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Telephone response system is the frontline of hospital operations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze a representative telephone response system of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, address the existing inefficiency issues such as long call waiting time, and improve system resilience to changes.

Resource sharing schemes are proposed to improve the system performance in answering calls related to appointment booking and medication renewal. Discrete event simulation is adopted to model the current system and the resource sharing schemes.

The resource sharing schemes dramatically improve system performance reflected by the decrease of call waiting time and queue, as well as the extreme high utilization of agents in a key unit. Compared with the less desired alternative of hiring additional employees to mitigate the performance issues, the resource sharing schemes perform at par or even better. Sharing more resource during the peak hours can further balance the agent workload.

The resource sharing schemes could alleviate staffing shortage, long waiting time, and high-abandonment rate in the bottle-beck unit of the system, and lead to better utilization of scarce resources on the hospital floor. The concept reflects localized centralization efforts in traditionally highly decentralized telephone operations in hospital systems.

This research provides a structured approach to analyze the operations of a VA telephone response system. The developed simulation model is validated, and this provides a valuable tool for management to analyze the complicated telephone operations of the telephone systems of other VA and non-VA hospitals. Resource sharing constitutes a cost-effective solution for improving system performance and resilience.

Aims to assess retrospectively the payback from NHS reactive research programmes in the Northern and Yorkshire region. A questionnaire was sent to all recipients of regional reactive research programme funding (biomedical, health services research (HSR), and primary and community care programmes) between 1 April 1991 and 31 March 1996. The sample available for analysis involved 174 respondents covering 119 projects, with a total financial value of £2.2 million. The main outcome measures used were peer‐reviewed publications, changes in individual practice, changes in NHS service delivery and organisation, and impact on the careers of researchers. Overall, 119 projects produced 230 peer‐reviewed publications: this was achieved at an average cost of £10,673, £6,386 and £22,310 per publication for the biomedical, HSR, and primary and community care programmes respectively. From the qualitative data analysis, important changes in individual practice and NHS service delivery were identified by respondents. The researchers in our sample appeared to have attracted over £6 million in R&D funding related to the initial regional grant. Although based on self‐report, there is evidence to suggest that the return on investment from NHS R&D can be substantial, taking a broad view of benefits to the NHS and to researchers. The findings also confirm the need for more effective dissemination and implementation of research findings.

R. J. Woodbridge has been appointed technical manager of Berger Decorative Paints. Since joining Berger 42 years ago, Dick has had wide experience in all fields of decorative paint technology, and been responsible for a number of significant advances in emulsion paints. As a recognised expert in this field, he has presented a number of authoritative papers at international symposia.

Debates in US politics over abortion, homosexuality and other socio‐moral issues are increasingly explained by sociologists, politicians, policy advocates and the media as the result of a “culture war” in American society. Contained in this explanation is a theory that explains the moral value attitudes driving these debates as the product of conflicting worldviews. Since the worldviews that ultimately drive these debates cannot be compromised, the debates are said to be insoluble using normal democratic processes. The widespread dissemination of the hopeless aspect of this theory generates concern of self‐fulfilling prophesies. In this paper I outline the “culture war” and traditional “status group” theories and offer a critique. I conclude with an explanation of how the traditional “status group” explanations of these conflicts offers a more accurate — and more hopeful — vision of US society that avoids potentially self‐fulfilling prophesies of war.

Cork stoppers may taint as many as one in 33 bottles of all domestic US wines. Yet, because tradition is thought to play such an important role in shaping expectations regarding acceptable premium wine packaging, marketers have felt little need to test whether cork closures are indeed a critical consumer expectation. This paper serves as a guide toward understanding the obstacles which must first be overcome by those producers who wish to adopt cork substitutes for fine wines. This paper also offers insight into grappling with the implementation of problem solutions; shows why desirable solutions may not always be practical; and provides insight into why conflicting intrafirm departmental viewpoints, consumer expectations, and the competitive environment in which the firm or industry operates, can combine to lead the marketer to reject money‐saving superior product innovations. Preliminary work indicates that consumers reject label message conditions as a means of achieving acceptance of cork alternatives. The main objective of future research should therefore be to provide specific findings on how much positive and negative impact is likely to occur by changing the product design.

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.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

BASF Coatings + Inks has announced the management team for this newly formed company. All members have extensive experience of the coatings and inks industry and were previously senior management members of companies within the BASF Group.

A series of online searches of the Harvard University Library System – which includes the Baker Library, Houghton Library and the Radcliffe Institute’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library – on the History of Women in America revealed nearly 1,000 archive and manuscript holdings on advertising and related topics. This paper aims to investigate the extent of these holdings, to assess their value to advertising and marketing historians and to explore their potential for encouraging future research on under-investigated topics and questions.

Described are the extensive and valuable special collections and other holdings related to advertising, business and marketing of the Harvard Library System. Also described are the availability of the holdings and recommendations for accessing and studying the collections and artifacts.

The research reported here supports an overall conclusion that the Harvard Library System holds an important place among the world’s repositories of valuable historical advertisements and marketing ephemera. The research also supports four specific conclusions regarding the historical value of Harvard’s collections and archives. First, some of the collections offer access to artifacts and items from an under-investigated period – the first half of the 19th century. Second, many of the collections are international in scope. Third, the collections represent a wide array of 19th century non-periodical advertisements and ephemera, such as trade cards, posters and theatrical playbills. Fourth, and most important, the collections offer significant potential for addressing, among other under-investigated topics, the important role of women in the development of modern advertising theory and professional practices.

A prior search for the world’s largest and most historically significant archives and collections of advertisements and marketing ephemera (promotional objects or media executions created for a one-time, limited purpose) revealed a handful of library and museum collections of exceptional size or topical importance meriting further investigation. This paper adds to an extensive line of research published in the marketing and advertising historical literature exploring and describing the breadth, depth and historical value of the world’s important collections of historical advertisements and ephemera.

A two‐day symposium will be hosted by the ISHM‐Can‐Am Chapter in Ottawa, Canada, on 19–20 June 1985. The event will concentrate on advances in Surface Mounted Technology and topics covered will include design rules and critical process parameters, multi‐stage attachment methods, advances in cleaning processes and fluids, robotic insertion of non‐standard components, automatic inspection, etc. A Tutorial will be held concurrently on rework techniques for surface mounted devices.