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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Developing individual relationships to drive multilateral, open communication, has the greatest power to connect all levels of an organization to a unifying strategy. This should be a primary consideration in both the due diligence and implementation stages of a cross-border merger/acquisition to ensure a successful transition. The organization considering/executing the merger/acquisition should look inward first, to its own practices, to make necessary adjustments and establish a foundation for integration.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to begin the discussion about re-positioning change management in information technology projects and to propose a framework for improving the quality of decision making in change initiatives that may contribute to that re-positioning.

The paper analyzed all change management job advertisements in Australia in both the public and private sectors for May 2015, to identify which change management-related skills were being sought. The purpose was to try to identify any patterns that would confirm or negate the original observations, and to help develop a research question for a subsequent, substantive study.

Change management may be perceived as predominantly comprising communications, stakeholder management and training. The quality of leadership decision making in change initiatives may also be contributing to the consistently high failure rates.

The analysis of job advertisements was a sample only, and requires more quantitative research.

The required alignment of leadership, ethics and change can only be achieved by first improving the quality of leadership decision making, which demands a values-based approach.

The paper highlights a restriction to the scope of practice of change management, and how that contributes to continuing high failure rates. The value is that it provides deeper insight into the commonly accepted “leadership alignment” issue, as well as demonstrating that this is probably the least practiced aspect of change management. The paper also challenges to build strong ethical foundations for the practice.

This chapter relates quantum storytelling consulting (QSC) to ensemble leadership theory (ELT) by Rosile, Boje, & Claw (2016). What kinds of leadership does it take to attend to the forecaring in advance of the future and how does this relate to quantum storytelling? In a music ensemble, no one musician is the star: they are equal, all are the stars of the show, emerging as stars and then taking a supporting role in cyclic rotation. ELT is important to the world ecology because it is a together-we-are-all-leaders approach. Rather than restricting leadership to one or a few people, the ensemble of many networks of leadership is important. I will contrast ELT with more familiar models of leadership: dispersed, distributed, and relational that restrict leadership to a few. One primary difference is that ELT includes both community and ecology and it is rooted in Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) that extend from the ancient Southwest US and Mexico. My contribution here is to recognize that ELT is rooted in the rhizomatic fractal, whereas the other models of leadership discussed here (dispersed, distributed, and relational) have been linear-, cyclic-, or spiral-fractal waves. A fractal is defined as recurring self-sameness patterns across scalabilities. I will look to Deleuzian rhizomatic-fractals, which ELT purports to be and make an observation: ELT revived and reinvented in late modern capitalism, must be a correlate with the dominant hierarchic kinds of leadership of here and now, which is this world situation we are now in. Does not each revolution (steam, diesel/gas combustion, cyber-information, and liquid modernity) actually create anew the enslavement of human beings in hierarchic forms of leadership? At the end of this chapter, ensemble leadership will be related to whole-world ecological health.

MID‐OCTOBER sees all library activities in process. The autumn and winter prospects are interesting and, in some senses, may be exciting. The autumn conferences have been held, except that of the London and Home Counties Branch, which is at Southend for the week‐end October 17th to 20th, and is the third sectional conference to be held this month in addition to seven other meetings. These gatherings, at Torquay, Greenwich, Felixstowe, London (three), Tunbridge Wells and Leicester, show a fairly wide coverage of the lower part of Great Britain. The northerners had their go, so to speak, last month, in Durham and elsewhere, as we have previously recorded. The Programme of Meetings, 1952–53, arranged by organisations in the London and Home Counties Branch area, is a most convenient leaflet listing 33 meetings in the area. Every interest seems to be served, with two exceptions, and every L. A. member of whatever section may attend any or all of the meetings. The exceptions are the meetings of ASLIB and the Bibliographical Society. Any list of meetings for librarians would be improved if it noted all that interest them and these would be a useful, not extravagant, addition. London Library Intelligence, the editorship of which has been handed over by Mr. F. J. Hoy, who did it extremely well, to Mr. R. W. Rouse, Borough Librarian, Finsbury, E.C.1, does provide the required information we understand. It is perhaps too much to expect a list of all gatherings throughout these islands; or is it? There are 12,000 of us and, if only 50 attended a meeting once a year—a satisfactory number for discussion— there would be room for 240 meetings.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy as “an entrepreneur” is gained in relation to others during the nascent phase.

The author studies two firm creating teams over a 12‐month incubation period. Data collected through participant observation, documentation and interviews are emploted as narratives in order to explore how nascent entrepreneurs gain legitimacy through social interaction. Positioning theory is used to explore how negotiated rights and duties are employed towards legitimacy‐gaining strategies.

Conforming, selecting and manipulating strategies are used to gain legitimacy during a process of firm creation through interactive dialogue with key stakeholders (role‐set). Positioning facilitates a process of negotiated rights and duties that helps to define the role of “entrepreneur” to which the nascent entrepreneurs aspire.

The study is bounded to a specific contextual setting and thus initial findings would benefit from further investigation in comparable and control settings. Findings illustrate the ways in which nascent entrepreneurs employ legitimacy‐gaining strategies through interaction with key stakeholders, an area of research not well understood. This contributes to an understanding of how entrepreneurial identity is developed.

