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This paper seeks to explore and explain the dramatic organizational changes that took place over a relatively short time period in the five largest global professional networks, or GPNs – a group of organizations that were originally global accounting firms and traditionally accustomed to relatively gradual change.

Begins by describing the background of divestiture and diversification in GPNs. The data were collected from the firms' web sites, interviews with GPN managers, e‐mail requests for information via Big Five web sites, and from reports in the newspapers and business press over the two‐year period to June 2001. Uses neo‐institutional theory to study the context, precipitating dynamics, and enabling dynamics of large‐scale organizational change, including the part played by governmental and regulatory forces.

Explains the extent to which changes have occurred in a sample of countries in which these organizations operate, noting that the firm effects seem to be stronger than the country effects in the consulting area, while country effects are more pronounced in the law area.

This paper is an original study of mainly secondary data – including those collected from firms' internet sites – analyzing change in an institutionalized environment. It is one of the first studies to make use of the GPN concept. Researchers and practitioners interested in professional service firms in general will find a unique combination of data, analyses, and conclusions.

Currently, the most widely used Printed Circuit Board (PCB) base material is the glass reinforced epoxy known as FR‐4. To improve the electrical or the thermomechanical performance of PCBs, there are two possibilities from a material standpoint: a modification or change of the resin system and a change of the reinforcement. Currently, there are a number of resins used for high performance PCB base materials. These resin systems offer higher Tgs and lower z‐axis‐expansions for improved through hole reliability. Non‐halogenated epoxy resin systems are offered for the production of green PCBs. In addition to new resins, new reinforcements are available for use in PCBs. Which can improve the electrical parameters of the base material and the x and y axis‐ thermal expansion also changes with the use of those reinforcements. This paper compares the thermomechanical and electrical parameters of some new high performance and green base materials with the glass reinforced epoxy materials commonly used in both high layer count boards and microvia applications.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This study aims to deal with entropy generation and thermal analysis of magnetic hybrid nanofluid containing silver and gold as nanoparticles (Au-Ag/NPs) in the Eyring–Powell fluid.

The blood is used as a base fluid to study the rheological effects in a wavy asymmetric channel. The effect of viscous dissipation is also taken into account. The mathematical model is developed using the lubrication technique. The perturbation method is used to solve the nondimensional nonlinear differential equations, whereas the pumping properties have been analyzed using numerical integration.

The impact of entropy generation, Brinkman number, Hartmann number, nanoparticles volume fraction, thermal Grashof number, Brinkman number and Eyring–Powell fluid parameter is examined on the velocity profile, temperature profile and pumping characteristics. It is observed that the introduction of gold and silver nanoparticles boosts the velocity field in a smaller segment of the channel. The temperature profile rises for the increasing values of Hartmann number, Brinkman number and nanoparticle volume fractions while the temperature profile is restrained by the Eyring–Powell fluid parameter. The pumping rate rises in all sections as the thermal Grashof number and Hartmann number increase; however, the Eyring–Powell fluid parameter has the reverse effect. The volume of the trapping boluses is significantly affected by the Eyring–Powell fluid parameter, thermal Grashof number and fluid parameter.

The results are original and contribute to discover the role of hybrid nanoparticles under the influence of entropy generation viscous dissipation and magnetic fields. Pharmaceutical technology may use this research for things like better mucoadhesive drug delivery systems and more productive peristaltic micropumps.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective's implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.

Previous literature on earnings management (EM) indicates that managers are motivated to adjust reported income to serve their own self-interests, and to try and influence capital markets. However, previous research has failed to provide an appropriate theoretical underpinning for EM and has ignored the effect of cultural and environmental factors on shaping managers’ motivations. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to draw on interpretive methodology and new institutional sociology (NIS) theory to identify the external factors that motivate managers of Egyptian companies to use EM to modify financial statements.

The research adopted an interpretative methodology and interview methods. Interviewees were conducted with 34 participants, who were divided into four different categories; executives, financial analysts, auditors and stock exchanges’ authorities.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the range of external factors that motivate Egyptian corporate executives to adjust the earnings number in financial statements. These external factors include the expectations of investors, lenders and employees, the impact of stock exchange listing rules, beating an earnings target, and the privatisation of key state-owned companies.

The authors recognise that the paper has a number of limitations. The research is concerned solely with EM in Egypt and, therefore, it would not be safe to generalise the results to other contexts, even in the Middle East. Further research on the behaviour of managers towards EM in other countries would be useful to test validity of the results reported in this paper.

The principal contribution of this paper is to build on the previous EM literature to include external factors within the Egyptian context which motivate Egyptian managers to manage the earnings of companies in an upward direction. It adds additional EM motives to available literature including: employees, stock exchange’s rules, privatisation and meeting industrial norms. Also, the paper provides evidence of the effect of concentrated share ownership on managers’ likelihood to engage in EM behaviour. The paper also extends NIS theory to recognise the importance of the interplay between institutional and economic environment by including economic reform, and non-financial providers as factors that can explain the EM behaviour.

This exploratory study examined the qualitative and quantitative financial measures that best describe the patterns, predictors, or degree of success for vision driven organizations. A framework was developed within the methodology to qualitatively partition and link the financial contributions of the organizational and strategic factors within visionary organizations. The qualitative measures were identified utilizing content analysis within the literature stream. Five financial indicators were chosen to represent the respective quantitative measures from 57 visionary organizations over a 16‐year period. The inferential test results from two multiple discriminant analyses and verifying MANOVA tests show the accuracy for predicting the level of a visionary organization at 84 percent. The results of this research suggest that group membership, either visionary or average visionary, can be predicted reliably from a set of financial indicators. This research further suggests that organizations can enhance their opportunities for sustained competitive advantage and supernormal profits by focusing on the alignment of ten core elements of vision driven strategies identified from within the research stream.

Interest in developing institutional explanations of political and economic behavior has blossomed among social scientists since the early 1980s. Three intellectual perspectives are now prevalent: rational choice theory, historical institutionalism and a new school of organizational analysis. This paper summarizes, compares and contrasts these views and suggests ways in which cross‐fertilization may be achieved. Particular attention is paid to how the insights of organizational analysis and historical institutionalism can be blended to provide fruitful avenues of research and theorizing, especially with regard to the production, adoption, and mobilization of ideas by decision makers.

The UK Office for Library and Information Networking are engaged in a wide range of work in the area of metadata, in cooperation with various partners. Projects on metadata for Internet resource discovery, interoperability and digital preservation all point to the continuing need for something like traditional library services to organise, access and preserve networked information.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.