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It is clear that throughout the 1980s, competitive advantage, new‐product development, new markets, productivity and profitability will be tied directly to technology. Advances on the technology front are revolutionizing both mature and high‐technology industries, radically altering traditional business strategy and triggering dramatic shifts in global market share. Traditional industry leaders are already reeling from the impact of unprecedented global competition, as newly emerged world‐class competitors outperform them, as once clearcut industry lines are blurred, and as government‐business alliances proliferate.

THROUGHOUT the chorus of horror and indignation that greeted the destruction of Louvain by the more disreputable successors of the Huns, one of the most persistent notes was for the famous libraries. This act of wanton destruction is all the more surprising coming as it does from the hand of a nation that has done so much for bibliographical advancement. Our readers will be glad to have the description of the libraries, from the pen of a distinguished author, which appears in our present issue. It is good news to learn that there is some possibility of salvage, although a glance at the published pictures of the destroyed libraries does not tend to raise any undue hopes.

The latest buzz word heard in boardrooms, business schools, seminars, executive conferences, lectures, and in management consultants' proposals is “technology management.” In this context, technology is not simply science applied, nor is it simply research and development activity. Technology has become a synthetic term for a number of techno‐socioeconomic forces at play in our material world. And in technology management we have yet a higher level of abstraction. Its seductive appeal consists of the implicit promise that technology can be managed by the corporation just like any of its other resources such as people, capital, and materials. The term suggests that companies can pick and choose between good technologies that lead to growth and profits, and bad technologies that lead to sterility and decay. It also implies that companies can defend themselves against technological surprises.

Notes that the collaboration between Edwin F. Gay, founding dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, and Arch W. Shaw, a Chicago publisher, exemplifies the significance of historical sensibility on the origins of US management studies. Points out that the attention they gave to historical methods and data as tools of inquiry reflected Gay’s professional training in economic history, but it also reflected the sense both men had of the significance of institutions and institutional patterns in business life. Both men also urged more attention to distribution as a serious topic for academic research and teaching, and also recognized co‐ordinating activity as a central function of modern management. Adds that the potential gains from scale economies depended on how well general managers filled this function, and that for this task managers required an outlook that transcended technical expertise. Suggests that they had to understand the broader institutional setting in which they managed and that historical awareness could illuminate that context.

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.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 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.