Designed firm creation environments can facilitate interaction with key stakeholders and support positioning of nascent entrepreneurs as they attempt to gain legitimacy in the role of “entrepreneur”, while creating a new firm. Legitimacy‐gaining strategies can strengthen entrepreneurial identity development, which can be applied to multiple entrepreneurial processes.

The article accesses individuals in the process of becoming entrepreneurs, a phenomenon most often studied in hindsight. Emphasis on stakeholder interaction as contributing to entrepreneurial development is also understudied. Legitimacy‐gaining strategies are explored through narratives using positioning theory, an approach which has been discussed conceptually but not readily applied empirically.

Substitution of lead‐free solders in electronic assemblies requires changes in the conventional Sn:Pb finishes on substrates and component leads to prevent contamination of the candidate solder. Options for solderability preservative coatings on the printed wiring board include organic (azole or rosin/resin based) films and tin‐based plated metallic coatings. This paper compares the solderability performance of electroless tin coatings versus organic azole films after exposure to a series of humidity and thermal cycling conditions. It is shown that the solderability of immersion tin is directly related to the tin oxide growth on the surface and is not affected by the formation of Sn‐Cu intermetallic phases as long as the intermetallic phase is protected by a surface Sn layer. For a nominal tin thickness of 60 ?inches, the typical thermal excursions associated with assembly were not sufficient to cause the intermetallic phase to consume the entire tin layer. Exposure to elevated temperatures, in the presence of humidity, promoted heavy tin oxide formation which led to solderability loss. In contrast, thin azole films were shown to be more robust to humidity exposure; however, upon heating in the presence of oxygen, they decomposed and led to severe solderability degradation. Evaluations of lead‐free solder pastes for surface mount assembly applications indicated that immersion tin significantly improved the spreading of Sn:Ag and Sn:Bi alloys compared with azole surface finishes.

The emergence of new interconnection technologies involving double‐sided surface mounted components has put stronger restrictions on the method of preserving the solderable finish on printed circuit (PC) boards. The popular Sn/Pb coatings have come under strong scrutiny due to environmental hazards of lead and also because they do not provide flat, planar surfaces for SM assembly. Organic solderability preservative coatings (OSP) are emerging as strong contenders for replacing Sn/Pb surface finishes. Benzotriazole based organic coatings have been successfully used in the past by several electronics manufacturers. However, assembly technologies involving multiple thermal operations have necessitated a fundamental understanding of the thermal stabilities and the mechanism of corrosion protection provided by the OSPs. This paper reports the results of an investigation of the thermal stabilities of two organic corrosion protection coatings. Although both are organic azole based, they operate in two distinct regimes: one forming thin films (∼100 Å) and the other forming thick films (∼5000 Å). The mechanism of surface protection has been studied using direct surface analytical techniques such as X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), scanning transmission electron microscopy (SEM/TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR). The solderability of the copper was measured by wetting balance techniques and correlated to the amount of copper oxidation. The results indicate that, although the thin films provide excellent protection for storage and handling operations, they decompose under heat, thereby causing oxidation of the copper. The thick films appear to withstand multiple thermal cycling. However, the underlying copper substrate can still be oxidised by oxygen diffusion through pores or cracks, or the film may undergo chemical changes that render the copper unsolderable.

This paper aims to summarize the importance of rare materials for academic libraries, including developments since the arrival of the internet and the effects of declining library budgets.

The authors reviewed the literature on the subject coupled with their experiences with collection development.

Collecting rare materials remains important for scholarly research, though harder to justify during a period of budget stringency. Academic libraries should discover creative ways to discover and add rare materials to their collections. Rare materials require special expertise in their acquisition, processing, storage, and use. Digitization is making rare materials more accessible but cannot substitute for the use of the originals in all cases.

The authors provide a summary of recent thought on the status of rare materials in academic libraries – for libraries that include such collections or for those interested in increasing their holdings of rare materials.

The paper provides a summary of recent trends in collecting rare materials in academic libraries.

AT intervals the rules and regulations of libraries should be scrutinized. They are not in themselves sacrosanct as is the constitution of the Realm, but many exist which no longer have serviceable qualities. Nevertheless, so long as a rule remains in force it should be operative and its application be general and impartial amongst readers; otherwise, favouritism and other ills will be charged against the library that makes variations. This being so, it is imperative that now and then revision should take place. There is to‐day a great dislike of discipline, which leads to attacks on all rules, but a few rules are necessary in order that books may be made to give the fullest service, be preserved as far as that is compatible with real use, and that equality of opportunity shall be given to all readers. What is wanted is not “no rules at all,” but good ones so constructed that they adapt themselves to the needs of readers. Anachronisms such as: the rule that in lending libraries forbids the exchange of a book on the day it is borrowed; the illegal charge for vouchers; insistence that readers shall return books for renewal; the rigid limiting of the number of readers' tickets; or a procrustean period of loan for books irrespective of their character—here are some which have gone in many places and should go in all. Our point, however, is that rules should be altered by the authority, not that the application of rules should be altered by staffs. The latter is sometimes done, and trouble usually ensues.