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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how misalignments between the organizational climate (measured as information‐processing demand) and the leadership style (measured as information‐processing capability) may result in negative performance consequences.

The empirical part of the paper is based on questionnaire data. Key informant is the CEO and thus there is a focus on the CEO's perception of climate and leadership style. Data are subjected to regression analysis.

The results indicate that misalignments between climate and leadership style are problematic for organizational performance. This is supported by the empirical findings that show partial support for three out of four hypotheses and full support for the fourth hypothesis.

Data cover information on Danish small‐ and medium‐sized firms. These cross‐sectional data and cannot study the effects of misalignments over time.

Because the findings show that misalignments between climate and leadership style are problematic to organizational level of performance, this implies that in case of misfits either the climate or the leadership style must be changed.

The main contribution of the paper is that the framework allows an explicit understanding of which managerial actions are needed to manage particular types of climate. Further, the framework enables an understanding of how misalignments may result in poor performance.

In the last few years, signs of material excess by organizational and political leaders have often evoked public outcry. The paper aims to argue that there is insight to be gleaned from drawing together strands from the leadership literature with the literatures on moral economy and conspicuous consumption. The premise is that views of leader conspicuous consumption are shaped by their moral economy, the interplay between moral attitudes and economic activities. The paper seeks to juxtapose tales of Cleopatra and Antony's display of wealth with current media accounts to contribute to the leadership literature on ethics, specifically its intersection with power and narrative representation.

The paper adopts an analytic approach, with an international orientation and an interdisciplinary perspective. It acknowledges the role of narrative representation in shaping leadership and the psychological ambivalence with which societies approach their leaders' practices, focus here on desire-disdain and discipline-decadence. Cleopatra and Antony's conspicuous consumption generated a legacy of condemnation for millennia. Drawing from the retellings of their story, four moralizing representations – by Plutarch, Shakespeare, Sarah Fielding and Hollywood – are analyzed and juxtaposed with current media accounts. Altogether, the paper combines the interest in leadership across history with moralizing perspectives on the display of wealth by leaders.

The intersection of the literatures on leadership, moral economy and conspicuous consumption draws together several dynamics of relevance to leadership. First, evaluations of the display of wealth on the part of a leader are contextual: they change across time and place. Second, interpretations of conspicuous consumption involve aesthetic judgment and so sit at the nexus of morality and taste. Third, following tragedies, tales of leader conspicuous consumption offer critics another knife to dig into the fallen tragic hero. Fourth, views of conspicuous consumption are gendered. Last, conspicuous consumption by leaders attracts condemnation through support for social responsibility and sustainability.

The paper establishes a novel articulation between the literatures on leadership, moral economy and conspicuous consumption.

The development of networked access to academic library catalogue records has been conspicuously slow compared with that of campus‐wide information systems in general. In cooperation with its systems suppliers BLCMP, the Pilkington Library in Loughborough is seeking to remedy this situation by developing an interface that allows users to access its OPAC via the Web. The benefits of such a facility are reflected in BLCMP's decision to incorporate a revised version in the forthcoming release of the commercial Talis system; but problems relating to the ‘statelessness’ of HTTP and to the inadequacy of traditional catalogue records as access points for electronic information resources are still cause for consideration.

Some of Lou Pondy′s closest colleagues were invited to submit letters and articles, as a starting point for this special issue. Many letters were received from leading scholars at some of the most respected institutions in the world, capturing Lou′s human qualities and his unique analytic style. A selection of these letters are included here.

THIS issue opens the new volume of THE LIBRARY WORLD and it is natural that we should pause to glance at the long road we have travelled. For over forty years our pages have been open to the most progressive and practical facts, theories and methods of librarianship; our contributors have included almost every librarian who has held an important office; and we have always welcomed the work of younger, untried men who seemed to have promise— many of whom have indeed fulfilled it. In the strain and stress of the First World War we maintained interest and forwarded the revisions in library methods which adapted them to the after‐war order. Today we have similar, even severer, problems before us, and we hope to repeat the service we were then able to give. In this we trust that librarians, who have always regarded THE LIBRARY WORLD with affection, will continue to support us and be not tempted because of temporary stringency, to make a victim of a journal which has given so long and so independent a service.

LIBRARIANS in Britain stand at the threshold of great possibilities. Having passed through the ages of the ecclesiastical library, the rich collector's private library, the academic institutional library, and the rate‐supported public library—all general libraries —they have reached the age of the special library. The next will be that of the co‐ordinated, co‐operative library service.

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.

THE beginning of a new volume is necessarily a time for reflection. Our journal is now forty‐four years old and has appeared without intermission, always with the purpose, enunciated by its founder, James Duff Brown—to furnish librarians of all kinds and ages with a thought‐exchange and a medium of expression independent of any other control than the editor's conviction that what was published was sincere in intention and likely to be of use to the profession. This does not mean, as our pages to‐day witness, that matters of controversy or even of severe criticism of those who lead the profession officially are excluded. On the contrary, we believe that the best spur to advance is a critical vigilance. Thus it has occurred occasionally that our writers have been at variance with some current policy of the Library Association, some phases of its examinations or its conference policy. Occasionally, too, there have been criticisms of library authorities which an official journal might hesitate to make because those authorities may be in membership of the Library Association. Such criticism was never more necessary than now. The library movement has to be kept alive under the greatest strain in history; indeed, it should progress.