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Computers have been used in food retailing groups for the past 13–14 years. Companies such as Sainsbury and Tesco Stores began by implementing distribution and basic accounting systems on mark sense cards and early computing equipment like the Emidec 1100. From these elementary beginnings the large companies have now developed sophisticated and integrated systems based on substantial investment on computer equipment and computer software. The emphasis in computing development however, throughout the last decade, has been on distribution systems. In addition substantial effort has gone into accounting and management information applications. The degree of centralised control of the trading operation within each group, has to a very large extent dictated the data processing policy pursued by individual organisations. Other factors have been the number and size of the retail stores owned by each company and the detailed trading strategy followed by each group, such as the ratio of own label to branded goods. The effect of these factors in practice can best be illustrated by a description of the different computer‐based distribution systems operated by the major groups.

The department store's twin characteristics of a wide range of merchandise and a high level of customer service compel it to react quickly to a constantly changing and a more sophisticated customer base. The customer also looks for service ‐ credit, delivery, and after sales. Originally computers were used in department stores only for payroll and purchase ledger. Now the objective is to run the entire trading operation round an integrated computer system. It is primarily in the area of conveying timely and accurate information to executives responsible for taking decisions, that computers are making the greatest impact on the department store trade.

Over the past eight years, the MELVYL catalog has become one of the largest public access catalogs in the world, and now plays a central role in providing access to the library resources of the University of California. Currently, under heavy load, the MELVYL catalog supports many hundreds of simultaneous terminal connections, servicing over a quarter of a million queries a week and displaying more than two million records a week to its user community. This article discusses the history of the network that has supported the MELVYL catalog from the early days of its prototype to the present. It also describes both the current technical and policy issues that must be addressed as the network moves into the 1990s, and the roles that the network is coming to play in integrating local automation, the union catalog, access to resource databases, and other initiatives. Sidebars discuss the TCP/IP protocol suite, internet protocol gateways, and Telenet and related inter‐operability problems.

A key pre‐requisite of locational decision‐making in retailing is appropriate sources of data. These have become increasingly available from a number of internal and external sources in recent years. Coupled with concomitant decreases in the cost of technology, locational decision‐making can now, more than ever, be based on more than subjective practices alone. This paper aims to assess how the use of data varies across four named retail and service sectors, an area of research that has hitherto been neglected. A postal questionnaire was distributed to approximately 300 locational planning managers to ascertain the use of data in decision‐making. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine how the use of 21 named datasets varied by sector. A number of significant differences in data usage and sharing emerged and are reported here. It is concluded that data use is by no means uniform across different retail and service types, and that future research that addresses inter‐sectoral differences in locational planning practices would be appropriate.

This monograph contains abstracts from the 2005 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, 6‐7th September 2005

The student revolt of 1967 to 1974, which finally expired about 1978, retains its fascination and much of its significance in the twenty‐first century. But the seven or so years which preceded it are often passed over as simply a precursor, the incubation of a subsequent explosion; they deserve a higher status. The concentration of interest on the late 1960s and early 1970s arises from the driving role of students in the cultural revolution whose traumatic impact still echoes with us. As late as 2005 some commentators saw federal legislation introducing Voluntary Student Unionism as the culmination of struggles in the 1970s when Deputy Prime Minister Costello and Health Minister Abbott battled their radical enemies. Interest in these turbulent years at a popular, non‐academic level has produced a succession of nostalgic reminiscences. In the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Weekend’ for 13 December 2003 Mark Dapin pondered whether the Melbourne Maoists had changed their world views (‘Living by the Little Red book’.) In the Sydney University Gazette of October 1995 Andrew West asserted that the campus radicals of the 1960s and ‘70s had remained true to their basic beliefs (‘Not finished fighting’.) Some years later, in April 2003, the editor of that journal invited me to discuss ‘Where have all the rebels gone?’ My answer treated this as a twofold question: What has happened to the former rebels? Why have the students of today abandoned radicalism?

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.

This paper is philosophical, conceptual and theoretical and in proffering a bold thesis, has an argumentative character appropriate to that style.

Three stages can be identified over the past 200 years in the relationship between the university and the matter of social responsibility, being successively tacit, weak and now hybrid. In the present stage, new spaces are opening for the university to transcend social responsibility, moving to a worldly and earthly responsibility. However, this new stage is having to contend against the university in an age of cognitive capitalism. As such, a large but hitherto unnoticed culture war is present, the outcome of which is unclear.

The scholarship informing this paper is wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary (history, social theory, philosophy, critical higher education studies, literature on the idea of the university, comparative higher education, ethics and sociology of knowledge), as it has to be in sustaining the large thesis being contended for, and it has broad hinterlands, which can only lightly be intimated.

The key implication is that the idea of social responsibility is currently being construed too narrowly and that, therefore, universities – in developing their corporate strategies and missions – should be more ambitious and set their responsibility goals against horizons that go well beyond the social realm.

The thesis developed here is original in offering a three-stage theory of a 200-year evolution of the socially responsible European university. A new stage of an Earthly responsibility is glimpsed but it is having to contend with a continuing performative university, so leading to a hidden culture war and such that the future of university social responsibility is in doubt.

As most teachers realize, classroom discussions have limitations including time restraints, reserved participants, or domineering discussants. With the advent of Web 2.0, the opportunities for class discussion have expanded to include synchronous and asynchronous discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. Discussion forums, as an extension of classroom discussions and activities, allow teachers to target multiple social studies skills while giving students opportunities to expand their own historical understandings via peer interaction. Whether the goal is to address specific historical thinking skills or push students to think about what it means to be an active citizen in a diverse society, discussion forums can play an integral role in the development of students’ understanding of society. I describe the reasons for expanding discussion into these new mediums and provide examples of students’ online discussions. Recommendations are offered for teachers who would like to begin using discussion forums in their own classrooms.