firms’ propensity to innovate and their strategic orientation.

The outputs of logistic regression models suggested that strategic aims, strategic goals and awareness of environmental threats influenced the propensity of small firms to innovate. On the one hand, the desire to expand the current market share and to open new markets aroused product innovation; on the other hand, the need to increase organizational flexibility boosted process innovation.

This study relied on secondary data; therefore, it was not possible to tailor the process of data collection to the specific purposes of this research. Besides, findings are not generalizable at either the European or worldwide level.

This is one of the first attempts to exploit the potential of multiple logistic regression models to shed light on the relationship between small firms’ strategic orientation and their propensity to innovate.

Discusses the quality strategy deployment (QSD) processes, and addresses how service organizations identify customers’ needs in relation to the development of viable strategies and deployment of quality services using the quality function deployment (QFD) and the hoshin kanri techniques. An integrated QFD/hoshin approach is proposed to help develop viable strategies and attain service quality deployment. An implementation case of the approach is presented based on a recent QSD study in a typical engineering service organization – the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory (MEL) of City University of Hong Kong. Incorporating the findings of the study, this paper sets forth the identification of the voice of customers (VOC), the building of a house of quality (HOQ), and the deployment of organizational strategies. Besides, a generic 13‐step guideline of QSD process is elaborated for assisting service organizations to attain continuous performance improvement. Effective implementation of the QFD/hoshin guideline and monitoring the QSD process must garner organizational support and commitment.

This study aims to provide insights into the scale and use of information and communication technology (ICT) in managing medical devices in the National Health Service (NHS), with a focus on reverse exchange (RE) systems as a part of the broader reverse logistics (RL) systems, within which medical devices are returned and exchanged.

Two case studies were conducted with NHS Hospital Trusts, whilst another was built upon secondary resources. Primary findings were triangulated with the information collected from the NHS Trusts’ reports, direct observation and a preliminary round of consultations with 12 health-care professionals working in other NHS Trusts or Integrated Equipment Community Services.

The findings of this paper suggest that the sophistication of ICT implementation increases with the risks and value associated with medical devices. Operational attributes are derived from ICT implementations which can positively affect RE performance. The forces that drive the adoption of ICT in the NHS include pressure from government, business partners and patients; competitive pressure; perceived benefits; organisation size; top management support; and the availability of sufficient resources. Obstacles are mainly centred around the lack of sufficient resources.

Although the trusts that participated in this research are representative of different regions, the generalisation of the study results may be limited by the size of the sample organisations, so the results can only provide insights into the research problem. As this work is exploratory in nature, there is insufficient data on which to form definitive recommendations.

NHS Trusts may use the six operational attributes identified and verified by the case studies to benchmark their ICT implementation for device management. The actual and potential benefits of ICT implementation could inform technology development and encourage the uptake of ICT in healthcare. Governmental bodies can utilise this information to develop directives to actively drive ICT adoption in device management and the associated RE system. A well-considered training programme is needed to improve staff ICT skills to fully realise the potential of ICT systems which support the effective RE of medical devices.

The results of this paper suggest that the reverse management of medical devices backs up the supply chain attained through using ICT, which in turn reduces capital costs, medical risk and increases the finance available for frontline medical treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to cut through the rhetoric that shrouds Russia's anti‐money laundering regime to uncover the reality that lies beneath.

This paper relies on both primary and secondary sources in Russian and English that deal with the problems of money laundering in the Russian context. Relevant sections of the Russian Criminal Code as well as Russia's anti‐money laundering regulations have been consulted.

Overall, the Russian anti‐money laundering regime has thus far proved ineffective in terms of meeting its stated purposes of combating organized crime and terrorism. Its limited success stems largely from structural weaknesses in the Russian banking system as well as that industry's lack of a culture of regulatory compliance. Moreover, Russian authorities have opportunistically seized on the current anti‐money laundering regime as a useful tool in the pursuit of ends unconnected to the fight against organized crime and terrorism. The Russian authorities have used the regime to attempt to reform the banking system and to extend their strategic control in the domestic political and business realms. The ineffectiveness of the anti‐money laundering regulations and their usage to achieve ulterior aims undermine the legitimacy of the regime as a whole.

The paper looks beyond the technical difficulties in applying the anti‐money laundering regulations and examines the misuses of the anti‐money laundering regime in the Russian context. However, the problems raised in the paper are not unique to Russia and have relevance to other jurisdictions, especially countries that are members of the Financial Action Task Force.

LONG before man learnt to make fire by the friction of wood, he experienced the burden of friction in dragging home his kill. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to suppose that the torn sides of his beast gave the first solid lubricant. Blood and mutton fat were seriously recommended as lubricants for church bell trunnions as recently as the 17th century. Indoed we still reckon fatty acids the best of all boundary lubricants. The range of man's activities has increased enormously in the present century, and particularly in the last few decades. Men have circled the earth in space; a space ship is on its way to examine another planet; terrestrial man is boring to the bottom of the earth's crust; others have descended to the depths of the ocean, and oven established a home on the floor of the Mediterranean, Speeds have increased by factors of thousands, temperatures range from near absolute zero to thousands of degrees; and a new environment of high‐intensity nuclear radiation has been created. Still, objects must move over and along each other in these exotic conditions; and to a large extent solid lubricants can provide the answer to the frictional problems.

This paper aims to utilize data collected at the national, state, and local level to analyze our library instruction (LI) program with the goal of designing a program to best suit student needs.

The collection and analysis of national, state, and local economic and computer access and usage statistics was carried out.

Although most incoming freshmen at East Tennessee State University have access to computers and can perform basic computer functions, they do not have the skill set necessary to do college‐level research.

Sherrod Library needs to continue providing traditional LI classes. Furthermore, new ways to train incoming freshmen in research methods need to be developed.

The use of national, state, and local economic and computer access and usage statistics to create a profile of our students in order to assess LI and outreach programs.

This paper aims to disentangle Chinese-English-rich resources linguistic and speaker timbre features, achieving cross-lingual speaker transfer for Cambodian.

This study introduces a novel approach: the construction of a cross-lingual feature disentangler coupled with the integration of time-frequency attention adaptive normalization to proficiently convert Cambodian speaker timbre into Chinese-English without altering the underlying Cambodian speech content.

Considering the limited availability of multi-speaker corpora in Cambodia, conventional methods have demonstrated subpar performance in Cambodian speaker voice transfer.

The originality of this study lies in the effectiveness of the disentanglement process and precise control over speaker timbre feature transfer.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).