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The paper introduces a new model, the evolutionary-existential model of organizational decision-making. The purpose of the model is to provide an empirical framework for understanding the context for decision-making under conditions of existential threat to organizations, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic during the year 2020.

The model is built on an extensive interdisciplinary literature review, drawing from research in social psychology, management, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology and consumer behavior. In general, the authors follow Bargal's (2006) call for action research in the spirit of Lewin (1951).

According to the model, organizational decision-making during the pandemic threat is influenced by (1) existential threat and (2) an unprecedented macroenvironmental context for decision-making. The authors argue that these psychological and macroenvironmental forces may lead to suboptimal decision-making, based on (1) their basic cognitive architecture and (2) specific evolutionary triggers activated by the pandemic. The authors highlight how the interaction between these inputs and the decision context manifest in various social psychological phenomena that are known to impact judgments and decisions.

Simply put, the magnitude and the urgency of the global pandemic call for new and integrative ways of understanding organizational decision-making.

The model is new. Although the authors draw on prior research and theory, the model is uniquely interdisciplinary; further, the authors are able to make specific and unique predictions about the inputs, decision context and their social–psychological consequences for decision-making.

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

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.

This study analyzes the impact of different types of social capital (structural, relational, cognitive) from different sources (internal and external) generated in electronic social networks on organizational performance.

We test our hypotheses using OLS regression analysis of data obtained from nonprofit organization (NPO) fundraising on a popular online social networking website.

The results provide insights into the multifaceted, complex nature of social capital in electronic environments. We find that electronic social capital does indeed impact organizational outcomes, but that these impacts vary depending on the type of social capital, the type of outcomes, and roles within the social network.

These results clearly indicate the need to further research exploring social capital, in all its forms, within increasingly popular online and electronic social networks. While specifically applicable to NPOs, the findings also provide important insights for a wide variety of organizations.

English chartered companies began to trade with both the Ottoman and the Mughal states in the last decade of the sixteenth century. In India, as recent work has shown, the rudiments of an English polity were established very early and eventually metastasized into a sizeable colonial empire. In Turkey, on the other hand, no “company-state” ever took root. This paper endeavors to explain this divergence from the perspective, not of the highly “successful” East India Company, but of the “failed” (and much less well-studied) Levant Company, which, with short interruptions, maintained a monopoly English trade with the Ottoman Empire from 1592 until 1803. The paper offers an account of this divergence that emphasizes the importance of an independent overseas administrative apparatus, something that the EIC had but that the Levant Company lacked. The Levant Company lost control of its overseas administration in the 1630s, when the Crown began to regard the Ottoman Empire as too diplomatically important to leave England’s representation there to “mere merchants.” Thereafter, the company was at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis rival commercial organizations that, because they had established a territorial base, could control and cheapen production in the colonial sites with which they traded.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

This chapter discusses the application of community informatics (CI) principles in the rural Southern and Central Appalachian (SCA) region to further the teaching of information and communication technologies (ICT) literacy concepts in courses that formed part of two externally funded grants, “Information Technology Rural Librarian Master’s Scholarship Program Part I” (ITRL) and “Part II” (ITRL2), awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program to the School of Information Sciences (SIS) at the University of Tennessee (UT).

The chapter documents ICT use in ITRL and ITRL2 to extend librarian technology literacy training, allowing these public information providers to become change agents in the twenty-first century. It discusses aspects of CI that influenced these two projects and shaped the training of future rural library leaders embedded in traditionally underrepresented areas to further social justice and progressive changes in the region’s rural communities.

The chapter demonstrates the role that CI principles played in the context of ITRL and ITRL2 from project inception to the graduation of the rural librarians with examples of tangible IT services/products that the students developed in their courses that were directly applicable and tailored to their SCA contexts.

ITRL and ITRL2 provided a unique opportunity to apply a CI approach to train information librarians as agents of change in the SCA regions to further economic and cultural development via technology and management competencies. These change agents will continue to play a significant role in community building and community development efforts in the future.

Everyone wants accountability in education. President Bill Clinton wanted accountability in education. In his 1999 State of the Union address, the President announced “…a plan that for the first time holds states and school districts accountable for progress and rewards them for results.” Through his proposed Education Accountability Act, President Clinton sought to insist, “…all states and school districts must turn around their worst-performing schools, or shut them down” (1999, pp. 202–203).

Examines the seventeenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.