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This article explores how digital exclusion measured by citizens' occasional social media use and their skeptical social media attitude may affect their satisfaction with democracy (SWD), which is critical for public engagement and democratic stability in Europe.

This study employs multilevel regression to test the hypotheses proposed in the context of Europe and uses cross-level data sources. Individual-level data, including social media use frequency and attitude and SWD, come from the 2012, 2014 and 2016 Eurobarometer surveys. Country-level data are derived from multiple pre-existing datasets.

The empirical results suggest that digital exclusion measured by occasional use and skeptical attitude are negatively associated with the likelihood of SWD. Additionally, the negative effect of a skeptical attitude increases in importance over time. Finally, although government transparency can mitigate the negative effect of a skeptical attitude, its role in mitigating the negative effect of occasional use is effective only in countries with moderate or low transparency levels.

This study preliminarily explores the direct, changing and conditional impacts of digital exclusion in social media on SWD. It also deepens our understanding of digital exclusion by differentiating between its physical and motivational aspects, which relate to public engagement and equity and then comparing their relative importance.

The Library of the University of Leeds, at the invitation of the Nuffield Foundation, carried out a survey of the borrowing use made of it by the staff, research students, and undergraduates of the university during the calendar year 1957, and a report on this survey was published in the Journal of Documentation in March 1959. The results were of value in showing in great detail what demands were made upon the library's stock by different groups of borrowers; it did not show how much use was made of the library for reading on the premises, or how much users of the University Library were able to draw upon external or private resources. The statistics for borrowing showed that undergraduate students ranged fairly widely in their borrowing, and that, for example, many of them made good use of the periodicals in their fields of studies, but it also showed that many of them borrowed from the university libraries only once or twice in a year, or not at all. What other resources had these students? How much did they read and work in the library without borrowing, and how much did they depend upon outside libraries, upon private borrowing, and upon their own book buying? Evidently a more comprehensive account of students' use of the library was needed to show the relative importance of the various means at the student's disposal in his need for books.

Although frequently discussed as a singular policy, there is tremendous variation in the laws and regulations surrounding so-called decriminalization policies adopted by Western countries, with many jurisdictions adopting depenalization policies rather than policies that actually change the criminal status of cannabis possession offences. This paper provides a discussion of the liberalization policies being adopted in Western countries, highlighting distinct elements about particular policies that are important for proper analysis and interpretation of the policies. It then discusses some of the environmental factors that also shape these policies, and hence influence their potential impact, using data from the U.S.A. as a particular example. The results clearly show that researchers should be careful conducting intra- or international comparisons of policies because important aspects of these policies are frequently ignored.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the use of quality management tools and techniques and their integration into the ISO 9001:2008 standard in a wind power (WP) sector supply chain (SC).

The research project was carried out in 119 WP sector SC companies (i.e. component suppliers, wind turbine assemblers and wind farm operation and maintenance services) using the questionnaire method. The companies selected employ quality management systems (QMSs) which conform to the ISO 9001:2008 standard.

The survey findings reveal that the degree to which quality tools and techniques are used in the WP companies can be characterised as “high”. The results show that internal audits, flowchart diagrams and cost of poor quality are the most-commonly applied tools and techniques, although they also indicate some areas for further improvement, for instance, when using advanced and complex quality techniques such as design of experiments, quality function deployment or business process management. In addition to this, the findings reveal that ISO 9001:2008 establishes a favourable environment for the use of quality tools and techniques.

The study was based on the perceptions of quality managers, quality engineers and company managers (subjective data) and did not examine the reasons for either not implementing and/or the difficulties encountered while implementing quality tools and techniques.

The specific findings indicate that employing quality tools and techniques is useful for managers, not only when implementing a QMS, but also when suggesting recommendations for improvement.

A change of developing a framework integrating the main QT&T procedures into the main ISO 9001 processes.

Reports on a unique five‐year longitudinal study of several hundred English 1990s adolescents, exploring how they make decisions about whether to try or use illicit drugs. Shows how young people make and re‐make decisions and journey down distinctive drugs pathways as abstainers, former triers, those in transition and those who are current, regular drug users. Discusses how official interventions (particularly drugs education) have only marginal impact on a generation of drugwise youth, because they fail to understand the complexities of these decisions.

The role of digital library resources (DLRs) in accelerating academic and research productivity has been acknowledged worldwide. The purpose of this study is to empirically explore the use of DLRs as a predictor of satisfaction and research productivity in the context of Pakistan to examine its impact on engineering research productivity.

Given the research objectives, the most suitable methodology for this study is survey. The tool used for gathering the research data on the frequency of usage, purpose, satisfaction level and impact of DLRs usage on research productivity was questionnaires.

The findings of this study showed that the frequency of use of DLRs and purposes of DLRs significantly contributed to the research students’ satisfaction and research productivity. In addition, a significant relationship was found between the predictors (DLRs purposes, DLRs frequency) and outcome variables (users’ satisfaction and research productivity). Thus, all five hypotheses are supported. The findings of this study further suggested the provision of information sources by university libraries to support research efforts and make a scientific knowledge-based society in the country. The findings are also significant for Higher Education Commission (HEC) authorities, university library administrators, Library and Information Science professionals/information providers to develop e-resources and formulate effective usage policies through which they could make effective use of DLRs.

The rationale of the present study is to fill the gap by empirically investigating the association of users’ satisfaction and research productivity with two dimensions of DLRs, namely, DLRs usage frequency and purposes of DLRs usage.

Joint consultative committees (JCCs) involving employee representatives exist to stimulate positive employee relations and unlock employee involvement to build organisational performance. They are rare in Africa. Mauritius is a successful, beacon economy for Africa. We therefore investigate which categories of an organisation implemented the 2008 Mauritian government Code of Practice on JCCs, to discover how effective this “soft law” for of institutional change had been three years after its inception, when post-Code JCCs were formed.

We test propositions derived from institutional theory broadly conceived, through analysis of data from 120 organizations in Mauritius responding to a comprehensive HR survey covering a wide range of organisational level policies and practices conducted during the JCC formation period 2011–2012.

By 2012, nearly 30% of our sample had JCCs. Three quite distinct categories of an organisation created them, as follows: those with substantial union influence, those where strategic HRM was practiced and recently formed organisations. Remarkably, no interaction effects existed between the three categories.

Several contributions are made to shed light on a previously unstudied institution. First, we empirically establish that over a limited period in response to institutional change in the form of the code of practice, JCCs increased from 10% of organizations to almost 30%. Our second central contribution is to show three principal, quite separate organisational antecedents of JCCs, which do not interact statistically.

A shotblast room can be very complex and expensive. It has to provide protection, ventilation, abrasive recovery, abrasive cleaning, dust removal and collection, and very good lighting.

Outlines the dynamic and complex information delivery environment facing managers, and describes the eLib‐funded FIDDO (Focused Investigations of Document Delivery Option) Project’s aims, organisation and activities to date. The project seeks to establish reliable information on document delivery to assist managers in decision making. The project has formal structure and management to enable consultation and liaison with relevant expertise and interests. Work to date is described, including literature reviewing, document delivery vendor study, World Wide Web‐based information dissemination point, national survey of interlibrary loan practices, exchange of experience workshop, and “live” field trials.